"For example, did dinosaurs actually exist, or was that 'memory' just part of the story consciousness created to explain our existence in the present moment?" — CasKev

"The bones exist. They change over time. What happened before we can only guess, and that is what science does. It makes up a story by guessing. We can never know, but we can enjoy the bones and the story behind it." — Rich

So according to Bohmian Mechanics, there is only one possible reality, based on causation, right? Wouldn't that mean the past is fixed and should be able to explain what we see in the present, as opposed to what Stephen Hawkings postulates in the quote I posted earlier from his book 'The Grand Design'? Or does it just say that what we observe in the present exists, and will behave according to certain patterns, with no real certainty of the events leading up to the present?

there is only one possible reality — CasKev

Well this gets tricky, because it depends upon perspective. What each of us is creating and perceiving it's real - but different. The fabric that we are part of, the holographic universe, is continuously changing. So we can't speak in static terms or as though there is only one perspective.

Wouldn't that mean the past is fixed — CasKev

Nothing is fixed. Even memory changes. Consider yourself memory (information) entwined in a constantly changing holographic waveforms. You are part of it and constantly creating within it.

Here is the key passage in Bergson's Mind and Matter where he's describes the universe as a holographic field, two decades before holography was discovered! The power of philosophical intuition brilliantly demonstrated:

"The whole difficulty of the problem that occupies us comes from the fact that we imagine perception to be a kind of photographic view of things, taken from a fixed point by that special apparatus which is called an organ of perception - a photograph which would then be developed in the brain-matter by some unknown chemical and psychical process of elaboration.But is it not obvious that the photograph, if photograph there be, is already taken, already developed in the very heart of things and at all the points of space? No metaphysics, no physics even, can escape this conclusion. Build up the universe with atoms: each of them is subject to the action, variable in quantity and quality according to the distance, exerted on it by all material atoms. Bring in Faraday's centers of force: the lines of force emitted in every direction from every center bring to bear upon each the influences of the whole material world. Call up the Leibnizian monads: each is the mirror of the universe. All philosophers, then, agree on this point. Only if, when we consider any other given place in the universe, we can regard the acton of all matter as passing through it without resistance and without loss, and the photograph of the whole as translucent: here there is wanting behind the plate the black screen on which the image could be shown. Our "zones of indetermination" play in some sort the part of the screen. They add nothing to what is there; they effect merely this: that the real action passes through, the virtual action remains."

Stephen Robbins provides his own insights on how this solves the "hard problem in this video.

Have you read The Simplest-Case Scenario by Karl Coryat? I'd be interested to hear whether his theories on information being fundamental fit with ideas of a holographic universe...

information being fundamental fit — CasKev

Precisely, it is Memory. That which the Mind remembers. Information is not information unless there is a Mind to interpret it and use it. Using implies that there is some movement in a chosen direction. To simply have information implies a static, dormant universe.