His later statement that plausible states are only thus if they "evolve backward without generating contradictions" which is a truism if I ever heard one. You m

His later statement that plausible states are only thus if they "evolve backward without generating contradictions" which is a truism if I ever heard one. You mean plausible states come from a prior plausible state, and can't just be created willynilly? Wow! That would be pretty damning for your thought experiment as presented! Your thought experiment photon not being created by "special processes" like any of the interactions of quantum mechanics (such as virtual pair annihilation or from atoms) means that it presupposes an origin for such a photon, and you find it comes from an evaporated micro black hole? That doesn't feel like a paradox, that feels like the conclusions from what may be an implausible setup. Conservation of energy demands the photon comes from somewhere, and you found that it was emitted by a black hole, just as it vanishes; so perhaps it's less implausible than imagined, or perhaps not? Either way, the only paradox is the demand that we be able to place a photon in space without any cause and then work backwards to assume where in the vaccuum this photon sprung up from to somehow make this implausible scenario plausible - and then, when you find it, and don't trace back further to ask what made that, you then assert it's a paradox because you don't think a black hole makes sense? I still find Biddings sections in this article very confusing and in need of clarification. But, I doubt the universe is in the habit of retconning, though arguably we wouldn't be able to tell either way, so oh well.