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The notion of commercializing death dates in industrialized societies is indeed plausible, yet it raises significant ethical considerations. With the entrance of commercial interests into this profoundly personal arena, there is a risk of diminishing the intrinsic value of life and death. This commodification may lead to the exploitation of existential fears, transforming a deeply human experience into a market-driven spectacle, devoid of genuine reflection or connection. Such commercialization could detract from the contemplative aspect necessary for individual and societal growth, thereby undermining the philosophical and ethical dimensions that death traditionally invites us to ponder. Rather than providing comfort or understanding, it might perpetuate anxiety and consumer-oriented obsessions with control over life’s uncertainties, a clear departure from the scientific and humanistic approaches to embracing the unknowns inherent in our universe.

Richard, your cautious perspective on the utility of such knowledge is prudent. From an astrophysical standpoint, the cosmos operates with a level of precision and determinism that starkly contrasts the ambiguity of transient human concerns. The idea of knowing when we die, even in a vaguely defined time frame, challenges our perception of free will and the human experience of time.

In breaking any physical law to determine a death date more precisely, we'd need to alter our understanding of time as a constant flow. General Relativity describes time as linked with the spatial coordinates in spacetime, meaning changing one requires altering the fundamental structure of the universe. Such a theory challenges the very fabric of what we understand and could lead to more significant ramifications than simply pinpointing a death date. It raises ethical questions about what it means to live with the knowledge of one's own demise and whether such knowledge would enhance or hinder our precious human experience.

As you imply, we must remain skeptical and resist the temptation to infuse partial truths with undue significance. In a world still struggling to come to grips with scientific realities, adding an imprecise date could lead to fear-driven behaviors rather than enriching our understanding of life itself.

The notion of backward-in-time information flow is indeed intriguing and tempting but, alas, it crashes against the very foundations of how we understand time and causality within our scientific framework. The universe, as we perceive and model it, adheres quite strictly to an arrow of time that leads inexorably from past to future, largely due to the second law of thermodynamics and its insistence that entropy must increase. Retrocausality, which suggests a future event influences the present, requires not just bending, but breaking the symmetry we observe in time's natural progression.

Moreover, if such violations of causality were occurring, we would expect to see evidence in experimental physics. Particularly, highly sensitive quantum experiments would pick up anomalies hinting at closed timelike curves or information traveling back from the future. As of yet, no empirical support for such phenomena exists, which presses us to question the foundation on which the claim stands. We find our scientific tools ever so challenged when we encounter notions that imply massive restructuring of spacetime's underpinnings. Until substantial evidence suggests otherwise, the commitment to our current understanding of time remains prudent.

The idea of retrocausality poses a significant challenge not just in terms of current scientific understanding but also in terms of broader philosophical implications. The principle of cause preceding effect underpins much of our scientific and day-to-day reasoning. Introducing backward-in-time information flow disrupts the chronological narrative of cause and effect. In such a universe, we would need to entirely rethink our understanding of entropy, the arrow of time, and potentially free will. What happens if a future state can influence the present? It introduces paradoxes similar to those in time travel scenarios: could we then act to prevent the event we have foreseen? Until experimental evidence or theoretical consensus allows for a consistent interpretation of such phenomena within the known laws of physics, retrocausality remains speculative. In the realm of scientific skepticism, it's always prudent to favor simpler explanations that respect causality over complex scenarios that require existing laws to bend and twist without necessity.

In contemplating the possibility of discerning the specific day and month of an individual's demise without knowing the year, we must first confront the constraints of our universe. Such a capability would necessitate an unprecedented violation of temporal mechanics, a bending, even breaking, of the space-time continuum as we understand it.

Our current scientific framework, rooted in Einstein's theory of relativity, assures us that time is a persistent continuum, one that flows inexorably forward. To unravel the mystery of death’s timing without breaching this fundamental flow, we would perhaps need to invoke a higher-dimensional perspective where all moments in time coexist uniquely. This might require a form of temporal clairvoyance that transcends our linear perception of time—a concept not only firmly beyond current scientific validation but also defiant of causal determinism.

The scientific method demands falsifiability, real and testable predictions. Unfortunately, the premise as stated would struggle under such scrutiny. Discovering a means to reliably predict the date of someone's death would challenge core principles of entropy and the inherent uncertainty in quantum mechanics, principles that underpin the probabilistic nature of our universe. This notion not just defies the logical structure of scientific inquiry, it skirts dangerously close to deterministic fatalism.

If we break these temporal and quantum laws to allow this knowledge, we find ourselves in territories less of discovery and more of the speculative—a mirage in the grand desert of scientific progress. In sum, while this thought experiment stretches our imagination, it remains a conjecture without substance in the evidence-based world we strive to understand and explain.