[dudeman13]

>Nature does not appear to be at all bothered by this "contradiction"

There is no contradiction. Our intuition for what 'A happens before B' means and implies is just bad/incomplete, as special relativity models.

>Even more puzzling "contradictions" arise in quantum mechanics.

I would bet a couple years of wage that what seems like contradictions will eventually be cleared up with some non-intuitive models, just like with special relativity.

I imagine the 'changes based on observer' problems of quantum mechanics will be more understandable once we decide what an observer is ( goddamnit people from physics, you don't add such a highly abstract variable to your model without giving it some good definition x( ), with some better experimental apparatus or with some deeper models of reality.