This is just wordplay. We both agree no material or causative thing jumped backwards in time.

Absolutely. Wordplay seems to be extent of Vladmir's question, at least as far as I am interested in it.

Sure, if you define a stream of consciousness that way it can be said to have moved backwards in time, but that's just because we're overextending the metaphor. I could equally say that if I predict (or record) all of a consciousness' successive states, and then simulate them in reverse order, then that consciousness has genuine Merlin sickness.

Another curious question. That would be a stream of consciousness flowing back in time. Merlin sickness also has the symptom of living backwards in time. But I don't think it follows that the reverse simulation is an example of Merlin sickness. Whatever the mechanism is behind Merlin's reverse life it appeared to result in him being able to operate quite effectively in a forward flowing universe. At least, he usually seems to get it right by the end of the story.