Nada. We are not left having to assume anything but the very clear laws we already have, and continually confirm.

The field equations clearly explain why a collapse “appears” to happen. There is no need to invent an actual literal collapse to explain something already explained.

Let’s keep going with cats.

We know from the laws of momentum and of light-matter interactions that if you throw a cat behind a couch it will “disappear” from existence.

Now imagine people proposing new “disappearing” laws beyond the laws we know. Or saying we are just supposed to assume there is one.

The problem with both responses is (1) the cat didn’t really disappear from the universe, we just perceive it that way, and (2) the reasons for that perception are already explained.

Likewise, quantum collapse doesn’t really happen, it is perceived, and we know why:

The field equations don’t just apply to cats inside boxes, but also cats outside boxes!

When an outside cat opens a box to determine the state of the inside cat, both cats are part of a single field equation. The total field equation covers all potential points of contact between the contributing fields of each cat. These points of contact are called “events” but not classical events. These events all happen. This is why we could have a dead/alive cat in a box in the first place.

(The field equations predict all the events, with different relative distributions, in superposition. Numerous elaborate experiments, and practical systems like quantum computers, both confirm these equations, including their distributions of superpositions.)

Now if you are an outside cat, which one are you? Pick any version based on which “event” you want, and that cat will see that event, see an inside cat alive or dead, and conclude the cat is alive. Or the cat is dead. But the cat never collapsed into one or the other. Another version of outside cat is seeing the other type of event in the total field equation.

So: each outside cat perceives a “collapse” of a dead/alive inside cat into either an alive cat, or a dead cat, but (1) there wasn’t a collapse, just two ways to half the field, and (2) the perception of a “collapse” is exactly what the field equations predict. There isn’t anything unexplained.

Apparently when we are very young and learning about the world, “disappearing” cats behind couches seems strange, and either inexplicable, or “needing” a special “disappearing” law, due to our lack of experience with occlusion.

Today, many people find “collapsing” cats (or atom states) strange and either inexplicable, or “needing” a special “collapse” law, due to a lack of experience with field equations of superpositions, that include themselves.

Contrary to politicians and newborns who may assume perception as reality. It is only a starting point for actually understanding reality. Which seldom actually conforms to our perceptions.

The box and cat and radioactive particle are in their own isolated system, cut off from the universe, so the universe can keep going without information from inside the box. From outside, the outcome in the box can remain probabilistic - it does not need to “be resolved”.

But inside the box (the isolated system) the cat knows very well if it’s alive or dead and the radioactive particle knows if it has decayed. The interior of the system must have resolved (an outcome was chosen) with respect to itself.

To match the first intuition, the universe must then be not merely lazily evaluated from your perspective, but actually lazily evaluated from every perspective.

Because everything is lazily evaluated with respect to everything else, this “inside the box or outside the box” lazy evaluation is happening all the time, everywhere. There’s no universal truth or sequence of events and there never was. There are only truths and sequences of events close enough not to matter at the levels of zoom humans operate at.

Whoa.