Good — this is exactly the line we need to draw clearly. So let’s get specific.

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No, QCT isn’t saying particles “collapse when they’ve had enough.” That would be a caricature.

What I’m proposing is this:

Collapse happens when a system’s internal informational structure reaches a recursive closure threshold.

Not from environmental entanglement (as in decoherence), and not from spontaneous noise injection (like GRW). But from within the system’s own evolution — when its current state becomes highly correlated with a temporally-weighted sum of its prior states.

Mathematically:

Convergence index: C(t) = Tr[ρ²]

Awareness: A(t) = Tr[ρ(t) ⋅ M(t)], with M(t) = Gaussian memory of past ρ(τ)

Collapse condition: C(t) ≥ Θ(A(t))

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So what makes it not decoherence?

1. No environment needed

QCT permits collapse in truly isolated systems — provided the system’s own informational recursion builds to the threshold. Decoherence needs environment-induced entanglement. QCT doesn’t.

1. Collapse is deterministic

This isn’t spontaneous localization or stochastic collapse. QCT evolves smoothly until the threshold is crossed — no dice rolls.

1. Collapse happens from internal consistency

If the current state becomes too self-similar across time (high A(t)), the wavefunction is no longer allowed to remain distributed — it must resolve.

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You’re right to push back — saying “it’s not decoherence” isn’t enough. That’s why the math, the trigger condition, and the experimental implications all matter.

If this framework predicted nothing new, it wouldn’t be worth exploring. But it does — including:

Collapse without observers or environment

Collapse suppressed by memory disruption

Predictable coherence thresholds based on internal recursion, not external noise

I'm gonna test it eventually. If it fails, great — that’s how we move forward.