[MHGinTN]

"It's not the future which is indeterminate, but the past." Actually, could we say that to a finite living observer that may be so, but the universe has no problem with the deterministic state of past, because it (the event as present when it happened) is entangled with the origin of the universe itself? To imply that the cat died at 4 but is in superposition until an observer notes the cat, is a false assertion (else nothing would have 'finished' prior to living observers being in the universe; everything would have been in superposition from the big bang onward, until living observers arrived, somehow). The universe is 'an' observer (because past and present exist in simultaneity in which the event of death occurred) but superposition is a temporal problem for the finite living observer due to the nature of the observers fix in time as always in 'planar' present while alive, yet sensing ONLY events that have already occurred. I like, for thought purposes, to think of past as linear and the ends of each pathway form the plane of present, with the 'blossom' of future the 'every path possible from present' on the opposite side of the planar present from the linear past.

[hosepipe]

[ I like, for thought purposes, to think of past as linear and the ends of each pathway form the plane of present, with the 'blossom' of future the 'every path possible from present' on the opposite side of the planar present from the linear past. ]

I like to be in the moment.. All past and future is/are composed of moments.. You handle the current moment correctly/wisely (as wisely as you can) and the past and future will take care of themselves.. Life is more about timeing than about time.. I think Jesus said the same thing in another way.. Time is probably not very important to eternal beings.. but timing is always important..

[Physicist]

else nothing would have 'finished' prior to living observers being in the universe; everything would have been in superposition from the big bang onward, until living observers arrived, somehow

I didn't understand most of what you were trying to say, but QM in no way requires an observer to be "living" or "intelligent" or "conscious". Any in-practice transfer of information will do. That's why quantum computers are so fussy to construct: the qubits decohere at much less than the drop of a hat, and it's not because somebody's peeking.

Your determinism probably does work in the case of a real cat, because it's so difficult to isolate from all information transfer that the state collapses more or less instantly. In the case of a subatomic particle, however isolation is much more likely, and your determinism explicitly fails (as seen in the Aspect experiment).