You’re wrestling with a classic paradox: if reality is just a cloud of probabilities, the observer pulls the curtain, but if reality is a branching tree, the observer just picks a branch. The trick is that “observer” can be a measuring device, a brain, or even a rock, so the line between objective and subjective blurs. Maybe the universe is indifferent and we only see collapse because we insist on a single story. Or maybe the act of observation is an act of choosing, and that choice is what makes a reality objective—yet if that choice is predetermined by hidden variables, the whole thing circles back. The real question is: do you think the cosmos needs a narrator, or does it narrate itself?