Time Symmetry, Retrocausality, and Emergent Collapse: The Tlalpan Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

Abstract: Quantum mechanics has remained conceptually puzzling since its inception. While its mathematical formalism provides predictions of unparalleled accuracy, the interpretative framework underpinning measurement and collapse has never been fully clarified. The Tlalpan Interpretation (QTI) proposes that the wavefunction collapse is not a primitive, axiomatic rule but an emergent phenomenon, a spontaneous breaking of time symmetry triggered by amplification and record creation. The novelty of QTI lies in its embedding of collapse within the conceptual language of critical phenomena in statistical physics. The theory introduces measurable parameters (the amplification fraction, the record asymmetry, and the retrocausal coherence time) that serve as order parameters describing the quantum-classical transition. Collapse is thus characterized not as a mysterious fiat but as a phase transition, with thresholds and scaling laws analogous to magnetization in ferromagnets. This perspective allows the interpretation to retain microscopic time symmetry and spatial locality, while attributing quantum correlations and Bell-type violations to retrocausal boundary constraints rather than instantaneous action at a distance. Collapse corresponds to the granularization of trajectories: the conversion of smooth, time-symmetric quantum evolution into discrete, irreversible records. Most importantly, QTI is testable. It predicts: (1) sharp threshold-like disappearance of interference when amplification exceeds a critical value, (2) anomalously fast decay of reversibility in chaotic optical cavities compared with regular ones, and (3) qualitatively new interference fringes in a time-symmetric generalization of Moshinsky's diffraction in time. If confirmed, these predictions would place collapse squarely in the realm of thermodynamic processes, removing the last "mystical" postulate from quantum theory.