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In this 'pre-universe' state, we have an infinite regress of causes, but we don't know the final outcome yet because we can't assume our universe a priori or the experiment is contaminated (as well as illogical).


You're assuming that all events are preceded by a sequence of causes. This, however, is not the case in nature. We've already discussed this some weeks ago -> Bell's theorem.

Under the assumption of infinite time you can also safely assume that there are infinite many events (if there is an event at all). But you can not assume that all these events are necessarily connected by cause-effect relations.

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If each step progressively leads closer to the universe from a 'lower' event, then it will have acheived the universe an infinite amount of time ago. Which means our universe would be dead right now because it would have existed an infinity ago.


No. It would only mean that many (in fact infinite many) universes would be dead right now.

Your thinking seems still restricted to the assumption that our universe, and/or our time, is in some way unique or privileged. However there is no logical reason to assume that.