Quantum Myths Through Relational Ontology

Popular science loves to trade in “quantum myths” — half-truths that travel easily, but miss the deeper picture. Recently, six physicists set out to debunk a few of these misconceptions. Their corrections are useful, but they remain framed within the very metaphysics that generates the confusion. Through the lens of relational ontology, we can see why these myths persist — and why the corrections don’t go far enough.

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1. “Scientists haven’t managed to send particles back in time — yet.”

The humour is in the “yet.” The underlying assumption is that particles are little objects that could, in principle, be transported backwards along a universal timeline. But in relational ontology, time is not an absolute container waiting to be traversed. It is a dimension of alignment across events, cut from our construal of experience. To speak of a particle “going back in time” misconstrues both “particle” and “time” as things-in-themselves.

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2. “It’s one thing to have a quantum computer, but another to extract the right answer.”

Here we find a practical admission: quantum potential doesn’t translate neatly into determinate results. In relational terms, the system of potential is not identical to its actualisation. The “answer” does not pre-exist in the machine, waiting to be pulled out — it emerges in the cut from potential to event. The challenge is not extraction but construal: how to stabilise meaning across that cut.

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3. “Einstein didn’t reject entanglement as spooky action at a distance.”

This correction pushes back against the myth, but still assumes that entanglement describes a physical mechanism out there. From a relational perspective, entanglement is no more “spooky” than language. It is the reflexivity of construal across what we construe as separated instances. Einstein’s discomfort stemmed from his desire for a determinate system behind construal. But if construal is constitutive, there is no “behind.”

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4. “GR and QM can be reconciled by quantum spacetime.”

The dream of unification persists: general relativity and quantum mechanics must be stitched into a single theory. But reconciliation does not happen at the level of equations. Both theories already converge in ontology: each is a way of construing reflexive alignment — one across motion, one across possibility. A model of “quantum spacetime” may be elegant, but it does not solve the “problem” unless we recognise that construal itself is the ontological ground.

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5. “Quantum computing won’t break all encryption — probably.”

This is the myth of omnipotent potential. The assumption: quantum = limitless power. But potential is not actuality. Every actualisation requires a cut, and cuts bring constraints. Encryption may well survive not because quantum is weak, but because reflexive constraints are inescapable. No system of potential bypasses the constitutive role of construal.

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6. “There’s not yet a perfect interpretation of quantum mechanics.”

This is the heart of it. Physicists frame their quest as the search for the correct interpretation — the hidden reality behind the mathematics. But if construal is reality, then there can be no “perfect interpretation.” Interpretations are alternate construals of the same reflexive ground. The “stroke of inspiration” that physicists await will not reveal the truth behind quantum mechanics. It will reveal that truth itself is always a matter of construal.

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Conclusion

The myths, and their debunkings, both circle around the same blind spot: the assumption that there is a reality behind experience waiting to be captured. Relational ontology flips this around. Construal is not a veil over reality. It is the very ground of meaning and experience. What we call “quantum” is nothing spooky, mysterious, or mythic — it is the reflexive play of possibility itself, cut into event through construal.

Why Quantum Theory Confounds Physicists: A Relational Ontology Perspective

For decades, physicists have struggled to make sense of quantum mechanics. Wavefunctions, superpositions, entanglement — these concepts seem almost magical, defying intuition and conventional logic. But the confusion isn’t a failure of intellect or mathematics; it’s a structural feature of how quantum theory construes reality.

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Quantum Mechanics as Systemic Potential

At its heart, quantum theory is a systemic potential — a formal structure that defines relational constraints among observables, probabilities, and measurement contexts. It is not a thing floating in the world, waiting to be discovered. It is a framework of possibility, a landscape of what can be instantiated when we perform specific symbolic cuts.

Physicists often make a critical misstep: they treat the wavefunction as an object with inherent reality, instead of recognising it as a potential for construal. This misalignment is the first source of the persistent “weirdness.”

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The Role of Symbolic Cuts

Every interpretation of quantum mechanics is a way of performing a symbolic cut — a perspectival act that selects which aspects of the potential become actualised instances:

• Copenhagen: Measurement creates the instance; the wavefunction “collapses” in this construal.

• Many-Worlds: All possible instances exist in branching universes; each observer experiences one branch.

• Bohmian Mechanics: Particles are guided by hidden variables; the instance is aligned with the system potential.

• Objective Collapse: Stochastic laws embedded in the system define which instances emerge.

• QBism: Outcomes are personal experiences; the agent updates beliefs based on the construal.

Each cut produces a coherent phenomenon — but only within its own symbolic frame.

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Instance Formation and Collective Uptake

An instance — the measured outcome, the particle observed, the branch experienced — emerges only through the cut. Without the cut, there is no event to observe.

But physics doesn’t operate in isolation. Stability of phenomena depends on collective uptake: alignment of observers, instruments, and institutional conventions. Textbooks, lab practices, peer review, and shared protocols all fix which cuts are treated as “normal” or “objective.” Confusion arises when the collective favours one cut rhetorically while multiple cuts remain valid.

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Paradoxes as Artefacts of Misaligned Cuts

Famous quantum paradoxes — Schrödinger’s cat, Wigner’s friend, nonlocal correlations — are not signs of reality misbehaving. They are artefacts of misaligned symbolic cuts, where system potentials are read as pre-existing objects instead of being reflexively constructed through experiment, observation, and interpretation.

Recognising this reflexivity dissolves the “weirdness.” Quantum mechanics is internally coherent; the challenge is aligning system, instance, and collective construal explicitly.

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Towards a Meta-Cut

A relational-ontology approach invites a meta-cut: a perspective that sees all interpretations as partial instantiations of the same systemic potential. No single interpretation is “true” in an absolute sense; each construes the potential differently. Paradoxes emerge only when one cut is treated as reality itself.

By making cuts explicit, acknowledging their reflexive nature, and situating phenomena within collective uptake, physicists can finally understand why quantum mechanics behaves as it does — not because the world is “crazy,” but because the act of observation, measurement, and interpretation creates the phenomena it describes.

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Conclusion

Quantum confusion is a structural feature of the theory, not a defect. From a relational ontology perspective:

1. Quantum theory is systemic potential.

2. Every interpretation performs a symbolic cut.

3. Instances arise only through cuts and collective alignment.

4. Paradoxes reflect misalignment, not ontological failure.

Understanding quantum mechanics thus requires reflexive awareness: an acknowledgment that the observer, the experiment, and the symbolic framework are co-creating the very phenomena physics seeks to describe.