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 Physicists Disagree Wildly On What Quantum Mechanics Says About Reality

A Nature survey (here) highlights a familiar but unresolved paradox: the most precise and successful theory in modern physics—quantum mechanics—still lacks a shared interpretation of what it means. Is the wavefunction real? Is quantum theory about particles, probabilities, information, or something else? After a century of extraordinary predictive power, physicists still disagree on whether the theory describes reality or merely models outcomes.

From the perspective of relational ontology, this confusion isn’t surprising. In fact, it’s precisely what we’d expect when modern physics is still working within metaphysical assumptions that quantum theory itself has already undermined.

Here are four key reframings:

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1. There is no “quantum world”—because there is no unconstrued world.

The debate assumes there’s a physical reality “out there” that quantum theory either does or does not describe. But relational ontology begins from a different starting point: phenomena are not things but construed events. A theory like quantum mechanics isn’t a mirror of a pre-existing world—it’s a structured potential for construal. The quantum wavefunction isn’t a “real object” or “just information”—it’s a system, a theory of possible instances, awaiting a perspectival cut.

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2. The observer–observed divide is not a mystery—it’s a misconstrual.

Quantum puzzles often hinge on the observer’s role in measurement. Does the observer collapse the wavefunction? What happens when no one is watching?

These questions presuppose a dualism between subject and object, knower and known. But relational ontology treats this distinction not as an ontological given, but as a cut within the system. The observer and observed are co-constituted in the act of construal. Measurement is not epistemic interference—it is actualisation within a potential.

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3. Wavefunction “reality” is a category mistake.

Physicists in the survey disagree on whether the wavefunction is real. But this assumes that “reality” is a simple category—either you exist or you don’t.

Relational ontology makes a sharper distinction: structured potentials are not actual entities, but neither are they fictions. The wavefunction belongs to the realm of system—a theoretical space of possibility. Its instantiation—what physicists call a measurement—is a perspectival shift, not a metaphysical transformation.

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4. Meaning precedes measurement.

Quantum experiments don’t generate raw data that later acquires meaning—they produce phenomena only through construal. The apparatus, the observable, the notion of “collapse”—these are not neutral or passive. They are symbolic selections within a semiotic system. The meaning of quantum events is not discovered but enacted.

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In sum: the survey reveals not just disagreement, but the limits of the metaphysical frame in which these debates are taking place. As long as quantum theory is interpreted through a lens that separates reality from construal, observer from observed, and theory from meaning, confusion will persist.

Relational ontology doesn’t offer another interpretation of quantum mechanics. It offers a reorientation: from what the theory says about the world to how the world arises in and through construal.