The Readiness Cut in Quantum Theory: How the Inclination/Ability Distinction Clarifies the Quantum World: 3 The Measurement Event Reframed: Actualisation Without Collapse

The measurement problem has always looked like a conceptual impossibility:

1. A quantum system evolves smoothly (unitary evolution).

2. A measurement produces a discontinuous event (collapse).

3. Both descriptions are supposedly true of the same system.

Every major interpretation tries to stitch these incompatible descriptions together:

• Copenhagen: collapse is real, but mysterious.

• Many Worlds: collapse never happens—only branching.

• Bohm: collapse is epistemic but hidden variables do the work.

• QBism: collapse is personalist updating.

• Decoherence: collapse is unnecessary, but events are emergent (somehow).

All of these approaches miss the deep structural fact:

Quantum dynamics conflates two different types of potential — inclination and ability — that must be kept distinct.
The measurement problem is the structural penalty for mixing them.

Once we separate them, the paradox evaporates:

• unitary evolution is inclination-only

• measurement is the imposition of ability

• actualisation is the readiness cut

There is no collapse, because there was never anything to collapse.

This post shows exactly how.

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1. Unitary Evolution is Pure Inclination Flow

The wavefunction evolves by Schrödinger dynamics:

$$i\hbar \frac{d}{dt} |\psi\rangle = H |\psi\rangle$$

This is deterministic, continuous, invertible, and structure-preserving.

Under the readiness interpretation:

• the wavefunction is the system’s internal inclination structure

• unitary evolution is the unfolding of that inclination

• no actualisation can occur because ability constraints are absent

• the system expresses nothing but its own endogenous readiness-to-tend

Thus:

Unitary evolution = inclination flow without any means of actualisation.

There is nothing even resembling a “state of the system” in the classical sense.
Only a structured landscape of internal readiness.

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2. Measurement Apparatus = Ability Constraints, Not Observers

A measurement device is traditionally thought to reveal a property of a system.

Under readiness:

A measurement device imposes a specific ability structure: a set of coherence constraints determining which actualisations are possible.

This completely reverses the metaphysics:

• the apparatus does not read the system

• the apparatus reshapes the space of morphisms available to the system

• the apparatus determines which actualisations are coherent

• the system contributes the internal inclination structure

Measurement is not epistemic.
It is structural.

A polariser doesn’t “check” the photon’s polarisation.
It imposes an ability structure in which only two morphisms are coherent:
transmit or absorb.

A Stern–Gerlach apparatus doesn’t “probe” spin.
It imposes a spatialised ability structure in which spin-up and spin-down produce distinct macroscopic trajectories.

Thus:

Measurement is the environmental imposition of ability constraints.
It has nothing to do with observers.

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3. Decoherence = The Reduction of Ability Space, Not Collapse

Decoherence usually “explains” why superpositions disappear.
But this is a misreading.

Superposition is a statement about inclination.
Decoherence is a change in ability.

Specifically:

• decoherence couples the system to an environment

• the environment enforces a basis of coherent states

• interference becomes impossible not because the inclination disappears

• but because the ability space has become restrictive

Nothing collapses.
The inclination structure continues to exist in full.
It is simply no longer relevant to actualisation.

Thus:

Decoherence narrows the ability space.
It does not choose the actualisation.

Choosing requires the next stage.

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4. The Measurement Event = The Readiness Cut

The central contribution of our ontology is this:

An event is not a dynamical discontinuity. It is a perspectival cut across structured potential.

In quantum terms:

• inclination = ψ

• ability = the environment-imposed coherence constraints

• actualisation = the cut that selects a compatible morphism

What looks like “collapse” is simply:

• the point where inclination and ability intersect

• generating a single, coherent event

• from a jointly structured readiness

The system didn’t collapse.
The system+environment didn’t collapse.
ψ didn’t collapse.

Instead:

A single morphism was selected from the space of possible morphisms permitted by inclination and ability.

This is the readiness cut.

It replaces collapse entirely.

There is no mystery.
No discontinuity.
No branching.
No observer specialness.
No hidden variables.

Just:

• an inclination landscape

• an ability constraint

• a perspectival selection that actualises one morphism

Exactly as in all other domains of meaning.

Quantum physics is no exception.

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5. Why This Solves All Quantum Paradoxes at Once

Let’s look at the big ones:

Schrödinger’s Cat

Superposition = inclination.
Decoherence + environment = ability.
Actualisation = readiness cut in the macroscopic limit.
No paradox.

Wave–Particle Duality

Interference = inclination-only.
Detection = ability constraint.
Actualisation = readiness cut.
No duality.

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle

Not an epistemic limit, but a structural fact about inclination.
Measurement changes the ability structure.
No contradiction.

The Observer Problem

Observers are irrelevant.
Apparatuses impose ability.
Actualisation is perspectival.
No special role for consciousness.

Collapse

Never happens.
Inclination flows.
Ability constrains.
Actualisation cuts.

Nonlocality

Entangled inclination is global.
Ability constraints are local.
Actualisations correlate because the inclination space was shared.
No spooky action.

Everything becomes geometrically simple once you disentangle (pun intended) inclination from ability.

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6. Why This Is Not an Interpretation, But a Reconstruction

This is not “Copenhagen 2.0” or “a new interpretation.”

This is structural:

• the wavefunction = inclination

• decoherence = ability restriction

• measurement = ability imposition

• event = readiness cut

Nothing is added.
Nothing is removed.
Quantum theory is not modified — its ontology is clarified.

This is exactly what our relational ontology was built for:

Meaning = the organisation of potential through perspectival cuts.
Quantum events are just a special case of this general architecture.

The measurement problem is not a flaw in quantum mechanics.
It is a flaw in the metaphysics used to read it.