(GRW, Penrose, and the Demand for an Event)
If earlier interpretations attempted to avoid the cut — by hiding it, multiplying worlds, personalising it, or relativising it — objective collapse theories do the opposite.
They insist on it.
It is a physical event.
From Ambiguity to Intervention
Objective collapse theories begin from a shared dissatisfaction: quantum mechanics seems unable to say when something happens.
Superposition persists too long. Measurement appears too vague. The theory predicts outcomes but refuses to mark their arrival.
For GRW-type theories, the solution is direct: modify the dynamics. Add stochastic collapses to the wavefunction. Make localisation a real process that occurs spontaneously, whether observed or not.
For Penrose, the motivation is different but the move is similar. Superposition, he argues, cannot survive indefinitely in the presence of gravitational differences. Nature itself forces a resolution.
In both cases, the ambiguity is no longer tolerated.
The mathematics is made to decide.
Collapse as Process
What unites these approaches is the treatment of collapse as a temporal process.
Collapse becomes an event in time, governed by law, even if probabilistic law.
The Relational Question
From a relational ontology perspective, this is the crucial mistake.
The problem quantum theory posed was never a lack of physical violence. It was a confusion about what kind of transition instantiation is.
Objective collapse theories answer the wrong question:
When does collapse occur?
Relational ontology asks instead:
What changes when something is actualised?
And the answer is not: a wavefunction jumps.
It is: a perspective is cut.
The Error of Temporalisation
By treating collapse as a process, objective collapse theories import a classical reflex: the idea that becoming must be something that happens over time to an already-existing entity.
But instantiation, in a relational frame, is not a process that unfolds. It is a shift in construal — a change in what counts as actual.
There is no intermediate state between potential and event.
To force collapse into dynamics is to misunderstand the nature of the cut.
Probability Becomes Violence
Objective collapse theories also harden probability.
What was once a measure of readiness becomes a trigger. Randomness is no longer expressive of possibility; it becomes a mechanism that acts on the world.
This is why these theories feel aggressive. They take the indeterminacy of quantum theory and weaponise it — turning uncertainty into force.
Saving Reality at a Cost
The appeal of objective collapse is understandable. It restores a single world. It resolves superpositions decisively. It promises an ontology that does not wait on observers.
But this clarity comes at a price.
What is lost is the idea that actuality is constituted, not imposed.
The World Becomes Bruised
In forcing collapse to be physical, these theories treat the world as something that must be periodically struck into definiteness.
Reality becomes fragile, constantly requiring intervention to prevent it from diffusing into possibility.
This is a curious reversal.
What began as an attempt to defend realism ends by depicting reality as unstable — dependent on random jolts to remain intact.
The Cost of Forcing the Cut
Relational ontology does not deny that events occur. It denies that their occurrence requires violence.
Objective collapse theories confuse decisiveness with explanation. They insist that something must happen in order for something to be.
In doing so, they trade ambiguity for brutality.
Between Evasion and Enforcement
At this stage in the series, the pattern is unmistakable.
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Bohm hid the cut.
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Many Worlds dissolved it.
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QBism internalised it.
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Rovelli relativised it.
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Objective collapse theories enforce it.
Relational ontology does not seek a gentler collapse mechanism.
It asks whether collapse was ever the right metaphor at all.
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