Quantum Mechanics Without the Haunted Stage: States as Ledgers 

Quantum mechanics is the most successful predictive theory we have. But it also tempts us into a specific mistake.

We treat the wavefunction as if it were a literal inventory of reality—nature’s own private spreadsheet of “what exists out there.”

Once we do that, the usual ghost stories arrive: instantaneous collapse, contradictory observers, spooky influence at a distance.

Changism suggests a simpler diagnosis. The problem isn’t the math.

It’s the metaphysics we quietly smuggle in when we turn a bookkeeping tool into furniture.

The relativity warm-up: no universal “now”

Relativity trained us to stop asking for a single, cosmic “now-slice.”

Different observers can keep different time ledgers, then translate between them.

The world doesn’t fracture.

Our bookkeeping changes.

Changism adds one careful ontological claim on top: there is still one world in act—one ongoing field of interactions in which events register, leave records, or remain open as potentials.

Quantum theory, read properly, asks for the same discipline.

The key move: a quantum state is a ledger

In the Changist-RQM frame, a quantum state is not “what the system is.”

It is a compressed scorecard of expectations kept by some physical system about another system.

It summarizes past interactions into forecasts about future interactions, under a specified protocol (what counts as an outcome, how you’ll read it, what you’re treating as the system boundary).

That’s why the right question is not “What is the state of S?”

It’s: Relative to which ledger? Based on which interaction history? Updated by which meeting?

This is not “anything goes.”

It’s the opposite: it forces you to name the physical situation that makes a state-assignment responsible.

Wavefunction, probabilities, density matrix: formats, not substances

A wavefunction is one convenient way of writing the scorecard.

Probabilities are what the scorecard yields for the particular marks you might register.

A density matrix is a more general compression tool when your ledger is incomplete or when you’re ignoring some correlations.

None of these objects needs to be promoted into a cosmic substance.

They are ledger formats.

“Measurement” is a meeting that writes a mark

On this view, measurement is not a magical interruption of physics.

It is a physical encounter—what Changism calls a meeting.

A meeting has a simple backbone:

approach → coupling/registration → stabilization/propagation

An “event” occurs when systems actually couple in a way that registers—when a degree of freedom in one becomes correlated with (and effectively records) a degree of freedom in the other.

That’s the heart of the Changist re-reading of “collapse.”

Collapse is not a mystical global shudder.

It is the discontinuity of a ledger update when a new mark exists.

Why different observers can assign different states (without contradiction)

If states are ledgers, then two observers can honestly assign different states to “the same system.”

Not because reality split.

Not because truth became personal.

But because the observers stand in different relations to the system: different past meetings, different records, different available marks.

The “contradiction” appears only when we demand a single, absolute master-state that must be true for everyone before anyone has interacted and compared notes.

This is exactly parallel to the relativity mistake of demanding a universal present.

Wigner’s Friend in one sentence: “contradiction” is illicit globalization

Inside the lab, the Friend has a definite outcome because a mark is literally recorded in the Friend+apparatus degrees of freedom.

Outside the lab, Wigner can still assign an entangled description because—prior to contact—no mark exists for Wigner that fixes which outcome occurred inside.

No contradiction exists, because these are entries in different ledgers about different relational situations.

When do the ledgers become one story?

At reconciliation: interaction.

Wigner opens the lab, couples to it, and his ledger updates by consulting the Friend’s record.

Entanglement without spookiness

Entanglement is not ghostly glue.

In ledger language, it is a statement about joint expectations for possible future meetings.

After a shared interaction history, you can’t write independent scorecards for A and B as if they were separate.

The correct ledger entry is about the pair—about the correlation structure that constrains what marks will be written in later interactions.

So what “travels” between distant labs?

Not the outcome.

Not a push.

What travels are records—physical carriers of marks—and ordinary causal influences, all constrained by reachability (no faster-than-light messaging).

And there’s an extra Changist twist:

A correlation becomes a public fact when records are compared—often requiring a third system that actually brings both records into the same interaction space.

Objectivity is earned, not assumed

If facts are minted at meetings, then “objectivity” cannot mean a view from nowhere.

Changism offers a physical definition:

Objectivity is stable marks plus successful cross-calibration.

A mark becomes more objective as it stabilizes, gets copied, propagates, and survives into later meetings where it can be checked.

Public reality is what endures the work of recording and reconciliation.

What this approach is not doing

It is not saying reality depends on consciousness.

“Observer” means any physical system capable of storing marks (a detector qualifies).

It is not saying “anything goes.”

Ledgers are constrained by interaction history and protocol, and must align when records are compared.

And it is not adding new machinery or new predictions.

It is a translation that keeps quantum theory’s empirical success intact while refusing the metaphysical inflation of a universal master wavefunction as “the world’s true inventory.”

The Changist quantum slogan

Time is a ledger over change.

Quantum state is a ledger over interaction.

When we keep the ledgers as ledgers, quantum mechanics stays weird—but weird in the right way: weird because the world is built from meetings, marks, and limited access, not weird because our bookkeeping was mistaken for a haunted stage.