you are what you’ve touched

how measurement, memory, and observation shape the self

the universe is not made of things, it is made of interactions. vectors of possibility that live in abstract mathematical landscapes called hilbert spaces. a particle exists as a cloud of potential outcomes, suspended across every configuration it might take. its position is undefined until observed. when we measure it the possibilities reduce to a single value. the particle chooses a shape. observation is not passive. it alters the system itself, collapsing uncertainty into reality.

what causes this collapse is entanglement. a deep quantum connection between systems that have interacted. once entangled, their states are no longer separate. the result is a kind of nonlocal unity where any action on one side changes the total configuration. not through communication but through structure. two once independent fields now share a wavefunction. they are one system. observation is interaction. and interaction is transformation.

what does it mean to be real if reality itself is a byproduct of relation? what is identity if the self only crystallises through measurement, through contact, through being seen? i’ve noticed how my voice shifts depending on who hears it. how even memory reshapes itself depending on how it is received. in solitude i still exist. but blurrier. less coherent. harder to resolve. this is what physics describes as decoherence. when a quantum system becomes so thoroughly entangled with its environment that its quantum nature is lost. no longer suspended between possible states. it becomes classical. fixed. irreversible. but in that process the system loses isolation. it becomes part of something larger. the boundary between self and field dissolves.

dirac once described the delta function. an idealised spike of absolute presence. infinitely narrow and infinitely tall. a way to represent pure certainty in an uncertain system. but delta functions are not physical. they cannot exist in nature. they are approximations. and so are we. all signals are smeared. all positions are fuzzy. all identities are imperfect reconstructions of conditional states. we are taught to think of identity as stable and internal. but even in classical physics nothing exists outside of a frame. speed is always relative to something else. and time, as einstein showed, is inseparable from perspective. in quantum theory the principle goes further. measurable properties like spin and energy do not exist in isolation. they emerge only in relation to other systems.

we are not particles, but we are systems. and systems are defined by what they touch.

i think about this when people say i just want to be seen. they don’t mean it symbolically. they mean measured. they mean collapsed. held in place by the gaze of something external. perception is not gentle. it cuts through ambiguity and demands definition. and yet we long for it. to be seen is to become real. even if only momentarily. even if at a cost. and when that perception fades. when the field goes quiet. something unravels. not all of us. but a version. a configuration that only existed under that particular observation. lispector wrote, “i write as if to save somebody’s life. probably my own.” and sometimes i think writing is just a way to simulate interaction. to measure oneself by proxy. to be collapsed without having to be touched.

time too is relational. in thermodynamics we experience time because of entropy. because energy spreads out and information becomes irretrievable. in quantum mechanics however the equations are time symmetric. they do not care about direction. but we do. because we are not ideal systems. we are warm bodies embedded in noise and decay. thermal time is not a universal clock. it is the consequence of partial information. the tea cools. the memory blurs. the gaze fades. and we feel these things as before and after. but this is just entropy. the mathematics of forgetting. to age is to be measured into incoherence. to live is to become irreversibly entangled with noise.

and still. what you were under someone’s gaze ripples on. even if the system evolves. even if that version is no longer accessible. the field remembers. history is not deleted. it is encoded in phase shifts and vacuum states. what collapses once can echo again. not preserved. but not gone.

if you want to know who you are. ask not what you are made of. but what you have been entangled with. what systems have collapsed you into form. what fields you’ve touched and been touched by in return. the self is a boundary condition on the edge of someone else’s frame.

you do not need to remain intact to be real.

you only need to have been measured.