29
Relation
Stimpunks Foundation · Guest Zine · No. 29

Only in
Relation

relational quantum physics, and what it means to be Autistic

after Helen Edgar · Autistic Realms · a relation, still becoming

L★S
Love You Down
To Your Star Stuff
· open edition ·
The physics

Only in
relation

A particle, on its own, doesn't quietly hoard its properties in private.

In Carlo Rovelli's relational quantum mechanics, a system's properties become definite only relative to another system it interacts with (Rovelli, 1996). There's no view from nowhere in which an electron already "has" its values, waiting to be read. What is real is what happens between systems.

An honest caution before we go further: RQM is one interpretation of quantum theory among several, and physicists still argue it. We're not smuggling physics in to prove anything about people. We are noticing a rhyme, not collecting a proof.

"There is no absolute, observer-independent description of a person that tells the whole truth about themselves."— Helen Edgar, We Are Made of Relations (2026)
the same particle, two situations in isolation ? no fact of the matter in relation ↑ definite — for that system

a value is something two systems have between them
not something one holds alone

Only in Relation · after Helen Edgar 2
count the outcomes two coins — distinct H H H T T H T T 4 two bosons — identical H H H T T T (H T = T H) 3 the missing 4th is the tell

nature can't tell the two apart
so it doesn't count them apart

What is actually real

Count the
bosons

Flip two coins and you get four outcomes — HH, HT, TH, TT — because the coins are distinct objects, so "heads-then-tails" and "tails-then-heads" are two different things.

Do the same with two identical quantum particles — two bosons — and nature counts only three. The two mixed cases collapse into one, because there is no fact about which particle is which (Webster, 2026). That vanished fourth outcome is measurable, and it is the tell: what's fundamental isn't the standalone particle. It's the symmetry — the relation — that says these two can't be told apart.

"What is fundamentally real are not particles as such, but rather the laws and symmetries … that govern their behaviour."— George Webster, IAI (2026)
Only in Relation · after Helen Edgar 3
Relation before relata

Made of
each other

Entangled particles can't be described one at a time. The pair carries correlations the parts simply don't have on their own — measure one and you've said something about the other, however far apart they've drifted.

The physicist-philosopher Karen Barad calls this intra-action: not the meeting of two things that already exist separately, but a relation out of which the parts come to be distinct at all (Barad, 2007). The relation is first. The "things" are what it leaves behind.

There's a word for the human version, one Helen draws from Barad: intradependence — not two finished people who later depend on each other, but selves made of each other from the start. Deeper than interdependence.

We don't arrive as sealed units who only later reach out. We are, from the start, relations wearing the shape of a person.
inter- vs intra- inter-action two wholes, then a link intra-action one relation, then parts the bond is the origin, not the bridge

the parts are what the relation leaves behind
made of each other

Only in Relation · after Helen Edgar 4
what comes first difference · relation objects (late arrivals)

first the differentiating, then the things
the object is what got built

The order of things

Difference,
then relation

Reading the physics through Deleuze, George Webster puts the metaphysics plainly:

"Objects do not come first and then differ; rather, objects emerge out of more fundamental processes of differentiation."— George Webster, reading Deleuze (2026)

First there is difference and relation; the tidy, standalone object is the late arrival — the thing that gets built. It's the same move Star Stuff has made from the start in Why Difference Comes First: the measured, average "normal person" was never the ground floor. Difference is. Turn it one notch further and relation is.

Only in Relation · after Helen Edgar 5
What it means for us

The gap is
two-way

When an Autistic person and a non-Autistic person misunderstand each other, the old story put the deficit in one of them — the Autistic one. Damian Milton named the truer picture: the double empathy problem. The misunderstanding runs both ways — a mismatch between two differently-built minds, not a fault inside one (Milton, 2012).

Relational physics says: of course it does. The trouble was never sitting inside a single object. It lives in the relation. Helen widens double empathy into DEEP — Dynamic, Embodied, Ecological, Political — because the mismatch isn't a static glitch between two heads. It's alive, bodily, environmental, and shaped by power.

Change the lighting, the pace, the assumptions, the room — and the "deficit" you were measuring moves. It was in the relation all along.
where the gap lives one mind another mind not one side — the space between double empathy, made DEEP

a mismatch is a property of the pair
it has no single owner

Only in Relation · after Helen Edgar 6
the ARLES ladder Systems Environment Lived exp. Relational + Regulation Attention near the base — on purpose

regulation lives inside the relational rung
not a private skill

Up the ladder

Regulation is
relational

This is why, in Stimpunks' ARLES ladder, Relational sits near the base — and why Regulation lives inside it. Regulation isn't a skill you own privately and keep failing to deploy. We co-regulate: nervous systems settle, or don't, in relation to other bodies, other pacing, a room that holds us or doesn't.

So the support that actually works doesn't try to repair an isolated person. It changes the relational field — the sensory environment, the pacing, the temporal texture, a community's capacity to hold different ways of being.

If it's not working, it's not the person. It's the environment, the relationships, or the system. — Stimpunks · ARLES
"We are not broken objects. We are relations, all of us still becoming."— Helen Edgar (2026)
Only in Relation · after Helen Edgar 7
Held with care

What we are
not saying

Relational physics rhymes with how we already know support works. It is not a licence for the traps that show up whenever "quantum" meets "people."

Notquantum mysticism. No "quantum consciousness," no mind magically collapsing reality. In physics the "observer" is any system at all — a speck of dust will do.
Not"everything is connected" as a vibe. This is a specific claim about how properties come to be, not a warm fog.
Notdissolution into sameness. Being a relation doesn't melt you. Where two rivers meet they run braided for miles — one current, still distinct. The spiky profile survives the merge.
Notphysics proving a politics. A rhyme, not a proof. Our belonging stands on its own; the physics only rhymes with it.
Nota duty to stay connected. Relational doesn't mean always available. Some of us need less contact, not more — and need is not a rank.
the confluence, not the blur one channel · two waters · still distinct

relation is not erasure
difference survives belonging

Only in Relation · after Helen Edgar 8
L★S You are not a broken object. You are a relation, still becoming.
No. 24 Shared Air — breath, co-regulation & the air we hold in common
No. 25 Shared Signal — signal, distance & no channel at the top
No. 26 A Mycelium and a Rhizome — decentralised knowledge & the Autistic Rhizome
No. 27 Every Nervous System — more-than-human neurodiversity & reclaiming animality
No. 28 Wyrd & Weird — fate, worth & becoming; a reclaimed word
No. 29 Only in Relation — relational quantum physics, double empathy & ARLES ← you are here
A thread to follow

Where has a "deficit" you were told you carried actually lived in a relation — a room, a pace, a mismatch — instead of inside you?

Whose nervous system helps yours settle? Whose settles near you?

If regulation is relational, what in your environment would you change first?

Only in Relation is a guest zine in the Stimpunks Star Stuff series, developed after Helen Edgar (Autistic Realms) from her essay We Are Made of Relations: Quantum Physics and What It Means to Be Autistic (More Realms, 2026). Two ideas carry it — intradependence, which Helen draws from Karen Barad's relational ontology (intra-action), and DEEP (Dynamic, Embodied, Ecological, Political), Helen's own expansion of the double empathy problem. It reads relational quantum mechanics as an argument about belonging, and is a companion to the relational threads already running through the collection — Why Difference Comes First (11), No Universal Now (19), and the co-regulation family: Bodies of Water (23), Shared Air (24), Shared Signal (25).

Sources & notes. Rovelli, C. (1996). Relational quantum mechanics. International Journal of Theoretical Physics, 35, 1637–1678. Webster, G. (2026). The quantum world reveals reality is made of relations, not objects. IAI News (19 Feb 2026). Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway (intra-action). Milton, D. (2012). On the ontological status of autism: the "double empathy problem." Disability & Society, 27(6), 883–887. Deleuze on difference and differentiation, read via Webster. Edgar, H. (2026), We Are Made of Relations (More Realms). ARLES — Stimpunks glossary.

Honesty note. Relational quantum mechanics is one interpretation of quantum theory, not settled fact; permutation invariance and entanglement are standard physics, while "reality is relations, not objects" is a philosophical reading of them. Barad's intra-action is philosophy of physics. As about.html puts it, we are noticing a rhyme, not collecting a proof.

The star stuff is Carl Sagan's, and the SN 1006 remnant on every Stimpunks page. You are not a broken object; you are a relation, still becoming — and never on your own.

Stimpunks Foundation · Guest Zine No. 29 · developed after Helen Edgar (Autistic Realms)
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Only in Relation · after Helen Edgar 9