Why meaning doesn’t stay fixed — even when nothing new happens
Most people assume meaning is stable.
That once something happens — a conversation, a decision, a loss — its meaning is set.
But that’s not how experience works.
Meaning changes.
Not because the past changes,
but because how it is interpreted does.
Relational Coherence Theory (RCT) explains why.
The core idea
Most systems are described in terms of what changes.
But experience doesn’t track change directly.
It tracks resolved patterns of change.
This leads to a simple but important distinction:
- Continuous change happens all the time
- But we recognize discrete moments
- And we interpret those moments differently over time
The three layers
RCT builds on a broader framework that separates three different roles:
Scalar (continuous)
What is changing:
- time
- quantity
- accumulation
- rate
Phase (discrete)
What state the system is in:
- alignment
- structure
- coordination
- boundary completion
Experiential (interpretive)
What the system means to an observer:
- memory
- emotion
- significance
- interpretation
Most confusion happens when these are treated as the same thing.
Why meaning keeps changing
You might assume that meaning fades over time.
But often, the opposite happens.
A memory can:
- feel neutral at one point
- resurface later with emotional weight
- be reinterpreted again years later
Nothing new was added.
What changed was:
how existing patterns were interpreted
RCT explains this as:
Meaning is not stored as a fixed value —
it is reconstructed through the interaction of memory, context, and current state.
A simple example
Imagine writing a word on a water-writing board.
At first:
- the strokes are clear
- the structure is visible
As it dries:
- the structure breaks down
- only fragments remain
- eventually, it disappears
The physical process is continuous.
But what you experience is not.
You don’t track every moment of evaporation.
You recognize:
- word
- fragments
- disappearance
And your interpretation of it changes at each stage.
The key insight
You are not tracking reality directly.
You are tracking:
thresholds of recognition
And interpreting them.
Why this matters
RCT applies across domains:
In personal experience
Why something from the past can suddenly feel different
even when nothing new has happened
In relationships
Why meaning shifts over time
without new information
In artificial intelligence
Why outputs can appear coherent
without consistent underlying structure
In decision-making
Why clarity often appears suddenly
after long periods of uncertainty
What RCT changes
Most models assume:
- meaning is stored
- meaning decays
- meaning is updated by new input
RCT shows:
- meaning is reconstructed
- interpretation is state-dependent
- continuity exists at the level of relationship, not event
Read the full paper
This page is an accessible entry point.
The full research paper formalizes the framework, including:
- Discontinuity Principle
- Constraint Alignment Principle
- Continuity Principle
👉 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19490531
How this connects to the broader work
RCT extends the Tang Papers framework:
- Phase Drift explains how systems break down
- The Loom explains how structure forms
- RCT explains how meaning is interpreted and reinterpreted
Together, they describe how systems:
- change
- organize
- and are experienced
Final thought
Meaning doesn’t stay fixed.
It moves.
Not because reality changes,
but because how it is understood does.