The Quantum Rashomon Effect as a Failure of Gluing

TL;DR

The paper reframes Szangolies’ Rashomon effect as a gluing failure in a presheaf-theoretic model of contexts, showing that locally coherent accounts tied to distinct contexts may fail to glue into a single global description, i.e., no global section exists. It connects this obstruction to contextuality and Čech cohomology, extending the analogy to social science where context effects imply the absence of a single joint probability space. The work clarifies that genuine contextuality is distinct from mere direct influence, and endorses quantum-like cognitive models as a compact, context-sensitive formalism rather than a claim of brain-level quantum processes. By providing a principled language for context dependence, the note offers a bridge between quantum contextuality and social-science modeling, with practical implications for interpreting order effects and other context-driven judgments.

Abstract

Recently Szangolies has argued (in the setting of extended Wigner's-friend scenarios) that quantum theory permits ``Rashomon'' situations: multiple internally coherent accounts of events that cannot be combined into a single, consistent global narrative. This note explains why the Rashomon phenomenon can be understood as a \emph{failure of gluing}: local descriptions over different contexts exist, but they do not admit a single global ``all-perspectives-at-once'' description. This is the same mathematical obstruction that underlies modern sheaf-theoretic treatments of contextuality. I then indicate why the same perspective is useful in parts of the social sciences (quantum-like modelling of cognition, judgment, and decision-making), where ``context effects'' can likewise be interpreted as the absence of a single joint probability space.