<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mml:mo>ψ</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:math>-epistemic interpretations of quantum theory have a measurement problem
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ψ -epistemic interpretations of quantum theory maintain that quantum states only represent incomplete information about the physical states of the world. A major motivation for this view is the promise to provide a reasonable account of state update under measurement by asserting that it is simply a natural feature of updating incomplete statistical information. Here we demonstrate that all known ψ -epistemic ontological models of quantum theory in dimension d≥3 , including those designed to evade the conclusion of the PBR theorem, cannot represent state update correctly. Conversely, interpretations for which the wavefunction is real evade such restrictions despite remaining subject to long-standing criticism regarding physical discontinuity, indeterminism and the ambiguity of the Heisenberg cut. This revives the possibility of a no-go theorem with no additional assumptions, and demonstrates that what is usually thought of as a strength of epistemic interpretations may in fact be a weakness.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.013 | 0.017 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.071 | 0.022 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".