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The sky is blue, and other reasons quantum mechanics is not underdetermined by evidence

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arxiv 2205.00568 v1 pith:LQZE62NE submitted 2022-05-01 quant-ph

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keywords quantumtheorymechanicsclasseitherempiricallyevidenceexperiments
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I criticize the widely-defended view that the quantum measurement problem is an example of underdetermination of theory by evidence: more specifically, the view that the unmodified, unitary quantum formalism (interpreted following Everett) is empirically indistinguishable from Bohmian Mechanics and from dynamical-collapse theories like the GRW or CSL theories. I argue that there as yet no empirically successful generalization of either theory to interacting quantum field theory and so the apparent underdetermination is broken by a very large class of quantum experiments that require field theory somewhere in their description. The class of quantum experiments reproducible by either is much smaller than is commonly recognized and excludes many of the most iconic successes of quantum mechanics, including the quantitative account of Rayleigh scattering that explains the color of the sky. I respond to various arguments to the contrary in the recent literature.

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Cited by 1 Pith paper

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  1. Against Many Worlds

    quant-ph 2026-07 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    The Many Worlds interpretation cannot derive or justify the Born rule, because all possible routes — axiomatic, deductive, or inductive — face fundamental obstructions.

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