50th anniversary of Bell's theorem

In summary: He has a similar assumption in his 20. This is the only place in the proof where it is used.In summary, a special issue on 50 years of Bell's theorem has been published in Journal of Physics with free access to all articles. Several articles in this issue discuss different aspects of Bell's theorem and its implications, including discussions on realism and counterfactual definiteness. One of the articles, written by Stapp, explores the idea that algebraic quantum field theory provides an example of a theory with full relativistic signal locality
  • #36
DrChinese said:
Bell assumes there is a c, and that's what you believe if you think there is realism. He can't use all 3 of a, b and c in a single equation if they do not all exist simultaneously.

I already quoted EPR's view verbatim, which was that a, b and c exist simultaneously if they exist separately (and other view is not reasonable, as an assumption we are supposed to accept - which Bell tried).

You can't get that inequality EXCEPT by assuming a, b and c are simultaneous elements of reality. There should be NO confusion between the 3 elements of reality a, b and c and the fact that entangled pairs are measured by 2 observers.

So in deriving the inequality, Bell is making the assumption of realism that is also the EPR view of realism. Now can there simultaneously be a model that agrees with QM predictions and inequality violation that is non realistic and saves locality ? Ie, what would the definition of non realism be in this case ?
 
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  • #37
morrobay said:
So in deriving the inequality, Bell is making the assumption of realism that is also the EPR view of realism. Now can there simultaneously be a model that agrees with QM predictions and inequality violation that is non realistic and saves locality ? Ie, what would the definition of non realism be in this case ?

I can't say that this is the only way to look at things, but here is an answer:

EPR says: IF you follow the more restrictive definition of elements of reality (which is our "non-realistic" because there are only those elements which are simultaneously predictable with certainty), THEN the reality of Alice can be determined by the nature of an observation by Bob. That translates to an OBSERVER DEPENDENT viewpoint, which is fully consistent with everything we know anyway and is consistent with most interpretations in some form or fashion. The only point I add is: Bob does not determine the reality alone: it is always Alice and Bob together that determine context.

So next you asked: can locality be saved? I don't know the final answer on that, but... In every variation of an context: there is never an influence on the final context that cannot be accounted for by direct relationships that individually respect c. In other words: the relationship of Alice and Bob may easily be non-local, but that is not the direct relationship. Alice and the source particle A she observed are related by action that respects c, and so does Bob and his source particle B. Even in cases in which Alice's source A and Bob's source B are completely non-local at all times to each other (and there are such cases): there is still a connection between them (via other particles C and D) that IS local. So I would say that if that can be modeled by QM, the answer is YES - respect for c and locality is preserved in some fashion.

Look at it another way: the Bohmian program* asserts that there is NO per se impediment or limitation on non-local action. And yet there are absolutely no experiments ever proposed that show Alice doing something here that Bob can see non-locally there. There is always signal locality! You wouldn't really expect that, if you are honest about it. So you tell me whether non-realism (EPR's observer dependent reality) makes less sense than non-locality (EPR's "two systems no longer interact") as a base principle, when either way we see signal locality. *Please note that I am not trying to diss the Bohmian program in any way, as there is nothing wrong with it as far as anyone is aware. I only mention it to say that non-locality is not the only option "out" when we say that local realism is excluded. Locality and realism are both touched on in EPR (not using those words of course) but only locality is mentioned in Bell (because the realism assumption was simply slipped in without fanfare).
 
  • #38
Demystifier said:
3) The only remaining possibility I see is to accept a softer version of solipsism, in which all observers are real, but internal observations of one observer are not correlated with internal observations of another observer. (That may be relevant to the philosophy of mind because it may explain why one can never experience the qualia of other people, and consequently why qualia is such an illusive entity from the scientific point of view.)
That is an interesting suggestion but how is it that we can have enough agreement to do stuff like science? I think Norsen sees Rovelli's model in a somewhat similar fashion:
What’s “relational” in “relational QM” (RQM) is reality itself: there is no such thing as reality simpliciter ; there is only reality-for-X (where X is some physical system or conscious observer). Advocates of RQM thus use the word “reality” to mean what people normally mean by the word “belief”. That some fact is, say, “real-for-Alice” simply means (translating from RQM back to normal English) that Alice believes it. And, crucially, what is real-for-Alice need not be real-for-Bob: “different observers can give different accounts of the same sequence of events.”...
http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0607057.pdf
 
  • #39
DrChinese said:
Bell assumes there is a c, and that's what you believe if you think there is realism. He can't use all 3 of a, b and c in a single equation if they do not all exist simultaneously.
I managed to locate Bell's "La nouvelle cuisine" on-line. With respect to c, Bell writes:
In region 3 let c stand for the values of any number of other variables describing the experimental set-up, as admitted by ordinary quantum mechanics.
La nouvelle cuisine
http://cqi.inf.usi.ch/qic/Bell1990.pdf

Anyway, this point was hi-lited previously by Maaneli:
And again, the variable c here is nothing but part of the specification of the experimental set-up (as allowed for by 'ordinary quantum mechanics'), just as are the polarizer settings a and b (in other words, a, b, and c are all local beables); and the introduction of c in the joint probability formula follows from the local causality condition, as part of the complete specification of causes of the events in regions 1 and 2. So, again, there is no notion of realism in c that is any different than in a and b and what already follows from Bell's application of his principle of local causality.
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/understanding-bells-logic.409161/page-2#post-2758101

But I suppose if one can come up with a way to explain the perfect correlations locally and without "realism", then it seems like a moot point, I think.
 
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  • #40
bohm2 said:

"When space-time itself is ‘quantized’, as is generally held to be necessary, the concept of locality becomes very obscure. And so it does also in presently fashionable ‘string theories’ of ‘everything’. So all our considerations are restricted to that level of approximation to serious theories in which space-time can be regarded as given, and localization becomes meaningful."

How interesting, now that we know how far that has come. Bell seems to always have been interested in gravity. In "Against 'measurement', he says something like wouldn't it be interesting if the measurement problem pointed to gravity? Of course, hidden variables was just his "hobby", and his real work was particle physics, he being one of the co-discoverers (with Jackiw, and Adler) of the chiral anomaly.
 
  • #41
bohm2 said:
I managed to locate Bell's "La nouvelle cuisine" on-line. With respect to c, Bell writes:
...

Anyway, this point was hi-lited previously by Maaneli:
...

Bell is defining c in a different manner than in his paper, in which a, b and c are all equivalent.

Maaneli's point is made in reference to a discussion with me about the exact point being discussed here. You cannot start with Bell's locality/separability condition - Bell's (2) - and do anything with it as it sits. Unless, of course, you have a 3rd hidden variable (element of reality) c which exists simultaneously. The simultaneous requirement, as quoted from EPR above, being the added assumption which creates "realism".

To summarize: the EPR argument works fine for entangled particles IF you are asserting there are only 1 or 2 elements of reality. There is no contradiction with the predictions of QM in that case. But if you assume 3 elements of reality are simultaneously real (and of course any 2 can be measured independently without affecting the other), like Bell did, the EPR argument falls victim to contradictions with the predictions of QM.

If you have any question about the above, simply go as far as you can without c in an equation alongside a and b... and see how far you get! Keep in mind that Bell was simply expressing in accordance with this quote from EPR: "Indeed, one would not arrive at our conclusion if one insisted that two or more physical quantities can be regarded as simultaneous elements of reality only when they can be simultaneously measured or predicted." Bell said: OK, I will assume EPR is correct and assume that a, b and c are simultaneous elements of reality - even though I can only measure 2 at a time.
 
  • #42
bohm2 said:
That is an interesting suggestion but how is it that we can have enough agreement to do stuff like science?
In a solipsistic view of the world, there is no "we". There is "me", and there are my observations (of nature, of scientific journals, of texts at Physics Forums, of speeches produced by other scientists, etc). These observations by me more-or-less agree with my thoughts.

In a soft-solipsistic view of the world, there is also "you", with your observations which agree with your thoughts.

For more details see my paper.

And I am not saying that such a view is reasonable. I am saying that I do not see any other way to make local non-reality logically consistent.* So if you think it is still unreasonable I am fine with it, but then it is the starting assumption of local non-reality which is unreasonable. And if it is so unreasonable that one does not even need to assume that this is not the case, then Bell theorem does not need to assume reality, but is simply a proof of non-locality.

(*A belief or hypothesis may be unreasonable but logically consistent. For example, a belief in dragons or in creationism may be unreasonable, but is logically consistent. On the other hand, a belief that dragons are green and not green is not only unreasonable, but is much worse: logically inconsistent.)
 
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  • #43
atyy said:
"When space-time itself is ‘quantized’, as is generally held to be necessary, the concept of locality becomes very obscure. And so it does also in presently fashionable ‘string theories’ of ‘everything’. So all our considerations are restricted to that level of approximation to serious theories in which space-time can be regarded as given, and localization becomes meaningful."

How interesting, now that we know how far that has come. Bell seems to always have been interested in gravity. In "Against 'measurement', he says something like wouldn't it be interesting if the measurement problem pointed to gravity? Of course, hidden variables was just his "hobby", and his real work was particle physics, he being one of the co-discoverers (with Jackiw, and Adler) of the chiral anomaly.

I think that quantum gravity (whether through string theory or other approaches) is expected to be nonlocal at the microscopic level, but the nonlocal effects are supposed to become unobservable at macroscopic distances. So the nonlocality of quantum gravity is not expected to have anything to directly do with the nonlocality of EPR type phenomena, which are completely unrestricted in range. Right?
 
  • #44
stevendaryl said:
I think that quantum gravity (whether through string theory or other approaches) is expected to be nonlocal at the microscopic level, but the nonlocal effects are supposed to become unobservable at macroscopic distances. So the nonlocality of quantum gravity is not expected to have anything to directly do with the nonlocality of EPR type phenomena, which are completely unrestricted in range. Right?

I don't know. Bell goes on to say that he is assuming the a classical spacetime and local quantum mechanical observables have already emerged. At that level of approximation, there is no nonlocal quantum gravity. But I don't understand the gauge/gravity duality well enough to know how spacetime and quantum mechanics emerge from the boundary, and there are all these speculative ideas like ER=EPR for black holes.
 
  • #45
Demystifier said:
In a solipsistic view of the world, there is no "we". There is "me", and there are my observations (of nature, of scientific journals, of texts at Physics Forums, of speeches produced by other scientists, etc). These observations by me more-or-less agree with my thoughts.

In a soft-solipsistic view of the world, there is also "you", with your observations which agree with your thoughts.

EPR failed to explain a crucial point in their characterization of the Observer-Dependent option: it is not relative to a single observer, it is relative to ALL observers as a group. And again, almost by definition, those observers can easily be positioned so that they are "non-local" relative to each other. And yet they are in fact connected indirectly by individual world lines that respect c.

So I don't see any particular observer's viewpoint - in this context - as needing to have a special position. My view is no more preferred than yours.
 
  • #46
DrChinese said:
So I don't see any particular observer's viewpoint - in this context - as needing to have a special position. My view is no more preferred than yours.
I agree. But my point is that my view should not be correlated with your view, if we want a logically consistent version of "local non-reality". This implies that my view may be different from your view. For example, a particle may have spin-up in my view and spin-down in your view.
 
  • #47
Demystifier said:
For a long time I was not able to understand how a physical theory can be non-counterfactual-definite (except by rejecting to talk about counterfactual definiteness), until I constructed my own model:
http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/1112.2034 [Int. J. Quantum Inf. 10 (2012) 1241016]

Would it be right to say that in your model there is no violation of the Bell inequalities by particle detections at spacelike separation, because the detectors are not real and thus not at spacelike separation? There is only the real apparent violation of Bell inequalities at spacelike separation? So there is no known counterexample to the hypothesis that given a violation of Bell inequalities at spacelike separation, there is no way to save locality by nonrealism?
 
  • #48
atyy said:
...given a violation of Bell inequalities at spacelike separation, there is no way to save locality by nonrealism?

That view is usually advanced by Bohmians, such as Norsen. But of course there are a number of interpretations that do just that, so that hypothesis is not correct. Without debating these interpretations themselves: MWI, Time Symmetric/Retrocausal, Blockworld. All claim to be completely local.
 
  • #49
DrChinese said:
That view is usually advanced by Bohmians, such as Norsen. But of course there are a number of interpretations that do just that, so that hypothesis is not correct. Without debating these interpretations themselves: MWI, Time Symmetric/Retrocausal, Blockworld. All claim to be completely local.
Do you consider all those models non-real/epistemic?
 
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  • #50
DrChinese said:
That view is usually advanced by Bohmians, such as Norsen. But of course there are a number of interpretations that do just that, so that hypothesis is not correct. Without debating these interpretations themselves: MWI, Time Symmetric/Retrocausal, Blockworld. All claim to be completely local.

I don't know enough about Blockworld. Does Time-Symmetric really claim to be local - as far as I can tell it is just Copenhagen written in a very interesting way? Retrocausation is an accepted loophole to the Bell derivation, so the Bell inequalities don't rule out that retrocausation could provide a real and local deterministic explanation of quantum mechanics. MWI also uses an accepted loophole, which is the assumption of one measurement outcome, so the Bell inequalities also don't rule out MWI can be a real and local deterministic explanation of quantum mechanics. So unless retrocausation or having more than one measurement outcome is "unreal", those don't seem to be counterexamples. MWI is considered real by Norsen, and also by some proponents like Wallace.

Incidentally, I don't know if there is agreement that MWI is local, but I think it is agreed that the question of locality in MWI is not affected by the Bell inequalities.
 
  • #51
bohm2 said:
Do you consider all those models non-real/epistemic?

They are non-realistic because EPR elements of reality are limited to those that can be predicted with certainty. That would be one of P or Q, one spin component, etc.

Note: There are MWIers that insist that MWI is both local and realistic. But that is not canonical to MWI, it is an added assumption. In MWI, the splits occur at observations and there are no splits when there is no observation. So saying there are universes in which a, b and c are all simulateously real is not accurate there either, Bell's Inequality would separate that out too if there were.
 
  • #52
Hmmm, after reading Demystifier's solipsistic hidden variables, I think he would say MWI is unreal? Would it be right to say solipsistic hidden variables is MWI (taken as unreal), but then you only add "real" Bohmian trajectories so that Alice is real in one world and Bob is not real in her world, but in Bob's world he is real and Alice is unreal?

Does this mean that BM can prove the correctness of MWI? After all, there is the Deutsch argument that BM is MWI with one world picked out. If MWI is simply BM with all possible initial conditions being realized, then it seems BM might prove MWI to be right. In fact, since BM doesn't have canonical hidden variables, nor trajectories, it seems BM could prove MMMWI.

Edit: I see my first question is answered in the paper! "Finally note that our result that different observers may live in different branches of the wave function is very similar to the many-world interpretation [16, 17], briefly discussed in Sec. 2.2. Yet, there is one crucial difference. In the many-world interpretation, there is a copy of each observer in any of the branches. In our solipsistic interpretation, for each observer there is only one copy living in only one of the branches."

OK, Demystifier, I don't know if I agree that you have provided a "local deterministic" theory that shows how nonrealism can save nonlocality. But it is a very nice paper! :) Also, the paper does not answer my second question as to whether this shows that BM can prove MWI to be right. Now that we have in BM also the freedom to choose what is real, it seems BM can prove MMMMWI :p
 
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  • #53
atyy said:
Hmmm, after reading Demystifier's solipsistic hidden variables, I think he would say MWI is unreal?
Wouldn't the wavefunction be considered ontic/real in MWI?
 
  • #54
atyy said:
Would it be right to say that in your model there is no violation of the Bell inequalities by particle detections at spacelike separation, because the detectors are not real and thus not at spacelike separation? There is only the real apparent violation of Bell inequalities at spacelike separation? So there is no known counterexample to the hypothesis that given a violation of Bell inequalities at spacelike separation, there is no way to save locality by nonrealism?
I guess you could say that, but that's not how I would say it. I would rather rephrase the above as follows: Bell inequalities are violated, but not at space-like separation. The violation happens locally (at the position of the observer), while the observer only thinks that it happens at space-like separation because he thinks that the violation happened in space-like separated detectors before he observed it.
 
  • #55
DrChinese said:
MWI, Time Symmetric/Retrocausal, Blockworld. All claim to be completely local.
But neither of them claims to be non-real.
 
  • #56
DrChinese said:
They are non-realistic because EPR elements of reality are limited to those that can be predicted with certainty.
Perhaps they are EPR-nonreal, but they are Bell-real.

DrChinese said:
Note: There are MWIers that insist that MWI is both local and realistic. But that is not canonical to MWI, it is an added assumption.
I have never seen that a MWIer claims that MWI is not realistic. Can you cite an example?

DrChinese said:
In MWI, the splits occur at observations and there are no splits when there is no observation. So saying there are universes in which a, b and c are all simulateously real is not accurate there either, Bell's Inequality would separate that out too if there were.
I guess your problem is to understand how can MWI be both real and combatible with the Bell theorem? That's because MWI is not Bell-local. But it is also not Bell-non-local. So what is it? It is Bell-alocal. What is the difference between non-local and alocal? Non-local lives in the 3-space but has action at a distance. Alocal does not even live in the 3-space. Bell theorem tacitly assumes that physics (either local or non-local) happens in the 3-space, but MWI violates this asumption.
 
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  • #57
atyy said:
OK, Demystifier, I don't know if I agree that you have provided a "local deterministic" theory that shows how nonrealism can save nonlocality. But it is a very nice paper! :)
Thanks! :)

atyy said:
Also, the paper does not answer my second question as to whether this shows that BM can prove MWI to be right. Now that we have in BM also the freedom to choose what is real, it seems BM can prove MMMMWI :p
I don't think that this paper helps to understand MWI. In this paper we can choose which particles are real, but (in a sense similar to that in BM) wave function is not considered real. MWI insists that wave function is real and that there is nothing else which is real.
 
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  • #58
Demystifier said:
I have never seen that a MWIer claims that MWI is not realistic.

We need a definition of "realistic" here. Is there one? What I think is important is understanding the relationship between observation and whatever it is that your theory considers to be real. With normal (pre-quantum) theories, it is assumed that observations give us information about the state of the universe. There is a sense in which, for MWI, observations don't tell us anything about the universe that we don't already know. If you measure the spin of an electron, you know ahead of time that there will be a world in which the outcome is "spin up" and there will be a world in which the outcome is "spin down". Some people would say that you learn something, in the sense that you learn which of those two worlds you are in. But the concept of "which world you are in" isn't part of MWI, is it?
 
  • #59
stevendaryl said:
But the concept of "which world you are in" isn't part of MWI, is it?
I think it is. But instead of explaining why, I will just use an analogy with biology of identical twins. So for that purpose, let us suppose that you have a genetically identical twin brother. Then what you said above would be analogous to saying that the concept of "which of the twins you are" isn't part of biology.
 
  • #60
Demystifier said:
1. Perhaps they are EPR-nonreal, but they are Bell-real.

2. I have never seen that a MWIer claims that MWI is not realistic. Can you cite an example?

3. I guess your problem is to understand how can MWI be both real and combatible with the Bell theorem? That's because MWI is not Bell-local. But it is also not Bell-non-local. So what is it? It is Bell-alocal. What is the difference between non-local and alocal? Non-local lives in the 3-space but has action at a distance. Alocal does not even live in the 3-space. Bell theorem tacitly assumes that physics (either local or non-local) happens in the 3-space, but MWI violates this asumption.

1. I say Bell is using the same definition as EPR: simultaneous elements of reality.

2. I don't think MWI is realistic. And I don't see how anyone can say - with a straight face - that MWI IS realistic. If you want to call it an additional assumption of realism that there be one world, that would do it for me.

I would ask the same question as always: if there is an a, b and c in MWI, what values do they have? Because there are definitely outcomes in which some values have negative probabilities of occurring (as soon as you assert realism) if QM is accurate. I presume there is no such thing as a negative world, which is what you would need to make everything balance out.

http://www.drchinese.com/David/Bell_Theorem_Negative_Probabilities.htm
 
  • #61
DrChinese said:
I would ask the same question as always: if there is an a, b and c in MWI, what values do they have?

Would I understand you correctly that for your definition of real, a,b and c don't appear in the same equation in MWI, so the Bell inequality cannot be applied, and hence the Bell inequality cannot be violated, hence MWI is not Bell nonlocal?
 
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  • #62
atyy said:
Would I understand you correctly that for your definition of real, a,b and c don't appear in the same equation in MWI, so the Bell inequality cannot be formed, and hence the Bell inequality cannot be violated, hence MWI is not Bell nonlocal?

I would say that, sure. In worlds in which no measurement is performed, there is no split to give the elements of reality a value. By my accounting, there must be a negative number of worlds with certain combinations of values. That is simply saying that a negative probability is as non-realistic as negative worlds. For example, when A=0, B=67.5 and C is 45 degrees, the likelihood of worlds with a=+ b=+ and c=- or a=- b=- and c=+ is -10%. Where are those worlds?
 
  • #63
DrChinese said:
I would ask the same question as always: if there is an a, b and c in MWI, what values do they have?
Some of them may have no values at all, but that's not non-realism according to Bell. According to Bell, realism is not an assumption that all observables have values. It's an assumption that something has a value. That something Bell calls a beable.

In particular, in MWI there is no a, b, and c. There is only ##\psi##, the wave function. So in MWI, the beable is ##\psi##. So ##\psi## is real in MWI, but a, b, c are not. Since there is something real in MWI, proponents of MWI consider MWI realistic.

But you don't consider MWI realistic, because, for you, "realistic" means that a, b, and c must be real. Fine, but that's your definition of "real", not Bell's.

Nevertheless, the good thing is that for both definitions of reality (and with some reasonable additional tacit assumptions, which I can list if someone is interested) one can prove that such reality cannot be local.
 
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  • #64
DrChinese said:
I would say that, sure. In worlds in which no measurement is performed, there is no split to give the elements of reality a value. By my accounting, there must be a negative number of worlds with certain combinations of values. That is simply saying that a negative probability is as non-realistic as negative worlds. For example, when A=0, B=67.5 and C is 45 degrees, the likelihood of worlds with a=+ b=+ and c=- or a=- b=- and c=+ is -10%. Where are those worlds?

I'm don't understand MWI well enough to agree or disagree on this technical point, but it seems reasonable. Anyway, I think your conclusion is broadly in agreement with Demystifier's. If according to your definition, the Bell inequality doesn't apply and cannot be violated, then MWI is neither Bell nonlocal nor Bell local. I think this is why he said that MWI is Bell alocal.

I believe there is general agreement that nonrealism can prevent the Bell inequalities from applying, so locality can be saved in the sense that the there is no Bell proof of nonlocality. I think the controversy is whether there is a case where the Bell inequalities apply, and are violated, and one can still find a "Bell local" explanation.
 
  • #65
atyy said:
I'm don't understand MWI well enough to agree or disagree on this technical point, but it seems reasonable. Anyway, I think your conclusion is broadly in agreement with Demystifier's. If according to your definition, the Bell inequality doesn't apply and cannot be violated, then MWI is neither Bell nonlocal nor Bell local. I think this is why he said that MWI is Bell alocal.
That's correct. DrChinese and I agree on locality issue in MWI. We disagree on the reality issue.

atyy said:
I believe there is general agreement that nonrealism can prevent the Bell inequalities from applying, so locality can be saved in the sense that the there is no Bell proof of nonlocality. I think the controversy is whether there is a case where the Bell inequalities apply, and are violated, and one can still find a "Bell local" explanation.
Any proof in physics or mathematics ever published contains not only a list of explicit assumptions, but also some implicit assumptions. The Bell proof is not an exception. Indeed, there are several "local realistic" interpretations of QM which violate some of the implicit assumptions in the Bell theorem, the assumptions which Bell didn't spelled out explicitly.

These implicit assumptions (violated by some interpretations) are a great source of confusion. Another source of confusion is the fact that Bell himself presented a few different versions of his proof by using somewhat different assumptions himself.
 
  • #66
As far as understand it, only Rovelli's relational interpretation can be considered both local and unreal. For instance have a look at the 2 categories under table of "comparison of interpretations". Only in that interpretation is locality maintained and the wave function is not real. Having said that, I'm not sure of some of the less popular interpretations like Relational Blockworld.

Interpretations of quantum mechanics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics
 
  • #67
Demystifier said:
These implicit assumptions (violated by some interpretations) are a great source of confusion. Another source of confusion is the fact that Bell himself presented a few different versions of his proof by using somewhat different assumptions himself.

Yes. To be fair, EPR made implicit assumptions too - and it is hard not to. Is the existence of a single world a tacit assumption?

And as to Bell: while I consider his follow on writings a source of much inspiration and knowledge, I don't consider them authoritative. His opinions changed over time, and it is not his opinion that made him famous. It was the 1964 paper. Although it was suitable for its audience then, it obviously raises a lot of questions today that are nowhere clearly answered. You have to piece a lot of stuff together.
 
  • #68
bohm2 said:
As far as understand it, only Rovelli's relational interpretation can be considered both local and unreal.

According to EPR: non-realism and observer-dependent reality are the same thing (see the EPR quote I presented). So time symmetric and retrocausal interpretations, being observer dependent, are non-realistic.
 
  • #69
DrChinese said:
Yes. To be fair, EPR made implicit assumptions too - and it is hard not to.
Not only hard, but impossible.

DrChinese said:
Is the existence of a single world a tacit assumption?
It certainly is.

DrChinese said:
And as to Bell: while I consider his follow on writings a source of much inspiration and knowledge, I don't consider them authoritative.
Fair enough.

DrChinese said:
His opinions changed over time, and it is not his opinion that made him famous. It was the 1964 paper.
I must admit, you are right about that.

DrChinese said:
Although it was suitable for its audience then, it obviously raises a lot of questions today that are nowhere clearly answered. You have to piece a lot of stuff together.
I tend to agree with that too.
 
  • #70
DrChinese said:
According to EPR: non-realism and observer-dependent reality are the same thing (see the EPR quote I presented). So time symmetric and retrocausal interpretations, being observer dependent, are non-realistic.

Since reality is observer-dependent, could nonlocality also be observer-dependent? Would you accept Norsen's hypothesis in the form that for any (observer-dependent) assignment of reality in which according to that observer the Bell inequalities are violated at spacelike separation, that observer cannot assign any local deterministic explanation of his reality?
 

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