Quantum entanglement, fair sampling, and reality: Is the moon there when nobody looks?

Abstract

In 1981, David Mermin described a cleverly simplified version of Bell's theorem. It pointed out in a straightforward way that interpreting entanglement from a local realist point of view can be problematic. I propose here an extended version of Mermin's device that can actually be given a simple local realist interpretation through a sample selection bias, and I argue that we still have no scientific reason to believe that the moon could possibly not be there when nobody looks.

13 pages, 8 Figures, 1 Table

References in corpus (7)

• Violation of Bell's inequality under strict Einstein locality conditions
• Heralding Single Photons from Pulsed Parametric Down-Conversion
• A local hidden variable model of quantum correlation exploiting the detection loophole
• Is the Fair Sampling Assumption supported by EPR Experiments?
• Bell's theorem and the experiments: Increasing empirical support to local realism
• Quantum measurement, detection and locality
• Experimental Scheme to Test the Fair Sampling Assumption in EPR-Bell Experiments

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Born's rule from measurements of classical signals by threshold detectors which are properly calibrated
• Classical probability model for Bell inequality
• On consistency of the quantum-like representation algorithm
• Measurement problem: from de Broglie to theory of classical random fields interacting with threshold detectors
• On the consistency of the quantum-like representation algorithm for hyperbolic interference