Contextuality or nonlocality; what would John Bell choose today?

Abstract

A violation of Bell-CHSH inequalities does not justify speculations about quantum non-locality, conspiracy and retro-causation. Such speculations are rooted in a belief that setting dependence of hidden variables in a probabilistic model, called a violation of measurement independence, would mean a violation of experimenters freedom of choice. This belief is unfounded because it is based on a questionable use of Bayes Theorem and on incorrect causal interpretation of conditional probabilities. In Bell-local realistic model, hidden variables describe only photonic beams created by a source, thus they cannot depend on randomly chosen experimental settings. However, if hidden variables describing measuring instruments are correctly incorporated into a contextual probabilistic model a violation of inequalities and an apparent violation of no-signaling reported in Bell tests can be explained without evoking quantum nonlocality. Therefore, for us, a violation of Bell-CHSH inequalities proves only that hidden variables have to depend on settings confirming contextual character of quantum observables and an active role played by measuring instruments. Bell thought that he had to choose between nonlocality and the violation of experimenters freedom of choice. From two bad choices he chose nonlocality. Today he would probably choose the violation of statistical independence understood as contextuality.

11 pages of text + 110 references , This is a substantially extended and revised final version of this article which has been just published in Entropy. It replaces also the first version of this articlewhich had a different title: A comment on Bell's Theorem Logical Consistency

References in corpus (20)

• Loopholes in Bell Inequality Tests of Local Realism
• Local deterministic model of singlet state correlations based on relaxing measurement independence
• Cosmic Bell Test: Measurement Settings from Milky Way Stars
• Is the Fair Sampling Assumption supported by EPR Experiments?
• Quantum non-locality - It ain't necessarily so...
• Making Sense of Bell's Theorem and Quantum Nonlocality
• Contextuality is About Identity of Random Variables
• Violations of locality and free choice are equivalent resources in Bell experiments
• Bell's theorem allows local theories of quantum mechanics
• A Note on Bell's Theorem Logical Consistency
• Supermeasured: Violating Bell-Statistical Independence without violating physical statistical independence
• Is Einsteinian no-signalling violated in Bell Tests?
• Contextuality-by-Default description of Bell tests: Contextuality as the rule not as an exception
• A Toy Model for Local and Deterministic Wave-function Collapse
• Seventy Years of the EPR Paradox
• Reply to "Comment on 'Nonlocality claims are inconsistent with Hilbert-space quantum mechanics' '"
• Assumption-free derivation of the Bell-type criteria of contextuality/nonlocality
• Comment on Causal Networks and Freedom of Choice in Bell's Theorem
• Context-independent mapping and free choice are equivalent
• Quantum violation of the Suppes-Zanotti inequalities and "contextuality"

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Quantum Nonlocality: how does Nature do it?
• Quantitative relations between different measurement contexts
• My discussions of quantum foundations with John Stewart Bell
• Taxonomy for Physics Beyond Quantum Mechanics
• Response: Commentary: Is the moon there if nobody looks? Bell inequalities and physical reality
• Commentary: Is the moon there if nobody looks -- Bell inequalities and physical reality
• Statistical Contextual Explanation of Quantum Paradoxes
• Quantum Mechanics: Statistical Balance Prompts Caution in Assessing Conceptual Implications