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Journal of Modern Physics

Logical Conflict between Bell’s Locality and Probability Theory

K. Hess

Published Jan 1, 2023• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Based on “locality” considerations, John Stuart Bell and his followers have derived inequalities and theorems that, when taken together with actual experiments that have been performed by Aspect and others, appear to contradict physical reality as defined by Einstein. However, their specifically applied concept of locality is in conflict with the Fundamental Model of probability theory and the set theoretic definition of conditional probabilities. Bell-type inequalities are, therefore, not adequate to decide ponderous questions regarding physical reality.

DOI
10.4236/jmp.2023.1413105

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Based on “locality” considerations, John Stuart Bell and his followers have derived inequalities and theorems that, when taken together with actual experiments that have been performed by Aspect and others, appear to contradict physical reality as defined by Einstein. However, their specifically applied concept of locality is in conflict with the Fundamental Model of probability theory and the set theoretic definition of conditional probabilities. Bell-type inequalities are, therefore, not adequate to decide ponderous questions regarding physical reality.
The celebrated inequalities of Bell are based on the assumption that local hidden parameters exist. When combined with conflicting experimental results, these inequalities appear to prove that local hidden parameters cannot exist. This contradiction suggests to many that only instantaneous action at a distance can explain the Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen type of experiments. We show that, in addition to the assumption that hidden parameters exist, Bell tacitly makes a variety of other assumptions that contribute to his being able to obtain the desired contradiction. For instance, Bell assumes that the hidden parameters do not depend on time and are governed by a single probability measure independent of the analyzer settings. We argue that the exclusion of time has neither a physical nor a mathematical basis but is based on Bell's translation of the concept of Einstein locality into the language of probability theory. Our additional set of local hidden variables includes time-like correlated parameters and a generalized probability density. We prove that our extended space of local hidden variables does not permit Bell-type proofs to go forward.
John Stewart Bell’s famous theorem is widely regarded as one of the most important developments in the foundations of physics. Yet even as we approach the 50th anniversary of Bell’s discovery, its meaning and implications remain controversial. Many workers assert that Bell’s theorem refutes the possibility suggested by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen (EPR) of supplementing ordinary quantum theory with “hidden” variables that might restore determinism and/or some notion of an observer-independent reality. But Bell himself interpreted the theorem very differently—as establishing an “essential conflict” between the well-tested empirical predictions of quantum theory and relativistic local causality. Our goal is to make Bell’s own views more widely known and to explain Bell’s little-known formulation of the concept of relativistic local causality on which his theorem rests. We also show precisely how Bell’s formulation of local causality can be used to derive an empirically testable Bell-type inequality and to recapitulate the EPR argument.
Bell's theorem is 50 years old. Still there is a controversy about its implications. Much of it has its roots in confusion regarding the premises from which the theorem can be derived. Some claim that a derivation of Bell's inequalities requires just locality assumption, and nothing more. Violations of the inequalities are then interpreted as ``nonlocality'' or ``quantum nonlocality''. We show that such claims are unfounded and that every derivation of Bell's inequalities requires a premise -- in addition to locality and freedom of choice -- which is either assumed tacitly, or unconsciously, or is embedded in a single compound condition (like Bell's ``local causality''). The premise is equivalent to the assumption of existence of additional variables which do not appear in the quantum formalism (in form of determinism, or joint probability for outcomes of all conceivable measurements, or ``additional causes`'', or ``hidden variables'', ``complete description of the state'' or counterfactual definiteness, etc.). A certain irony is that perhaps the main message of violation of Bell's inequalities is that our notion of locality should be based on an operationally well-defined no-signalling condition, rather than on local causality.
Using CH model of Bell’s theorem and only by applying the conditional probability definition in ”classical ” probability theory,without imposing the locality condition,we are able to show that the stochastic realistic (CH) model cannot reproduce all of the predictions of quantum mechanics. PACS number: 03.65.Bz It is generally claimed that Bell inequalities are inconsistent with experimental data and with the predictions of quantum mechanics.A condition often used in the derivation of Bell inequalities is the so-called locality condition.The temptation is to attribute Bell inequalities violation to the violation of locality. In this paper we are going
Bell's theorem contains the proposition that the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) theory (hypothesis) of the existence of elements of reality together with Einstein locality permits a mathematical description of EPR experiments by functions that are all defined on one common probability space. This proposition leads in turn to restrictions for possible experimental outcomes that Bell expressed in terms of his well known inequalities and that Vorob'ev and others had investigated before Bell. Summarizing several previous publications and adding new material, the above proposition is refuted by Einstein-local counterexamples from classical physics and shown to involve additional assumptions that can not be justified for mutually exclusive (incompatible) measurements and experiments. Moreover, criticism of our work by Mermin who invoked "standard sampling arguments" is shown to be false.