Parallel Lives: A Local-Realistic Interpretation of “Nonlocal” Boxes

Abstract

We carry out a thought experiment in an imaginary world. Our world is both local and realistic, yet it violates a Bell inequality more than does quantum theory. This serves to debunk the myth that equates local realism with local hidden variables in the simplest possible manner. Along the way, we reinterpret the celebrated 1935 argument of Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen, and come to the conclusion that they were right in their questioning the completeness of the Copenhagen version of quantum theory, provided one believes in a local-realistic universe. Throughout our journey, we strive to explain our views from first principles, without expecting mathematical sophistication nor specialized prior knowledge from the reader.

Keywords

• Bell’s theorem
• Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen argument
• local hidden variables
• local realism
• no-signalling
• parallel lives