A reasonable thing that just might work
Abstract
In 1964, John Bell proved that quantum mechanics is "unreasonable" (to use Einstein's term): there are nonlocal bipartite quantum correlations. But they are not the most nonlocal bipartite correlations consistent with relativistic causality ("no superluminal signalling"): also maximally nonlocal "superquantum" (or "PR-box") correlations are consistent with relativistic causality. I show that---unlike quantum correlations---these correlations do not have a classical limit consistent with relativistic causality. The generalization of this result to all stronger-than-quantum nonlocal correlations is a derivation of Tsirelson's bound---a theorem of quantum mechanics---from the three axioms of relativistic causality, nonlocality, and the existence of a classical limit. But is it reasonable to derive (a part of) quantum mechanics from the unreasonable axiom of nonlocality?! I consider replacing the nonlocality axiom with an equivalent axiom that even Bell and Einstein might have considered reasonable: an axiom of local retrocausality.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1507.01588,
title = {A reasonable thing that just might work},
author = {Daniel Rohrlich},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1507.01588},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
To appear in Quantum Nonlocality and Reality: 50 Years of Bell's theorem, eds. S. Gao and M. Bell (Cambridge U. Press), 2015, in press