The straw man of quantum physics

TL;DR

This paper challenges the traditional interpretation of Bell inequality violations by arguing that classical realism is a straw man and proposing that quantum fields and random fields are more appropriate models for understanding quantum phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces the idea that classical realism is a misrepresentation and suggests modeling quantum fluctuations with random fields as an alternative to quantum field theories.

Findings

Bell inequality violations do not necessarily imply non-locality

Quantum fields and random fields can be modeled as alternatives

Realism may be inapplicable to quantum phenomena

Abstract

The violation of Bell inequalities by experiment has convinced physicists that we cannot maintain a classical view of the world. When we argue against the possibility of local realist hidden-variable models, however, the ubiquitous requirement of realism, that "measurement results depend on pre-existing properties of objects that are independent of the measurement", reduces classical theory to a straw man. When our most successful physical theories have been field theories for well over a century, and probabilistic for almost as long, the proper comparison is between quantum fields and random fields, for which there are no sharply defined objects and no properties, so that realism is inapplicable. If we model quantum fluctuations explicitly, we can construct random field models as alternatives to quantum field models.