Non Locality versus Modified Realism: Convivial Solipsism

TL;DR

This paper explores how rejecting the physical reality of wave function collapse can reconcile quantum mechanics with locality, challenging the standard realist interpretation and offering an alternative perspective on quantum non-locality.

Contribution

It demonstrates that by not treating wave function collapse as a physical change, locality can be preserved in quantum mechanics, providing a new interpretation called Convivial Solipsism.

Findings

Wave function collapse need not be a physical process.

Locality can be maintained without abandoning quantum predictions.

Standard realist interpretations imply non-locality, but alternative views can avoid this.

Abstract

A large number of physicists now admit that quantum mechanics is a non local theory. The EPR argument and the many experiments (including recent loop-hole free tests) showing the violation of Bell's inequalities seem to have confirmed convincingly that quantum mechanics cannot be local. Nevertheless, this conclusion can only be drawn inside a standard realist framework assuming an ontic interpretation of the wave function and viewing the collapse of the wave function as a real change in the physical state of the system. We show that this standpoint is not mandatory and that if the collapse is not considered an actual physical change, it is possible to recover locality.