/Medium-bound model

What each answer to Bell's theorem explains, and what it gives up

Bell's theorem says no theory can keep every classical idea and still match quantum results. Each school below keeps some and pays with the rest. Tick the ideas you refuse to give up and the models that keep them stay lit. Click a model's name for what it explains, what it does not, and its price.

Pick what you refuse to give up

Models that give up (✗) or only partly keep (◐) a ticked idea fade out.

✓ yes◐ partly, or disputed✗ noRatings are a working summary of the usual positions, several of them contested. Check them against the sources before citing.
Ticks count ✓ across all 13 columns, every column weighted equally, ◐ counts as zero. It is not a ranking of which theory is right.

The pattern. Only the classical row keeps every classical idea, and the 2015 loophole-free tests (Delft, Vienna, NIST) ruled it out. Every other row has paid somewhere. The medium-bound model pays with locality and the preferred frame of the pair, and it keeps finite-time influence, determinism and free choice. Unlike a chance-based model, the phase fixes each draw.

Where the medium-bound ratings come from. The Bell-test result (|S| = 2.83) is reproduced in simulation for the Delft settings, and the flip rule gives the entangled-pair (singlet-type) correlation at every angle. Nothing wider has been derived yet: other states and experiments are not covered. Its testable lag and herald predictions are listed in the paper.

Compiled 15 October 2026 from the project's working notes and standard reviews, partly from memory. Citations still to be checked.