What are the beables of the interpretation?

In my thermal interpretation all expectation values exist objectively in Bell's sense. Some are accessible to experiment - namely those that vary sufficiently slowly in time and space and have a small uncertainty. Because of the law of large numbers, all thermodynamic variables are in this category.

All others are not accessible to experiment - these are the hidden variables, for which Einstein and others searched for so long. Most of them are highly non-local, in accordance with Bell's theorem.

My thermal interpretation thus reinstates realism, without, like Bohm, introducing additional degrees of freedom into quantum mechanics.

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Arnold Neumaier (Arnold.Neumaier@univie.ac.at)

A theoretical physics FAQ