QBism on Locality and Nonlocality

Abstract:Recently Pienaar (2026), building on work of Cavalcanti (2021), has shown that QBism cannot always assume distinct observers' quantum-measurement outcomes---say, of Wigner and his friend---are embedded in a single spacetime. This follows from QBism's rejection of the `Absoluteness of Observed Events' assumption in the Bong et al. no-go theorem. Thus, QBism has no choice but to treat the notion of spacetime every bit as personalistic as it treats quantum states and quantum measurement outcomes. In a way, this is not a surprise to QBists, as they have taken the notion of `personalist spacetimes' to be the ansatz most compatible with their other views since at least 2009. But it does enjoin us to finally make crystal clear the sense in which QBism is a purely local interpretation of quantum mechanics despite this new theorem and despite quantum theory's age-old violation of Bell's inequalities. With the extra clarity we also hope to poise QBism for a distinctly new way to approach issues at the interface of quantum theory and gravity.

arXiv:2608.05368 [quant-ph]

(or arXiv:2608.05368v1 [quant-ph] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.05368 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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