In his brilliant article “Against ‘Measurement”, John Bell famously argued that ‘the word has had such a damaging effect on the discussion, that …it should now be banned altogether in quantum mechanics.” But in the beginning was the word, and the word is still with us. Indeed, David Mermin responded “In Praise of ‘Measurement’ that “within the field of quantum computer science the concept of measurement is precisely defined, unproblematic, and forms the foundation of the entire subject”, a verdict reaffirmed by the development of measurement-based quantum computation. Bell’s arguments deserve a more direct response: I shall try to give one.
University of Arizona in Tucson