Hidden Variables and the Two Theorems of John Bell

Abstract

Although skeptical of the prohibitive power of no-hidden-variables theorems, John Bell was himself responsible for the two most important ones. I describe some recent versions of the lesser known of the two (familar to experts as the "Kochen-Specker theorem") which have transparently simple proofs. One of the new versions can be converted without additional analysis into a powerful form of the very much better known "Bell's Theorem", thereby clarifying the conceptual link between these two results of Bell.