Explanatory Strain and Entanglement: 1 Electrons Do Not ‘Decide’

“But the equations say that at the time that the electrons are emitted from their source, they do not have a definite spin. Each of them exists in what is called a superposition, a mixture of up and down states, and the electron only 'decides' what spin to settle into, in accordance with the rules of probability, when it interacts with something else. The point Einstein seized upon is that if the electrons must have opposite spin, at the moment electron A 'decides' to be spin up, electron B must be spin down, no matter how far apart the two electrons are. He called this 'spooky action at a distance', because at first sight it seems as if the electrons are communicating faster than light, which is forbidden according to the special theory of relativity.”

— John Gribbin, Six Impossible Things

A single word in this passage carries a heavy explanatory load: decides. Much like the “knew” in the two-slit experiment, decides is not a literal description of physical reality. Electrons do not deliberate, choose, or act with agency. Yet the metaphor is introduced at precisely the point where ordinary physical description strains to account for correlations between distant events.

What is being smuggled in under the cover of decides? Consider what ordinary decision entails:

1. Agency — an entity capable of choosing between alternatives.

2. Access to options — awareness of the available possibilities.

3. Temporal sequencing — a before and after in which the decision is made.

None of these conditions applies to an electron in superposition. There is no standpoint from which it surveys possibilities, no mechanism by which it exercises choice, and no temporal event in which the “decision” occurs as a causal act. The moment one electron is measured does not “trigger” the state of the other; it only actualises one of the possible outcomes constrained by the joint structure of the entangled system.

Why, then, does Gribbin employ the word decides? It is a classic symptom of explanatory strain. The text is attempting to convey a remarkable fact about correlations: that the spins of entangled electrons are constrained in such a way that they always appear opposite, regardless of spatial separation. The intuitive human reaction is to imagine the electrons actively coordinating or communicating, and decides serves as a shorthand for that intuition.

The metaphor has consequences. By framing the correlation as a decision by electron A that instantaneously determines electron B, the passage smuggles in notions of instantaneous influence and forbidden faster-than-light communication. It sets the stage for the familiar rhetorical drama of “spooky action at a distance,” which, as we will see, is more a symptom of how we talk about correlated outcomes than a statement about reality itself.

In the next post, we will examine the temporal smuggling more closely: how the narrative of one electron deciding first and the other responding second introduces a pseudo-causal structure, and why this temporal framing is not required to understand the correlation.