Explanatory Strain and Entanglement: 3 Correlations Are Not Built

Following our discussion of temporal smuggling, we now turn to the broader pattern of entangled outcomes. A familiar intuition arises: it seems as though electrons are somehow coordinating their spins across space to ensure perfect anti-correlation. This is often dramatised in terms like “spooky action at a distance” or imagined as one particle communicating with the other. But this intuition is misleading.

The correlation is a property of the system-as-pair, not a property of sequential events. Each electron measurement is an independent instantiation of the joint structured potential defined by the entangled state. No electron modifies or influences the other; no signals are sent; nothing accumulates in the world beyond individual detection events.

Describing correlations as being “built” or “produced” by electrons introduces the same explanatory error we saw with interference patterns in the two-slit experiment. Patterns in the outcomes do not require communication or coordination; they emerge from the constraints encoded in the structure of the system itself. Each detection event simply actualises one of the allowed outcomes, and the regularity we observe across many measurements is a reflection of the structured potential, not a cumulative process of influence.

Thinking otherwise leads to conceptual confusion: it makes the phenomenon appear paradoxical, requiring faster-than-light signals or retrocausal effects. Recognising that correlations are constraints on possible joint outcomes, rather than messages exchanged between particles, dissolves the mystery.

In the next post, we will introduce the relational ontology perspective fully: measurement events as perspectival cuts, superpositions as structured potential, and how this framing explains entanglement without invoking hidden coordination or mysterious action at a distance.

Explanatory Strain and Entanglement: 2 Temporal Smuggling in Entanglement

In the previous post, we examined the metaphor of electrons that "decide" their spin. Here, we focus on the temporal structure implied by that metaphor, and why it is a classic example of explanatory strain.

Gribbin writes that “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.” This phrasing introduces a subtle but consequential temporal narrative: electron A acts first, electron B responds instantaneously. The appearance of cause-and-effect across space seems undeniable, but the temporal framing is misleading.

The correlation between entangled electrons is not the result of a sequence of actions. No electron waits for the other to act, and no information is transmitted between them. The “moment” in which electron A chooses is a human-centric way of narrating what is actually a constraint on joint outcomes. By translating a structural constraint into a temporal story, the explanation smuggles in the familiar logic of causal interaction: something happens first, something else reacts.

This pseudo-temporal framing encourages a kind of explanatory anxiety: how could the second electron know what the first has done without violating relativity? The mystery feels real because the narrative imposes a temporal sequence that the phenomena themselves do not require.

What is really happening is simpler: the system of two entangled electrons defines a structured potential for joint spin outcomes. Each measurement event is an instantiation of that potential. The correlation is encoded in the structure; it is not a causal signal or decision transmitted in time. Once this distinction is recognised, there is no need to imagine electron B being influenced by electron A, or to worry about faster-than-light communication. The “spooky action” dissolves as a product of our explanatory language, not as a physical requirement.

In the next post, we will look at the broader pattern of correlations: why it seems as though electrons are coordinating their behaviour across space, and why this pattern does not entail any form of communication or joint causation.

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.

Between Knowing and Deciding — Explanatory Humility and the Two‑Slit Experiment

Before turning to entanglement, John Gribbin pauses to qualify the discussion of the two‑slit experiment. The passage is careful, restrained, and explicitly anti‑naïve. Precisely for that reason, it is worth examining closely.

“It isn't that things like electrons are seen behaving as both wave and particle at the same time. They seem to travel through the experiment like waves, but they seem to arrive at the detector screen like particles. Sometimes they behave as if they were waves, sometimes they behave as if they were particles. The as if is very important. We have no way of knowing what quantum entities ‘really are’, because we are not quantum entities. We can only make analogies with things we have direct experience of, such as waves and particles.”

At first glance, this looks like exemplary scientific caution. Gribbin explicitly rejects the crude idea that electrons are waves or are particles, emphasises the metaphorical status of both descriptions, and warns against taking either literally. But this apparent humility does important conceptual work — and not all of it is benign.

The work done by “as if”

The phrase as if appears to suspend ontological commitment. Electrons behave as if they were waves, as if they were particles — but are neither. Yet this very suspension quietly preserves a deeper assumption: that there is something electrons really are, over and above the phenomena we observe, and that wave and particle descriptions are merely imperfect stand‑ins for that hidden reality.

The caution does not dissolve the ontological question; it stabilises it. The reader is invited to set aside naïve literalism, but not to question the representational framing itself. The mystery is relocated, not removed: if electrons are neither waves nor particles, what are they really?

From the perspective of relational ontology, this is already a misstep. There is no further “what it really is” waiting behind phenomena. Phenomena are not appearances of an unconstrued substrate; they are first‑order meanings — outcomes intelligible only in relation to the structured potential that makes them possible. The as if does not neutralise realism; it preserves it while appearing to be cautious.

Travel, arrival, and illicit process metaphysics

Gribbin’s formulation also relies on a familiar but problematic narrative:

“They seem to travel through the experiment like waves, but they seem to arrive at the detector screen like particles.”

Here, a continuous process is smuggled in. Something is imagined as persisting through space and time, behaving one way during transit and another at arrival. But nothing in the formalism requires such a story. There is a structured potential — characterised by the wavefunction — and there are discrete detection events. There is no fact of the matter about how an electron “travels” between source and screen.

By narrating potential as behaviour in time, instantiation is misdescribed as a transition: wave‑like becoming particle‑like. The appearance of duality is then treated as a puzzle about how one thing changes its nature mid‑flight, rather than as a category error arising from conflating structured potential with actualised events.

“Sometimes they behave…”

The phrase “sometimes they behave as if they were waves, sometimes as if they were particles” introduces a further slippage. It suggests that electrons themselves vary their mode of behaviour from occasion to occasion, as though they possessed a repertoire from which different responses are selected.

But what varies is not the electron; it is the construal. Wave‑like descriptions characterise structured potential. Particle‑like descriptions characterise actualised detection events. These are not modes the electron switches between; they are different theoretical articulations corresponding to different cuts.

Once again, explanatory strain arises because variability is located in the entity rather than in the perspectival framing.

Epistemic humility and the return of the noumenal

Gribbin continues:

“We have no way of knowing what quantum entities ‘really are’, because we are not quantum entities.”

This sounds modest, but it introduces a strong metaphysical commitment: that quantum entities have a determinate nature “in themselves” which is inaccessible to us. The limitation is framed as epistemic — we cannot know — rather than as a misplaced ontological demand.

Relational ontology rejects this move. There is no unconstrued reality hiding behind phenomena, waiting to be accessed by a more suitable kind of observer. Construal is not a limitation on access to reality; it is constitutive of what counts as real. The appeal to our non‑quantum status quietly reinstates a Kantian split between appearance and noumenon, even as the text warns against naïve realism.

Analogy as crutch rather than constitution

Finally, Gribbin treats analogy as a second‑best substitute:

“We can only make analogies with things we have direct experience of…”

Here, analogy is framed as epistemically deficient — a workaround forced on us by our cognitive limitations. But this again misidentifies the source of the problem. Wave and particle are not inadequate approximations to a truer description; they are different ways of articulating different aspects of the same structured potential. All meaning is relationally construed. There is no more literal description waiting in reserve.

A hinge moment

This passage matters because it sits precisely between two kinds of explanatory strain. In the two‑slit experiment, electrons are said to “know” the experimental setup. In entanglement, they will be said to “decide” outcomes across space. Here, Gribbin pauses, reins in the metaphors, and urges caution.

But the caution itself preserves the framework that makes later metaphors feel necessary. By retaining process narratives, representational realism, and a hidden “really is,” the mystery is kept alive — disciplined, respectable, and ready to re‑emerge.

Seen this way, the passage is not a solution but a stabiliser. It prepares the ground for the next chapter, where electrons will no longer merely behave as if — they will appear to decide.