# Dumb question about entanglement and relativity

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-question-about-entanglement-and-relativity/533121>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 20, 2010, 9:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-question-about-entanglement-and-relativity/533121 "2010-03-20T09:55:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\
**Post date:** [March 23, 2010, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-question-about-entanglement-and-relativity/533121/21 "2010-03-23T05:20:38Z")

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> [@Frylock](#):
>
> Your analogy relies on the idea of probability as a measure one’s own epistemological state. But I think that in Quantum Physics, though the math they use is the mathematics of probability, what they’re measuring isn’t supposed to be the measurer’s own epistemological state, but rather something metaphysically “out there,” independent of the measurer’s epistemological state. I thought this was part of the import, for example, of Bell’s Theorem. You’re analogy is like saying there’s a “hidden variable” (the code locked in the box) that explains everything that happens, but Bell’s Theorem shows that no “hidden variable” theory can explain this kind of thing.

I found [this](http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/bayes.html) to be interesting reading (from people who know the physics, no less), discussing, among other things, the “epistemological” nature of the wavefunction (this is not in contrast to Bell’s theorem; just because we interpret the wavefunction in this way, it doesn’t follow that it must specifically be (impermissibly) intended as our ignorant approximation of what are really underlying local hidden variables).

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**Author:** ![Bytegeist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@Bytegeist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bytegeist)\
**Post date:** [March 23, 2010, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-question-about-entanglement-and-relativity/533121/22 "2010-03-23T16:07:37Z")

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> [@Indistinguishable](#):
>
> I found [this](http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/bayes.html) to be interesting reading …

Thanks for posting that link, by the way. I also found it interesting.

Not that I’m in a position to comment intelligently in this thread. But, in my (limited) physics education, no one ever explained QM probabilities in quite this way, or linked them to the probabilities involved in ordinary classical measurements.

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