This is an effect that uses entanglement to move the state of one particle to a different particle. You're describing only entanglement, so that's only half the puzzle.

And you're describing entanglement in a misleading way. The most important part of entanglement is that you can't model it as two particles sharing secret data. When you touch one, you affect the output of the other. And this happens faster than light. It still looks random on each end, but once you combine the measurements you can see patterns.

Is their any layman's physics explanation of how this works? Obviously you can't transmit information, but one particle can affect the other at distance faster than the speed of light?

My sense was that quantum physics basically makes sense if you go really small and have an understanding of how the particles interact. But entanglement is weird, because somehow there's also a mechanism for them to interact at distance?

(I know, I could try to look it up, but hopefully other people here have the same silly question)

Particles are constantly randomly changing their state. Entangled particles change in tandem.

As the GP said - to find out whether a particular change of state was random or a signal, one would need to compare readings from both.

Readings cannot be sent faster than the speed of light. Thus preserving causality.

While I don't have an explanation for you, you aren't the only one to think it's weird. Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance".