Yeah, they seem to have come to the same conclusion: For an event with no cause, you probably need to go to true quantum events. Even then there may be factors that we just don’t know yet influencing the decay or the photon release. Personally, I can’t imagine that either of those is truly without cause. Everything we know of happens because of a series of influences, even if they are so complex that we despair of ever being able to predict the effects.
I’m still not sure what you’re getting at here. What experiments or results do you have in mind when you say that causation has been proven?
I started agreeing with dnooman, but with his last few posts I’m not really sure anymore.
In the end I do believe, as has been said, that it’s mostly a matter of definition. I actually wonder about whether ‘random’ is not a rather modern concept. AFAIK people used to speak more about ‘accident’, ‘act of God’, ‘chance’, those kind of things. Randomness, if I read the definitions in Cardinal’s post correctly, is just the scientific negative of predictability. That doesn’t mean that it is intrinsically unpredicatable, only that we cannot yet find the pattern/function behind the behaviour.
The OP seems to use a different definition of ‘random’, meaning ‘not-caused’ (is that even a word?). That is much stronger than the previous definition of ‘random’, since even patterns we cannot predict may stand in a strict causal relationship to something else. Often we even know that it is a strict causal system, but still cannot predict. An example is an Operating System or computer application locking up: AFAIK the computer is (mostly) fully subject to causality based on its input, but the internal state of the computer is highly complex hence not really properly predicatable anymore from the outside.
If you use ‘random’ as ‘non-causal’, it all boils down to something close to a matter of belief. Do you assume that the world is completely governed by causal relationships, or not? The scientific viewpoint does assume this, and while I see no reason to reject it, it still remains an assumption.
Adding quantum effects doesn’t really help: that would only allow undeterminate inputs at the boundary of the system, but once these effects have entered the system, the consequences would still be fully determined by causal relationships. Of course, this still would be completely unpredicatable, but that’s not the definition that the OP seems to assume.
Hence randomness in the scientific sense exists: we can’t predict everything. Whether randomness in the OP’s sense exists, depends on whether you assume that everything is causally determined or not. That question has no factual answer.
Finally, the OP appears to be interested also into the related question about the existence of free will. That is an entirely different topic, that also is heavily laden with assumptions about causality and psychology.
Bell’s theorum is generally accepeted to be true, but there are some dissenters who dispute for example the assumptions made about a local hidden variable theory.
Here’s an explantion of it:
Consider a local hidden variable theory (LHVT) and a system of spin half atoms, as it’s a LHVT the result of the measuremnt of the spins will be pre-determined before the measurement takes place.
Now consider the components of the spin in three directions (1,2,3). a set of N atoms will contain a subset of n(1[sub]+[/sub],2[sub]+[/sub],3[sub]+[/sub]) particles, each of them would mean apostive result if there spin was measured in any of the three directions, wheras, particles that are members of the n(1[sub]-[/sub],2[sub]+[/sub],3[sub]+[/sub]) would yield a negative result in the 1 direction and a postive in the 2 and 3 directions, etc., therefore the set of N particles conatins 8 mutually exclusive subsets as defined by their spin components in the three directions. You cannot define which atom is in which subset as measuring one spin component would change the others but as this is an LHVT all atoms must belong to one of the subsets.
Now lets say that each atom in the subset N is a member of an entangled pair (though obviously as we’ve assumed a LHVT they won’t be truly entangled but they’re measuremnts are still dependent on each other though pre-detirmined). By measuring the spin component of 1 member of the entangled pair in say the 1 direction and the other member in the 2 direction we will be able to know the components of spin in both the 1 and 2 directions of a particle by only disturbing it once as the measurements do not affect each other. we can by measuring these two components create 5 new subsets:
n(1[sub]+[/sub],2[sub]+[/sub]) = n(1[sub]+[/sub],2[sub]+[/sub],3[sub]+[/sub]) + n(1[sub]+[/sub],2[sub]+[/sub],3[sub]-[/sub])
n(1[sub]+[/sub],3[sub]+[/sub]) = n(1[sub]+[/sub],2[sub]+[/sub],3[sub]+[/sub]) + n(1[sub]+[/sub],2[sub]-[/sub],3[sub]+[/sub])
n(2[sub]-[/sub],3[sub]+[/sub]) = n(1[sub]+[/sub],2[sub]-[/sub],3[sub]+[/sub]) + n(1[sub]-[/sub],2[sub]-[/sub],3[sub]+[/sub])
etc.
If N is large enough we should be able to effectively measure any of the above three sets, also from the above we can detirmine:
n(1[sub]+[/sub],2[sub]+[/sub]) - n(1[sub]+[/sub],3[sub]+[/sub]) + n(2[sub]+[/sub],3[sub]-[/sub]) = n(1[sub]+[/sub],2[sub]+[/sub],3[sub]-[/sub]) + n(1[sub]-[/sub],2[sub]-[/sub],3[sub]+[/sub])
which means that n(1[sub]+[/sub],2[sub]+[/sub]) - n(1[sub]+[/sub],3[sub]+[/sub]) + n(2[sub]+[/sub],3[sub]-[/sub]) ≥ 0
The above is one way of stating Bell’s inequality
Putting in the QM predictions for this (where θ[sub]12[/sub] is the angle between directions 1 and 2 obtained from the first equation):
n(1[sub]+[/sub],2[sub]+[/sub]) =NP[sub]±/sub
cos[sup]2[/sup] θ[sub]12[/sub]/2 - cos[sup]2[/sup] θ[sub]13[/sub]/2 + sin[sup]2[/sup] θ[sub]23[/sub]/3 ≥ 0
Now lets say that all three measuremnt directions are in the same plane (as they are allowed to be), therefore:
θ[sub]12[/sub]+θ[sub]23[/sub] = θ[sub]13[/sub], now specializing further and conmsidering the case when θ[sub]13[/sub] = 3θ[sub]12[/sub] and now taking θ[sub]12[/sub]/2 as θ we get:
cos[sup]2[/sup]θ + sin[sup]2[/sup]2θ - cos[sup]2[/sup]3θ ≥ 0
Now we can then plot this function we find that when θ = 20°, among others, the value is actually negative (-0.22) therefore the last equation cannot be true and the predictions of a LHVT differs from those of QM and both cannot be true.
So if we could exactly duplicate the initial conditions, as in the seed number in a random number generator, we could always throw a 7 when we wanted to? As Achernar pointed out, the sensitivity to initial conditions is such that is seems your statement is without any effect in the physical world.
One poster stated that this scientific view is one of strict casuality. I don’t think that the case any more.
As far as real “chance” is concerned, gambling casinos bet large sums of money on its existance and depend on being able to predict the distribution of the occurence of random events and the casinos are successful in doing so. And to make that prediction they use the mathematical formulation of the frequency of occurrence “chance” events.
Maybe that isn’t what the OP meant by chance which I take to mean the unpredictability of which one of a number of possibilities will occur in a single trial of the experiment.
Wait a minute. If EVERY event is an effect, and is caused, then even the cause is an event which is an effect that was caused, etc. There’s no beginning to such a thread of thinking, is there? If EVERYthing is caused, don’t you wind up asking what caused the first thing? Is this where we’re heading in this thread? Heeeeelllllllpppppp !!!
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Well, yes, this is a good point. I noted that this came up because of reading Phillip Johnson, the wannabe evolution fighter. He seems to think that evolution-believing scientists mean “just happened” when they say “random”. I can’t find that in the dictionary, I don’t find the honest ones saying that, and from this thread, I’m doubtful that anyone believes that kind of thing at all.
The question of the first cause is a good one. It’s where science leaves off and has no real indicators. I personally am comfortable with God being the first cause. Some aren’t, but this is not supposed to be a religion GD thread. I’m still interested in comments on the idea of the causes, though.
Oh, and no one has clearly stated what Bell’s theorum is. It got mentioned in reference to an early post, but not clearly defined for the non-physicists here.
Sorry that post above was pasted from one of my posts on another message board and was for someone who had read what Bell’s theorum was in a pop-sci book and wanted to know anout it in more detail.
Bell’s theorum basically states that the properties of particles (the post above used spin angular momentum as it forms a virtually seperate part of the wavefunction) cannot be defined until they are measured.
When a particle is measured it falls randomly into an eigenstate (in the above example a particle has a 50-50 chance of falling into an eigenstate with postive spin or negative spin).
Bell’s theorum tackles the EPR paradox which the fact that particles seperated by an arbitarily large distance can have spin eigenstates that are dependent on one another (so if one is measured and it’s spin is postive the other one must instantly fall into the negative spin eigenstae). This means that particles appear to communicate instantly and therfore superluminally.
My problem is with the idea that there is a definite cause for a particular number on a die to come up but it is such a complex of facts that we just don’t have the tools to find out what it is.
It doesn’t bother me a bit that someone thinks that there is a Cause that is too complex and sophisticated for us to figure out. It’s just that this doesn’t get us anywhere. Unless, of course, prayers to Cause are actually answered. But we can’t be sure that they will be since we don’t fully understand Cause.
Mathematicians, on the other hand, have constructed a well behaved method of figuring out how the frequency of the occurrence of events is distributed by assuming and carefully defining the idea of “chance.”
I’m a firm believer in the maxim of W.K. Clifford: Truth is not that which can be contemplated without error. It is rather that which can be acted upon without fear."
We can’t count on knowing anything at all about what undeterminable Cause will do. But we can estimate what our chances are using the mathematical analysis of “chance.”
Very astute. I’m sure I’d agree if I would be able to understand it. 
So, is this just random, or is it uncaused, or is the jury still out on that? To quote a great newspaper columnist, “The act of observing disturbs the observed.” Could the measurement itself be influencing the spin? I realize that the experimenters have done everything to make everything constant, but is it fairly well established that they are not being a cause?
I just still have a logical problem with things happening “just because they happened”, even these. Can someone address that point, too?
Yes a measurement of the spin does affect the spin, this is why Bell’s theorum as stated above uses entangled particles. Bell’s theorum is pretty much accepted as being correct, after being tested by Alain Aspect, though there’s still the odd disenter.
When the wavefunction collapses it’s a completely random process, but it’s not ‘uncaused’ as it’s the act of measurement that causes the collapse.
And so which spin it ends up as is affected by the act of measuring?
No, it’s not. I can’t tell you what experiments show this, or how much it’s disputed, but the way people are taught quantum, the result is not affected by the measuring apparatus. It is, in fact, random.
Forget the appearance of hubris by my quoting myself, but I think what I was getting at is that the notion that everything has a cause is sort of a dead end line of reasoning, leading to a “God”-type answer, which is unacceptable to me. The only other way out, which is apparently what I think (if I think about it) is that every event does NOT have a direct cause, or set of causes. Some things do happen as a result of other things, and yet those things are not necessarily causes. I think it’s related to the post hoc fallacy. A tree loses moisture as the summer ends. The tissues in it dry up. Eventually, a leaf’s weight pulls it from the dissicated branch and it falls. I don’t see any CAUSE, per se, of the event, aside from the fact that gravity is acting on things. Things happen. In that case, a series of things happen. The falling leaf is another thing that happened. At random.
How did the Friends of Wigner paradox end up getting resolved ?
I didn’t say that it leads to a “God”-type answer. I’m comfortable with the first cause of the universe being God. It’s unknowable what it is, but I’m comfortable with that.
I don’t think either of us reached our God conclusions from learning about quantum theory. It would never have occured to me to think, “Mah stars, Ah’ve been wrong about God all this time, because subatomic particles fall randomly into one spin or the other.” People have already made their decisions about God independently of small stuff like that, really.
Whether God is in this kind of detail is not something I’d like to debate. I have a whole speech ready about not basing spiritual conclusions on current scientific theory, because they don’t point at each other in the first place, and you’re just likely to look foolish later when the theories change later. And I’m one of the most churchified people on this board.
Achenar’s right the result itself is not affected by measurement it’s random whether it’s postive or negative, BUT (see the explantion above again) we’re dealing with spin in three directions, so the result of measuring the spin in one direction disturbs the spin in the other two directions.
Wigner’s solution to his paradox is generally rejected, your not going to find many physicists in this day and age who believe in psychoparallelism. This paradox, like Schroedinger’s cat is really just an expression of the ‘measurement problem’, which arises because in QM the measurement apparatus are treated classically. The measurement problem is still a flaw in the Copehagen interpretation (the Many worlds theory solves it, but it creates other problems), but decoherence (how large quantum systems tend to classical systems very quickly) offers a possible explanation.