Randomness Cannot be Proved

There are scientists who believe in strict determinism, and say it is necessary to a scientific view. Albert Einstein was such a believer. In particular, they do not believe in free will.

I have criticized this as wrong, and I also point out the opposite view is also wrong.

Roman Schnabel writes in a new paper:

Experiments testing Bell inequalities [12, 13, 15] have proven that there are physical events that occur without a causal reason, i.e., that are truly random. The proof does not make any assumptions, in particular, the proof does not use QT but only pure mathematics and reproducible experimental observation. Regardless of the validity of QT, random numbers can be certified as truly random using an experiment to test Bell’s inequality [27]. It is remarkable that a truly random process can be proven as such. The only assumption made here was the reasonable but, in principle, unprovable one that there is no entity that has predetermined every single microscopic event in the universe in advance [28].

Others also say this -- that randomness has been proved, except for the silly possibility of superdeterminism.

The whole idea is absurd. No experiment or theorem could possibly prove true randomness. At best they could only prove that something is not predictable with the data and methods available.

Since QT is complete, as proven by Bell’s tests, radioactive decay is a truly random process. There is no causal reason, no cause that leads to decay before or after the half-life. If you start observing a single atom at any point in time, there is a genuine, equally weighted quantum mechanical randomness as to whether the atom decays before the half-life expires or only afterwards. ... Radioactive alpha decay occurs in a truly random manner, i.e., without cause, which is referred to as ‘spontaneous’ in quantum physics.

Yes, radioactivity seems about as random as anything could be. K-40 has a half-life of about a billion years. Decay statistics are predictable. But no one can predict when a particular potassium atom will decay.

Maybe the problem is that we do not the physics and technology to measure the K-40 state well enough. If we knew exactly how those quarks were bouncing around the nucleus a billion years ago, maybe we could predict when one will bust out.

I know that seems absurdly impractical, but the Bell argument says something else. It seems to say that some things are unpredictable if we assume a local hidden variable theory. Maybe that K-40 nucleus has a state that can predict the decay without using classical variables. Bell's theorem does not say anything about what can be done in a non-classical theory.

The paper has also been criticized:

The paper repeatedly suggests that Bell-test violations show that quantum theory is complete, that hidden variables cannot exist “in general,” and that some events happen without causal reason and are therefore truly random. We think these claims go too far. Bell’s theorem rules out local hidden-variable models only under a definite set of assumptions, including locality or factorizability, measurement independence, and an ordinary Kolmogorov probabilistic framework in which the relevant joint probabilities and expectation values are defined. It therefore does not, by itself, settle every broader question about causality, ontology, or completeness.

PBS TV just dropped a video on atomic clocks, and Sean M. Carroll makes his usual dopey appearance:

[0:00] [Narrator] Albert Einstein famously said that he didn't believe God plays dice with the universe. ...

[Carroll] [0:42] The basic idea of quantum mechanics, the thing that we really struggle with to get our heads around even as professional physicists, is that unlike any other version of physics, quantum mechanics separates what happens in a system when we're not observing it from what we see when we measure it. ...

[1:50] That opens up a whole world of questions. You know, what happens to the observational outcomes that are not observed? What picks out which outcome is going to happen? This is still what we're thinking about today.

He would argue that what happens is that the observational outcomes that are not observed slip off into a parallel universe.

I do not see how Carroll's struggles with QM relate to atomic clocks, the subject of the video. Yes, atomic clocks depend on the quantum mechanics of atoms having discrete energy levels, but Carroll's philosophy rants are not relevant.