On 7 May, 02:19, Peter Brooks  wrote:
> On May 6, 10:25 pm, Dave Smith  wrote:> On 5 May, 05:27, Peter Brooks  wrote:
>
> > > How can an event be independent of all other events though?
>
> > I tend to assume that every event has a cause, whether or not I know
> > what the cause is.  However, I don't see how such an assumption could
> > be proved.
>
> I think that you're right, it isn't really a matter for proof.
>
> However, the very point that started this thread is that, if you
> observe a regularity in some behaviour, then it is difficult to see
> how there cannot be a cause. Of course the regularity might be a
> coincidence - and we're good at spotting those - so just one
> regularity doesn't establish the matter.
>
> If, though, you can conduct repeatable experiments that show that in
> situation X, you get a constant result Y, as in, if you observe the
> radiation from a sample of Uranium 235, you'll find that it has a half-
> life of 704 million years, then there must be something about the
> atoms that 'knows' when to decay. Otherwise, if it was a random event
> (that it each atom decayed utterly spontaneously, based on no history
> - in other words had no cause) then two lumps of U235 would be
> expected to show different half-lives. This would render the measuring
> of half-lives a non-repeatable event.
>
> Even I have managed, successfully, to measure the half life of various
> substances within ranges of reasonable experimental error, so they do,
> in my view, have a very clear reality.
>
> So I'd say, rather than it being a matter of 'proof' that things have
> causes, it is a matter for a sceptic to find something that doesn't.
> If there is something, then that's interesting. I think it would be
> reasonable to say that things in another universe would have to have
> separate causes from things in this universe - that's really what it
> means to be a different universe, to have a separate physical
> existence or, in other words, a separate causal chain. You couldn't,
> because of this, measure things there, so that makes it rather less
> interesting as a practically demonstrable phenomenon.
>
> We might be falsely inclined to this view by special circumstances of
> where we are - evolution, for example, is a powerful case of very long
> observable causal chains. The trouble is that even things observed at
> the limits of our ability to observe appear (like radioactivity) to
> have causes too.

I haven't got anything new to say.  We ran over many of these
arguments back in November 2002.  The thread started out as 'Cuba
Crisis 1962' and was changed to 'Chance'.  I raised the 'half life'
issue and Lance produced some 'heavy' quotes favouring  an explanation
in terms of indeterminism rather than hidden variables.  You seem to
have changed your position somewhat.  You might find it interesting to
have a look.

Dave