What you're describing is a distinction without a difference (God creating laws of nature, wind it up and let it go vs controlling each thing). They're de facto the same thing - randomness is an illusion banished by complete understanding of underling fundamentals.

Only because we don't understand the underlying causal principals. Anything viewed with an improper frame of reference or without understanding cause and effect will seem random.

Loosely familiar yes. But even if the concept of real or locality or freedom or whatever is subject to an...ah... "Recalcitrant" experience I'm ok with that. I think my belief in causality is stronger than my belief in reality as we understand it.

Also, multiworlds satisfies causality doesn't it?

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Do you believe it is at least possible?

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Nope.
I believe animals within a kind can change through cross breeding. I don't believe that dogs and humans share a common ancestor.

Either dogs and humanity are eternal or they were created. I don't believe either existed in eternity past.

Because I don't think we are capable of believing anything else. I think the whole idea of observation has an underlying expectation assumption of causality.

Kind of like Watsons question earlier - where does causality break down?

If causality is not real in the quantum level I see no reason to ascribe it higher. And if it's real on the macro level it should be lower.

I don't think you can prove that something is truly random.

Right but my point is that you could also make an effective statistical model for a great deal of phenomena that could in theory be derived analytically if we had the data and capability to observe the proper variables.

The problem is at the level were talking about our frame of reference becomes impossibly small and simultaneously perhaps impossibly large (i.e. The whole universe - super-determinism). I'm not saying the model is not useful, I'm just saying its models all the way down so I don't really believe in any of it.

I do, however, believe in cause. It seems as useful as any other belief.

The problem is in the observation.

I'm fine with functional randomness and observed randomness and statistical predictions etc. but at the end of the day whether it's -actually- random or not becomes an article of faith. Flip a coin, it doesn't really matter which way you land.

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Do you believe it is at least possible?

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Nope.
I believe animals within a kind can change through cross breeding. I don't believe that dogs and humans share a common ancestor.

Either dogs and humanity are eternal or they were created. I don't believe either existed in eternity past.

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Define kind, please.

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Have you heard of Bell's theorem? It proved that you can't reproduce the effects of QM with any system defined by local hidden variables. You have to give up locality to believe what you do.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem

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This should lead us to reject locality, not probability correct? I mean, if you reject probability then locality and quantum theories are compatible again. Who cares if Bell Inequalities are violated by quantum mechanics? They were computed using probability theory. And the experimental results you're appealing to reject probability also presuppose, you guessed it, probability theory.

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You don't seem to have any logical reasons to believe in causality over randomness.

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What about:
1) The universe is random and uncertain
2) Therefore, the logical rules of inference can't apply
3) Therefore, we must reject any and all rational conclusions
4) Including quantum physics

I don't agree with part II. Saying something is random isn't an explanation at all. It's just saying there's no observed or identified significant variable or known means of prediction. QM may be a useful model but it's far from an explanation.

Or we reject locality. Or we allow simultaneity. Or we allow for future information to travel backwards. None of these bother me.

Only if you accept randomness as a fundamental property of the universe. That doesn't seem very logical at all - it actually precludes logic.

By the way I have no real clue what I'm talking about and don't really have a firm opinion on the subject. You do seem very smart and informed.

Why would randomness in the universe preclude logic? We have games, hell, entire cities (hello, Vegas), built on the logical application of randomness.

Because if causality is only an agglomeration of statistical overlap on any level we have no reason to presume it will continue to do so. Predictive models are only as good as far as they have affirming experience as opposed to recalcitrant experiences. Put another way, the application of logic presupposes causality. Even in your example the assumption is that the randomness is of a predictable and repeatable variety (i.e., the table continues to be predictably random with a fixed win chance, which is why I continue to not gamble.)

Before astro says "but we've tested this over and over!" I would point out that in the timescale of the universe we know nothing. We don't know if, for example, in 1856 there was observable causality. Or if the first nuclear explosion ruined observability on earth forever. Or for next week. Randomness is the absence of logical explanation, it's saying something is without regard for anything ever - or with regard for everything ever equally. It's the antithesis of logic.

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The above contains no appeals to faith, nor does faith have a seat at the scientific table.

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while i have nothing intelligent to contribute to the discussion of QM, this statement frustrates me every time i see it. faith absolutely holds a place in science, even if it is not a faith in God.
"Faith:complete trust or confidence in someone or something."
without any sort of faith you would not believe that a model or theory that has been "proven" will continue to behave the same way in the future that we have shown it to behave in the past. we would continuously have to re-prove every theory if we did not put faith in their reliability. for instance i have faith that the laws of gravity will continue to behave consistently in any future moment, so i do not worry that i will float off into space any time i jump. i have faith in the principles governing atomic bonds so i do not worry that the atoms of a chair will separate as i sit down causing me to fall through.

at some point, if you believe that laws and processes that are occurring right now will continue to behave that way the next second you have faith. because you have zero empirical evidence about the future. you are simply extrapolating the past and saying, "it has always behaved this way, so it will always behave this way"

i'm not saying i think you are wrong in placing faith in those assumptions, just pointing out that you do in fact have faith.

And that table and card shuffle isn't actually random. There is direct causal relationship between initial conditions and final outcomes for both. We just don't have the information to solve the model in any feasible way.

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There is a difference between faith in something and an assumption. All hypotheses must make assumptions. Within a hypothesis, the assumptions are considered to be unquestionably true. I guess you could say that they are accepted on faith, but only in a technical sense.

The hypothesis itself is not accepted on faith, however. Many hypothesis are considered, and even if one is chosen to be the most logical or likely model, it is not considered proven or indisputable. Scientists do not have "complete confidence or trust" in it. Well tested theories like GR and genetic inheritance are essentially completely trusted, but there is technically a chance that they are wrong, and that has to be recognized. It has not been proven that nothing can go faster than c, and genetic information could be passed on through the arrangement of lipids in a cell membrane.

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I agree on pretty much every account with what you said here. The only point I would make is that i would say the "faith" in science comes in once a hypothesis moves to being an accepted theory. While is is acknowledge in most circles that there is a technical chance it is wrong (although i have had a number refuse to do so in evolution conversations) the posture is one that essentially states "while there is technically a chance that this is wrong, all available evidence points to it being true, and so, unless it is proven otherwise to be false, I will move forward in my decisions, assumptions, and even the way I think, assuming that this principle is true".
like gravity for instance. unless someone comes along and shows that our fully understanding of gravity as wrong, we will enter into anything involving gravity, be it simple life actions or detail experimental models involving gravity, with the overriding assumption that our understanding of gravity is correct, and it will continue to behave the way we understand it into the foreseeable future. If that is not the very definition of faith I don't know what is.

again, I don't mean this to detract anything from science. i just want to dispel the notion that there is no faith in science, making it somehow inherently superior to religion (not saying this is your stance, but it is the stance of some). because i hold that very same posture towards my religious faith. while i hold that, technically, everything i believe about God could be wrong, all evidence I have experienced in my life points to it being true. So until a day when someone can prove that understanding to be false, I will move forward under the assumption that it is true.

yeah, this trying to equate faith in a particular religion with the general understanding that i'm not going to suddenly lift off the ground and fly into space is pretty weak.

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The faith required for science is fundamentally different from the faith required by relegion. So much so, that I think it can be useful shorthand to say that faith isn't required for belief in the scientific method.

Science is a method of repeated empiricism. Basically, the only philosophical leap of faith required is that the fundamental laws of the universe will continue more or less unchanged. While that belief is unprovable, it is universally accepted. Without that belief you couldn't get out of bed in the morning, for fear that the floor might suddenly be lava.

Religious belief is somthing quite different.

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please elaborate you your last sentence, explain exactly how the faith in religion is different that the faith in science. I will agree that many in religion make that "leap of faith" in their belief system without a rigorous level of examining it and fully understanding it, but the same could be said for some people's acceptance of science. There are countless people that accept the principles of electricity and magnetism trusting them to work in their household appliances and wiring without ever even attempting to understand how it all works before deciding to trust it.