The Law Causality

I disagree as well. Atomic decay seems to happen without cause. That is, if you have 50 atoms of a specfic element that decays rapidy, and you observe one of the atoms in decay - why that atom? What caused that atom to decay and not another one?It happens at random, of course. This was what really upset Einstein.I don't think causality is a law; it's more like a general principle of our perception of the universe. We may percieve a mechanistic universe to some degree; but we certainly don't live in one.

You missed my point. What's responsible for choosing which specific atom will decay next? It's just random - no causality.

No, it does very much matter if you're going to try to say "every event has a cause." If every event has a cause, no random events can occur. I pointed out a random event. Therefore, some events occur without cause.If your entire world was an atom - if only that one atom was all the atoms you had ever seen - and it decayed suddenly, wouldn't you say that it occured without cause?The weak force explains the general phenomenon of beta decay for all atoms, but it doesn't explain why, at any one moment, one atom decayed while another did not. Hence, that specific atom's decay was random and uncaused. Ergo, causality is not a universal law; random, causeless events can and do occur.

Ok, so why did that atom decay and not another? If we live in a causal universe, then there's a cause that mechanistically determines the outcomes of "random" events. But we don't live in that universe, we live in a universe where some events are truly random and happen without cause. Ergo causality is not universal.

So, you're sure we live in a mechanistic, deterministic universe? You don't think God plays dice, in other words? I don't believe this has been a popular view in physics for about 50 years. But (seriously, not sarcastically) what do I know? I never said I wanted a universe without causality. But clearly, causality is not a principle that can explain everything. Somethings are simply beyond causality. Perhaps even the existence of the universe. There's no way to know, of course.

Not in a discussion about universal causality. Either causality applies to everything, or it doesn't. Does causality apply to that one atom?

As fruitless as it is to discuss the Matrix, which doesn't exist, one wonderes nonetheless - is the Matrix a deterministic reality? Or does the ability of the humans in it to bend the rules make it non-deterministic? Is it that the human mind rejects a deterministic reality no matter what?Is any of this worth talking about? It's just a movie, I guess.