I'm not trying to be unscientific here but i cannot wrap this around my head that scientifically anything can work randomly except a conscious mind which is capable of making a random decision. how can there be a general rule or law that picks a random value ? There always have to be a rule !
Please feel free to rubbish my idea but i know radioactive decay for example can be considered a random event.. but how can you understand randomness in this case ?
how can there be a general rule or law that picks a random value ? There always have to be a rule !
That's a reasonable hunch to have, but just turns out to be completely incorrect when you look at the evidence. Lots of things are governed by randomness in quantum mechanics. For decades many scientists, including Einstein, erroneously held onto this idea that what appears random to us must be governed by some deeper laws we just don't know about yet.
The contribution of many physicists over the years to demonstrably prove that some quantities are truly random was awarded the nobel prize this year. For more information, look up the "EPR paradox" and "Bell's inequalities".
Take the randomness of the number coming up when throwing a dice. If the results are not truly random it means the dice is biased.
How can randomness occur in the case of radioactive decay
Radioactive decay is as random as the fall of a biased dice. Quantum mechanical states, of which radioactive decay is a part, are biased by the quantum mechanical probability of the decay happening, the wavefunction $Ψ$ is the quantum mechanical solution for the particular decay, and $Ψ^*Ψ$ is the probability of the decay happening.
