Einstein like Newton expected light particles to follow a fixed path from source to screen, so identical photons shot the same way should hit a screen at the same point, but instead they give a random spread. Quantum theory explains this by saying that where each photon hits the screen is randomly chosen from its possible points. Baffled by this, Einstein concluded that either quantum theory was incomplete or there were hidden physical causes:
“This is the fundamental problem: either quantum mechanics is incomplete and needs to be completed by a theory of hidden quantities, or it is complete and then the collapse of the wave function must be made physically plausible. This dilemma has not been solved until today, but on the contrary has become more and more critical.” (Audretsch, 2004), p73.
This problem, which Einstein raised and Bohr covered up, still haunts physics today. All attempts to find physical variables that explain quantum randomness have failed, as have all attempts to show that quantum theory is incomplete. The problem that quantum theory works perfectly but allows random events with no physical cause then remains to this day.
What then is the resolution? Both theories, that quantum theory is incomplete or that there is physical cause, led nowhere, so the answer must lie elsewhere. Physicalism requires quantum theory to be either physically plausible or false but a processing model lets quantum theory be both true and non-physical, hence it always works despite not being physical. It follows that physics can’t find hidden variables to explain randomness because there are none, and it can’t find a fault in quantum theory because there is none. That quantum events create physical events, as proposed here, then allows randomness to arise from outside the physical domain.
For example, the laws of Minecraft don’t define where we add a block and the laws of chess don’t define where we move a piece because that is outside their domain. If I turn off a game or tip over a chess board, this action has no cause within the game so it can’t be explained by the laws of the game. The randomness of quantum collapse could then arise from a cause outside the physical domain, and that it is a server restart suggests that this is so.