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shminux comments on Can you recognize a random generator? - Less Wrong
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Indeed there is no hidden "time until I decay" number hidden inside each radioactive atom (based on some pseudo-random generator, or what have you), but how is it related to Bayes? And what do you mean by "official"?
I mean the *prevailing view among (quantum) physicists that:
You said it.
It is, while one thinks, that he must update on every evidence. You can't update anything on a decay of the particular radioactive atom. Could be another one, but it just wasn't and what is to update? Nothing, if that was a "truly random" event.
Either it wasn't, either you have nothing to update based on this evidence.
This "view" has been experimentally tested in a simpler case of two-state systems as Bell's inequality, though I do not remember, off-hand, any tests related to radioactive decay.
You can update your estimate of the element's half-life, if nothing else.
You can update the half-life from the TIME of the decay. But nothing from the fact that it was the atom number 2 and not the number 1 or any other.
I know. That's way I keep bringing up this "true random" case.
If I understand correctly, there is no physical difference between atom 2 and atom 1. There just is no fact of the matter to update on.
Say you have two diamonds, both marked with a million uranium 238 atoms.
You can measure in WHICH diamond the first decay will occur. An evidence you can't use it for any update then.