Free will re-redux

I'm not sure which post you're referring to. Decay is a stochastic process. I don't think I'm willing to go any further than that, with some sort of philosophical hypothesis about what that means for determinism/randomness.

Note that the half-life of a particular isotope is not random with respect to other isotopes. The more unstable the isotope's nucleus, the shorter the half-life. Of course, one could argue that this is a tautology, if stability is defined in terms of half-life. But I think it's usually a function of the ratio of protons to neutrons.
 
We can also change the half-life of an isotope by tearing off some or all of its electrons.

~~ Paul

[My last post above.]

It seems to me that everything you're talking about here shows that while the particle emission aspect of decay is not determined, the fact the half-lives can be compared & manipulated in the way you mention speaks to the continued [r]elation between the indeterministic event (particle emission) and the precusors (the stuff you mention in your post).

So there is a causal relation but it remains un-determined. I don't think there's any complicated philosophy here, rather just observation of the process and noting different isotopes have different calculable half-lives.

Honestly I think the idea that decay is a Random process, as in there's no causal relation between the precursors and the "random" emission event, is based on a philosophical insistence of a dichotomy that whenever there's a causal relation there's  determinism.

IMO if you gave a lecture on radioactive decay to physics students who had never heard an argument for everything being exclusively random/determined, and simply said the process was neither you wouldn't get any objections.

I certainly never knew of this claim of dichotomy until I heard it as a philosophical argument. No one teaching the STEM courses I took ever mentioned things must be exclusively random or determined.