"that is the nature of the quantum universe..."
Well, you and I are not going to settle that here. That's what Eistein and Bohr spent years arguing about. Bohr won, according to modern physicists, but I still think Einstein was right that God does not play dice. Part of the problem with physics is that there is a degree of orthodoxy. There are some things you can't argue without being labeled a quack. That's one reason why Aristotle's view that the Earth is the center of the universe prevailed for almost 2,000 years. A lot of physicists will tell you that if you've got a theory that works in the sense that it predicts the right result, then that's all you need, even if it's wrong. They aren't going to change it until they get to a point where they just can't explain something.
Of course, some of us would say that they are already there inasmuch as they can't explain gravity. That doesn't seem to bother them though.
Very, very interesting point. But remember, Einstein lost only on the point that there are no deterministic locally hidden variables (according to the proof of Bell's Inequality). There very well could be globally hidden deterministic variables (i.e. ones that do not require local causality).
You won't be labeled a 'quack' for discussing these points - these are very interesting philosophical points, indeed. That globally hidden causal agents hide within (?outside?) the universe, however, remains a very untestable claim at this point in time, though, you must surely recognize. Science is unfortunately/fortunately constrained to what it can observe.
Part of the problem with physics is that there is a degree of orthodoxy.
Very true, but with good reason. 99.9% of new ideas that fall 'outside the fold' are just plain wrong - and there's no shortage of pseudogeniuses in the world who think they've found the next great scientific breakthrough - science operates on the provision that the 0.1% of wild new ideas that are indeed right will demonstrate their validity while swimming against the tide; in the meantime, theories that have a degree of demonstrably earned certitude retain their well-earned validity, and the new ideas (if valid) will 'toughen up' enough to withstand the stones cast at them (a pretty tough 'boot camp' for new hypotheses, but it's worked so far, and the theories that do indeed gain eventual acceptance have come out stronger as a result...)
Of course, some of us would say that they are already there inasmuch as they can't explain gravity. That doesn't seem to bother them though.
Quite the contrary; every particle/cosmological physicist I know regards gravity as the most bothersome, troublesome, and uncooperative entity in the universe. There's a whole field in physics dedicated to getting gravity to cooperate at a quantum level with the forces we better understand - physicists openly admit there's no complete theory of gravity. You can't just abandon what we do understand in pursuit of a new theory; otherwise, you'll have a theory that explains the new phenomenon, but doesn't fit with anything else - hence the quandary with gravity. There is testable progress being made, though, both experimentally and theoretically
Thought-provoking post you made, there.
Disclaimer: All percentages are estimates :-)
I've been thinking about this a bit lately, and I have a counter-question. Does it lend the universe a more or less concrete existence to suppose that God doesn't play dice? If it's true, then I suggest that at no matter what level of resolution, stuff has to have parts. Does this seem like a more satisfactory state of affairs than that, at some level of resolution, there's a fundamental basis for stuff, even if it's a little probabilistically smeary? For my part, I'll take stochastics over infinite recursion any day, insofar as my sense of security in the actual existence of stuff goes.