Free Will

I've watched yet another video, by yet another Atheist, declaring their belief in a lack of free will. The basic premise is as expected, that all actions and thoughts emanate from within the brain as a result of past experiences and current input; thought and choice is nothing more than a consequence of unguided chemical reactions and electrical impulses within the brain. This latest video watched(which itself is quite old), was a video by someone I otherwise quite enjoy watching lately and believe a very reasonable person. In fact, I can't argue that this viewpoint is unreasonable to hold. I do argue that it is a premature conclusion(scientifically) at best, and ignorant of modern science and the unknown at worst. In any case, I have never been convinced of this belief.
   First off, we know very little of the brain and mind. There are constant advancements in understanding how the brain works, and increasingly how certain elements of decision or mental processing occur. As of this time, however, we are no-where near creating a model of the entire complexity of the brain. Until that is done, it is entirely premature to argue that the brain is nothing more than a state-machine, using current state and environmental inputs to drive us along. We might have a hard time envisioning how free-will works, but it is a non-scientific arrogance to claim free-will is clearly non-existent.
   Some of the most interesting research right now has to do with quantum mechanics which are somewhat famously known to be indeterminate. There is a randomness at play in the basic rules of the universe that prevents any quantum system from being 100% predictable at any moment. If science itself supports an indeterminate reality at it's core, is it really a stretch to argue that it leaves no place for free-will? This randomness of nature provides just one possibility that religious individuals can point to as a potential mechanism for the function of a soul(assuming our brain is sensitive enough to a quantum scale randomness to be so perturbed in the first place...this remains to be proved, but science hasn't shut the door on free-will yet). Sure, you might argue that this randomness would be merely another input into our otherwise machine-like brain, leaving still no evidence for a soul. But at the same time, it would not eliminate the possibility of a soul unless you could also prove it is truly random in a particular case of an individual decision.
  If future science leaves us in such a case of natural indeterminacy as an input to our thought process, we would have no hope of disproving the existence of a soul and proving a lack of free-will. As a scientifically minded Christian, I certainly hope(and expect), this is the sort of situation we eventually reach. Perhaps it will finally stop Atheists from trying to argue against the Truth of Christianity, as they would know scientifically they can't. At the same time, it would stop fellow Christians from painfully ignorant attempts to assert that science is wrong, misguided, etc, as science would limit itself from the religious realm(at least concerning a soul).
  I don't personally advocate that quantum indeterminacy is the mechanism by which the soul or free-will works; we just don't know yet. But I do believe it provides just one example of why we shouldn't call the issue of free-will scientifically settled(or even sort of known). We are only now beginning to truly look at the physical function of the brain, and there is still very little known about how physical reality functions on a foundational level. To claim that there is no room for a soul or free-will is at this point a faith. As a scientifically-minded Christian, I find it annoying that Atheists so often ignore the limits of modern science, just as the religious so often ignore the limits of our divine teachings.

Let's End Video Hoaxes

I don't know about everyone else, but personally I hate that there are so many fraudulent videos being created and shared on the internet, with far too few willing or able to identify them. Sometimes they're benign, simply a "Look at this unbelievable thing that happened", which of course didn't happen but it is on video so it is believed. At worst, these are a time-waster, or hurt your pride when you realize you've been taken. Sometimes they're not so benign, such as videos edited in a manner to enrage people against an innocent man or group. Most such videos(at least the ones I've seen), will use fancy editing of real events(hiding context that explains perceived misconduct), or uses a combination of clips from different events to completely fabricate a scenario(for example, video of police misconduct from years past, and long forgotten by most, mixed with news clips from modern riots leaving viewers with the impression of new crimes by government). And it isn't just end-users on social media who are fooled by such clips, they regularly are spread by popular news and political websites as well.
  With the massive volume of such fraudulent creations, we need a way to more easily track video origin. What would be nice is if there is a way to see links to the original uses of individual segments as you are watching them. This way, when you see that amazing or infuriating clip you can immediately see that it is bunk, or at least see that it has been highly edited from the original. It may seem that this is a huge problem to tackle(as how can we build such an index to search against), but I think there are two very good possibilities.
  First, since most of these videos are either initially or eventually posted to Youtube, perhaps there is a way to utilize the anti-copyright-infringment tech to help trace parts of videos. I'm sure they're already breaking all videos into bits and creating a hash or other log in order to find infringing parts. Depending on how this is done, it may be trivial to use this to find the "first sight" of each clip, or perhaps a list of all uses of the clip.
  In many ways, I can't believe I am suggesting this. When Google first started automatically monitoring videos for copyright infringement, I opposed it due to the risk of using that tech for censorship of fair-use content. Since then, there have been many instances of take-down requests resulting in censorship of fair-use, but I can't blame the monitoring tech for that as I believe most are the result of human-error(or human-corruption, depending on the case).
  If we could use the anti-infringement tech for fraud-detection we can possibly improve the quality of amateur reporting by making frauds harder(and therefore the remaining video more trustworthy). This could also be used for searching. If you want to find video of a current event(say a recent riot), search by date excluding clips that first appeared prior to the date(not just by posting date of the individual video). Only a google/youtube engineer can tell use if such a thing is possible, but it would be wonderful if they were to do so.
  Another possibility is to build that tech into the video decoder. While you are watching video, it would automatically be analysing and fingerprinting what you watch and when you watch it. These logs would be sent(anonymously), to a public database which merely tracks the first few appearances of that video. Then, when that video gets remixed into the latest fraud, a user who wants to check whether it is true would simply press a button, and their browser/app would query the public database and present the list of earliest known uses of each segment within it.
  I'm sure there are a number of difficulties to overcome, but I don't think any of them are too difficult for this to be a reasonable goal. Obviously, there would have to be coordination between several parties for the decoder-based version to work(utilizing the Youtube anti-infringement tech would be more straightforward, but dependent on the dedication of a single company and assuming it could be re-purposed for this use).

Ferguson is not Boston

  I am always surprised at pathetic errors in basic historical knowledge, or at least errors in relating historical events to modern ones. Take the linked article for example: http://time.com/3605606/ferguson-in-defense-of-rioting/

  The author actually tries to morally compare the Boston Tea Party to the burning and looting of  Ferguson rioters: "However, even the Tea Party gets its name from a riot, The Boston Tea Party [...] What separates a heralded victory in history from an attempt at societal change, a cry for help from the country’s trampled, today? The fact that we won." 

  I can't believe this must be said, but the riots in Ferguson are nothing like the Boston Tea Party. For starters, the destroyed tea was actually at the *center* of the problem. The importation of the tea itself was part of the abuse by the British over American colonists' rights. In addition to protesting the taxes on imports, resisting the tea meant fighting future attempts by the British government to enforce monopolies on trade with the colonies. Compare this to the innocent property owners who have nothing to do with the Ferguson Police Department having their property burned and looted. For them, the closest argument for their involvement is they may happen to be white. Yes, the destruction of the tea was destruction of property, but it was not random looting and burning just because you're upset. The Boston Tea Party was a deliberate and relevant act with a specific aim; the looting and arson in Ferguson is random, irrelevant to the claimed issue, and has no aim other than the mindless destruction or theft of property owned by innocent bystanders.

FTTH

I wonder if anyone has tried hard to at getting mortgage companies involved in the FTTH broadband business, at least for financing. Obviously financing is one of the more difficult parts of planning and building a community or locally owned FTTH network. But broadband is an increasing necessity for success in education and employment, as well as increasingly affecting home values. Since most homes are under an active mortgage already, and the value of that mortgage greatly exceeds the cost of hooking the average home up to fiber, it seems like it would be a great idea for a city to work with the major lenders to finance a FTTH network: mortage companies have the incentive to maintain the value of their investment, not to mention successful homeowners can pay their mortgage.
  Imagine an underserved community wants to build a broadband network themselves, either because they lack access or lack the competition to keep prices reasonable. First they create a plan that determines they need, say, 30% of homes to each pay ~$3k in order to fund the project(these numbers are fake examples, but hopefully close enough to reality for our purposes). Since most homes are under active mortage, rather than homeowners paying that out of pocket, perhaps they can work with lenders to rewrite mortgages to tack it on to housing costs(where it rightfully belongs anyway). Homeowners might be willing to do this as their immediate out of pocket cost would be negligible(since they're paying $4k over 20 or 30 years it would be a minor blip on their bill). Lenders might be willing to do this since it is extremely low-risk(an extra $4k on a home loan won't make much of a difference if it goes under, but could in fact save more value than that due to home prices being higher for well-connected neighborhoods). An additional incentive for homeowners is they could become part-owners of a business, and end up making money by selling service to their neighbors who choose not to join the initial funding.

This Pomegranate Is Rotten

I've been wanting a place to share random thoughts, observations, or pieces of info. This is now that place. Thanks for reading.