The new blog post titled "The New Tau" is available for everyone to read. The blog post speaks on the critical topic of collaborative decision making. This is a topic which I myself have been interested in and Ohad's solution is different from the usual solution. In my own thinking I was considering a solution based on collaborative filtering but I realized this would never scale. I then considered a solution based upon using IA (intelligence amplification) by way of personal preference agents and this does scale but requires that the agents have a lot of data to truly know each user and their preferences. The solution Ohad Asor comes up with attempts to solve many of the same problems but his solution scales without seeming to require collaborative filtering or any kind of voting as we traditionally think about it.
Let me list some of the obvious problems with voting which many will recognize from Steem which also relies on collaborative filtering:
- Attention scarcity. This is the main problem and this problem is due to the fundamental limit of the human brain. Human beings simply do not have enough attention to vote on every possible topic without developing what is known as choice fatigue.
- Bounded rationality. Human beings are very limited in our ability to be rational. Frankly without help we cannot be rational and have a tendency to make decisions against our own best interests because emotions trump logic.
- Ignorance/uninformed. This is simply the lack of knowledge and or the poor application of knowledge. This is one of the big problems because Democracy seems to assume an informed populace which simply does not exist in reality.
Now let's see what Ohad Asor has to say:
In small groups and everyday life we usually don't vote but express our opinions, sometimes discuss them, and the agreement or disagreement or opinions map arises from the situation. But on large communities, like a country, we can only think of everyone having a right to vote to some limited number of proposals. We reach those few proposals using hierarchical (rather decentralized) processes, in the good case, in which everyone has some right to propose but the opinions flow through certain pipes and reach the voting stage almost empty from the vast information gathered in the process. Yet, we don't even dare to imagine an equal right to propose just like an equal right to vote, for everyone, in a way that can actually work. Indeed how can that work, how can a voter go over equally-weighted one million proposals every day?
This in my opinion is very true. In reality we have discussions and at best we seek to broadcast or share our intentions. Intent casting was actually the basis behind how I thought to solve this problem of social choice but I would say intent casting even with my best ideas would not have been good enough because again the typical voter would be uninformed. Without an ability of the typical voter to be either educated continuously which in a complex world may be unrealistic, or for the network itself to somehow keep the voter up to date, this intent casting barely works. It works well for shopping where a shopper knows what they want but does not work so well when a person doesn't actually know what they want and merely knows what they value. Values are the basis for morality, for ethical systems, and this is the area where Ohad's solution really shines.
Tauchain has the potential not only to scale discussions but also morality, because it will have the built in logic to make sure people can be moral without constant contradiction. The truth is, without this aid, the human being cannot actually be moral in decision making in my opinion due to the inability to avoid all sorts of contradictions.
All known methods of discussions so far suffer from very poor scaling. Twice more participants is rarely twice the information gain, and when the group is too big (even few dozens), twice more participants may even reduce the overall gain into half and below, not just to not improve it times two.
It turns out that under certain assumptions we can reach truly efficiently scaling discussions and information flow, where 10,000 people are actually 100 times more effective than 100 people, in terms of collaborative decision making and collaborative theory formation. But for this we'll need the aid of machines, and we'll also need to help them to help us.
This is the conclusion that Ohad and myself reached separately but it still holds true. We require the aid of machines in order to scale collaborative decision making. This in my opinion is one of the major difference makers philosophically speaking between the intended design and function of Tauchain vs every other crypto platform in development. This also in my opinion is going to be the difference maker for the community which Tauchain as a technology will serve because it will enable the machines and humans to aid each other for mutual benefit or symbiosis.
The blog post by Ohad Asor brings forward a very important discussion which has many different angles to it. The angle I focused on with regard to the social choice dilemma is the problem of how do we scale morality. In my opinion if we can scale morality in a decentralized, open source, truly significant manner, then nothing stands in the way of absolute legitimacy, mainstream adoption, and with it a very high yet fairly priced token. The utility value of scaling morality in my opinion is higher than just about anything else we can accomplish with crypto tech and AI. If the morality is better, then the design of future platforms will be greatly improved in terms of how the users are treated, and this in itself could at least in my opinion help solve the debate about whether AI can remain beneficial over a long period of time. I think if we can scale morality in a decentralized way, it will make it easier to design and spread beneficial AI. Crypto-effective alturism could become a new thing if we can solve the deeper more philosophical problems.
References
- http://www.idni.org/blog/the-new-tau
- https://steemit.com/steemit/@dana-edwards/personal-preference-bot-nets-and-the-quantification-of-intention
- https://github.com/idni/tau
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_amplification
- https://www.wired.com/2016/01/forget-ai-the-human-friendly-future-of-computing-is-already-here/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_fatigue
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounded_rationality
I agree with you that the person who performs the voting process must be aware of everything... Because at this time many voters decide to rely on media guidelines.. Controlled by a particular group for a particular purpose.....
Exactly. This is also the case with voters in Ethereum, Tezos, or any decision made by a crypto community. All are vulnerable to fear, to FUD, to greed, to any emotions which can be manipulated by the media. If we think of votes like we do investing then we can see how speculators are buying into ICOs which have literally no product.
Decision fatigue:
Arrow's impossibility theorem:
The problem of choice paralysis:
Choice paralysis only will get worse with increased transparency.
Thank you for this post. I will read "The new Tau" and see if I manage to understand it. I see all the problems that you mentioned but I am not sure yet how he manages to overcome these. If this worked, this could be the basis for a better, more effective democracy, right?
Hmm, I red the original article, I guess I have not understood everything, but I get the taste I think. He is proposing to use a computer program to filter out the opinions from an argument. But if people relied on such a program, what happened if this program was to be hacked? Then decision making processes could be manipulated - and people would not even realize it...
So hack the Bitcoin blockchain in the same way and walk away with billions?
You are right I guess. But as with the bitcoin blockchain this is nonetheless a risk, isn't it?
wow !!!!!!so informative post for me.love to read it.thank you a lot for sharing
You might say that the double fact that people influence one another
and that mentalities influence behaviors is not a big discovery.
Simply live your life ethically, morally, and you'll be above all "hearts".
This is a lot deeper thing than I thought Crypto was ever capable of. I had no idea if the Tau blog or its creator so thank you for sharing :).
I've only been able to grasp yet a tip of the iceberg, thanks to Dana's translations. Still can't say I understand even a fraction of the potentials, though am continually strongly fascinated and stimulated with the possibilities of what could come should this project unfold according to how he's expressed some of the possibilities...
You have heard of the concept of virtuous cycle and feedback loop? When you have AI in the center in the form of (intelligent machines) allowing human machine human communication, then you scale the virtuous cycle by way of this feedback loop between human and machine intelligence.
For example what is the design of Tau? It's whatever we decide to be. We could for example copy the best lessons from EOS in real time or take the insights from Golem for the computation market, and this is because the Internet of languages combined with the virtuous cycle and self amendment make Tau truly the most adaptable technology possible.
In nature the species which tends to survive best is that which can adapt the fastest. In fighting, Bruce Lee even said to be like water. Tau is the most water like design, as it can take on any necessary form to survive.
I will post more about this concept of "liquid design" in the future as I seem to be the first person to articulate it on Steemit. I will also discuss the concept of "feedback loop" and "virtuous cycle" which are critical to understanding the value of intelligence amplification which is possible theoretically at least from Tauchain.
Reference
It seems like I learn something new everyday about it. The only area I know a decent amount for real use is blockchain potential use in the insurance industry because that is where I work. I was reading an article on Forbes and the Insurance Journal the other week about how startup Insuritech companies are beginning to try to use blockchain to handle Auto claims. They were working on somehow incorporating it into property & casualty insurance as well.
The only issue is with how regulated that industry can be but that is a HUGE thing that I see coming from blockchain in 2018 and the coming years.
For more about the problem of bounded rationality:
Hmm. Quite interesting. Thanks for providing the videos here that helped aid my rabbit hole. Have you heard of R-Chain($RHOC) by chance? Curious to hear your thoughts on Rho Calculus.