Demo coming soon? Tau Meta Language in C++ updated on Github.

in #blockchain6 years ago (edited)

63FD68AE-B6C9-48D1-8774-A2C5CAE4D0E9.jpeg

Awesome visual promotion design by @capitanart for my only other favourite blockchain project besides Steem. Tau for the win! Might sound overly dramatic, but life has never been the same ever since I came across the following statement back in 31st December 2017:-

"Consider a process, denoted by X, of people, forming and following another process denoted by Y. Tau is the case where X=Y."
by Ohad Asor, The New Tau

Say hello to our little friend above. It's the formula for intelligent decentralized networks. I'd really like to write more about this all day and night, but it's just difficult talking about something without a product to inspect. Regardless, it's still very real in my head because it has been shown to be a technical possibility. Is this the alpha protocol, the e=mc2 of blockchain technology?

Good news: there's something to show soon. It looks like the MVP release is on the horizon. New code just out on https://github.com/IDNI/tau. The author, Ohad Asor also remarked "the code is written. now i have to fix its bugs."

At only 384 lines of C++ code, what could it possibly demonstrate? If this is indeed the first instance Tau Meta Language (TML), it would then need to be re-written in TML itself for the next significant stage in development. At the moment, maybe you'd want read up on the following if you're interested:-

  1. Binary decision diagram: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_decision_diagram
  2. Boolean satisfiability problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_satisfiability_problem
  3. First order partial-fixed point logics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FO_(complexity)
  4. Partial evaluation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_evaluation
  5. Gödel's incompleteness theorems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems
  6. The Paradox of Self-Amendment by Peter Suber: https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/23674879/Suber%20-%20Paradox%20of%20Self-Amendment%202.pdf?sequence=1
  7. Decidability: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decidability_(logic)
  8. Self-reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-reference
  9. Negation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negation
  10. IDNI / Tau / Agoras website: http://idni.org

Stay tuned.

Honestly, I don't really know what to expect at the moment. All I know is that I've never been this excited before. Alright, time to attend to some life obligations before getting back into writing about Tau's development. As always, thanks for reading!

Note: here's part 1 of my series on Tau, more to come soon - https://steemit.com/blockchain/@kevinwong/what-is-tauchain-and-why-it-could-be-one-of-the-greatest-inventions-of-all-time-part-1

Disclaimer: Not financial advice.

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EDIT: The demo comes before TML is written under TML. I made a mistake initially. Demo is the next main step

TML has been written, and is in the process of debugging

The implementation of using Binary Decision Diagrams is performing better than what was initially anticipated.

Once the TML is debugged, the demo should be out for us to get a sense of the reasoner.

After this is about writing TML using the TML itself. This is the ultimate test to self definition which is central to the design of Tau.

Tau is based on the design of a decidable, self defining logic where the blockchain and amend itself automatically according to the real time consensus of its users. This requires the protocol to first be able to define itself using its own logic.

This is the most difficult step (given decidability, self definition within non decidable frameworks like Turing Complete is trivial) and it looks like this step has been successfully completed.

Join over 2000 community members on telegram https://t.me/tauchain to find out more

I would hope Ohad at least provides a demo which people can relate to before the TML in TML. People need to see visually the progress not just see code. I know how to read the code but I'm not 99% of the audience. For the 99% seeing Tau in action is the game changer.

From what I see on Github doesn't Ohad still have to complete the Earley parser component or is that completed somewhere else? I would think he would need the parsing mechanism before he can code TML in TML? But it does look like he is nearly complete with regard to PFP and BDD which are the two major components that make TML special. The Early parser if I understand right is the component which will allow discussions to translate into the logic component.

EDIT: The demo comes before TML is written under TML. I made a mistake initially. Demo is the next main step

I had to ask Ohad

Yes, the Earley Parser is a very important component to the TML, but it will be applied on the next layer (TML written in TML).

There are a lot of reasons why TML has to be rewritten in TML (rather than just in C++). Firstly, the entire idea of Tau revolves heavily around self definition. Tau is about defining its own rules using its own rules, which is how we'll get to a protocol that can amend itself in subsequent blocks according to the real time consensus of its users in the current block.

Additionally, implementing the TML using BDDs gives it a unique feature: it enables the TML defined under itself to carry significant performance increases over the original. This means it no longer makes any sense to implement the parser over the original C++ TML as one would rather implement it over the faster version and the Parser itself is not necessary for self definition.

Similarly, the demo will come once TML is defined under itself. <- wrong, it's coming before that

BDDs are one of the best things to have happened to the project since the discovery of Partial Fixed Points (only known decidable, self defining logic that supports negation). It is truly very well suited to our needs and offers extraordinary advantages over alternatives.

Finally, Ohad doesn't anticipate this next step (TML over TML) to be as difficult as the previous one and it shouldn't take anywhere near as long.

Interesting. I have no idea how he will implement TML over TML without some kind of parser but I guess I will find out. I mean I suppose he could do it but it seems like it would be quite difficult. What I can see from the current Github code direction is you can definitely implement the rules, and you can for sure handle the logic, and I can sort of see how you can do stuff like deductive reasoning and model checking etc.

I admit the self definition part seems to be conceptually the more difficult part. From what I understand the Futamura projection component is what ultimately will allow TML to be implemented in TML. From what you say it seems he will have to reverse engineer the C++ code base and do it again in the TML language which I'm hoping will be simple else we will not be able to even read it.

I guess I can look forward to the Futamura projection which is the next key component I expect Ohad to implement as it's the logical next step. For instance PyPy seems to be an example of what Ohad might be trying to do next where Python is using the Python language to rewrite a better version of itself. The benefit seems to be "automatic compiler generation and optimization". This might explain how TML could be generated from TML itself to be far superior and better optimized than done in C++. Strategically speaking this makes a lot of sense but it also means we might not see or know the benefits until later.

Reference

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PyPy
  2. https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.09906

sorry, I made a mistake about the demo

Ohad plans to demonstrate TML with the initial version, it doesn't have to wait until TML over TML

So it shouldn't be very far off

When you want to Flag them but see their Steem power lol

Hey Kev, like a few others, I am interested in this but haven't had a whole lot of time to do my own research. Where is the best place to ask questions? the telegram channel? Best ways to invest in the project?

Telegram is best :) Tau itself doesn't have a coin, but best closest way is through the project its founder plans to build after Tau is up, which is Agoras.

Good stuff, will check out their telegram

As we discussed the last time, this is really something I should dig into. My problem is finding the time. Anyways, I bookmark this with all the inks you provided :D

Haha.. yea i have too much time.. a common situation in tau fanboys/girls/etc i think. Feel free to drop by telegram/irc to ask anything you have in mind!

I hope I will be able to free some time at some point. With all the recent SteemSTEM developments (the app is about to be released... it is a matter of hours) plus my normal job... I need 48-hours-long days :D

But as long as I will start digging into it, I will definitely come back to you, as I said earlier this summer.

so, we have the language of langues. I am new to Tao - but after going through many things like eSML for the smart contract "translation" this looks interesting. Thank you for sharing!

TML is definitive for "smart contracts" as it's a hypothesized language of law, in that it needs:-

  1. To be able to refer to itself (self-reference)
  2. To be decidable (this rules out turing-complete languages)
  3. To support negation (With 1 & 2, we end up with two possibilities when it comes to choosing the type of logic which is FO[PFP] and FO[LFP]. Requirement 3 is only possible with FO[PFP])

Which is why TML is based on FO[PFP]. It's also worth noting that TML is not one single universal language as it can redefine itself and change over time, from block to block.

Check out these blogposts in regards to language:

I need to call “Ullman and Aho” for help!

I remember reading something about Tau in a discussion regarding WREN and Smart contracts in STEEM

Quick question: formal verification of this language with something like F* will be possible ?

Yup ultimately it depends on the nature of F*, here's the excerpt about internet of languages taken from the website:-

There is no single best language for all purposes, which is the reason we're building the Tau Meta Language (TML): a language intended to define other languages and translate between them while maintaining the same information. TML allows seamless communication and semantic translation between programming languages, knowledge representation languages, visualization and organization formats, domain-specific languages, and more.

ultimately it depends on the nature of F*

F* is a language developed at Microsoft Research for the formal validation. Quick into is here : https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/nswamy/

I always find your posts refreshful and immaculately clean of the contrived eagerness of some Steemit advocates and honestly filled with genuine enthusiasm. I also appreciate the deeper, more open-minded and philosophical way you look at things and your passion for truth.

I must admit that I'm starting to anticipate this in greater number as well after seeing the presentation of how discussion and decision making along side it would flow using Tau. As someone who codes, the discussion looked like high level coding to me, which is a good sign. Every system needs clear sets of rules and directions to work efficiently, and every individual should have a say on them. Tau makes that a painless process.

I haven't given it more thought, but I'm excited what the future holds for this technology. Perhaps in future, every decision making that involves groups of people will somehow use Tau.

Hello igster, Steemgar does not work. There is a error: "SDKError: sc2-sdk error"

I'll look into it in the coming days.

Thanks igster, that's very nice of you =D

Should be working now

Hey great, igster, thank you =)
Why do not like you play along?

Thank you, igster, I appreciate it =D

All these blockchains including TAU are seriously working hard on releasing more of their product and solving a lot of problems of any current system.

10 months ago the prices didn't reflect the development of each project but now, the prices doesn't reflect the progress of these projects as well... hahaha...

The valuation that is coming is gonna be massive. I'm not invested in TAU but you talk about it a lot that I'm looking at it and wanting to study it much closer.

I dunno, I just don't find much else interesting anymore since Tau. If you happen to study and write about it in the future, let me know!

I would heavily suggest you study it intensely and thoroughly. In fact I don't understand why more people in the space haven't. Why have so few really looked deep at Tau?

Have been invested in others basically. Already at my max of keeping track ability. Haha.

To really be honest with everyone, I'm super excited about the future of Steem and Crypto Currency as a whole ????
I look forward to sharing the future with you all ???

Finally some code to prove the concept but I feel like compliement more on the first graphic, definitely on par with some AAA title of movie posters.

Posted using Partiko Android

Yes now that there is code the developers can see for sure that what is being attempted is feasible. I figured out it was feasible in 2017 after discussing it with Ohad in private. But seeing the code is even better because showing is better than telling. If the code works then it's proof by example that TML and Tauchain is plausible.

We are really really close to that proof by example. The proof by example is the biggest moment because once we know what can be built we can then see it as only a matter of following the current specification over time to build it. So we know a partial evaluator can be built theoretically speaking but if Ohad can prove it in practice it's suddenly not theory that we can use PFP. If he can show a demo example then we can see for ourselves that the logic really can work. Seeing that it can work should generate much excitement.

Currently though the code is being debugged. I'll be much more excited when I see test results and or some example.

Yep, proof of example will be the next big thing as most of the folks do not have the command of c++ knowledge. Checked out your blog it seems like you are quite into the Tau concept as well? Glad to find out this project are actually backed by elder steemian like you and Kevin. Let's see what Ohad would bring to us soon.

The proof of concept was already up since last December. This one is pfp/tml though, which is the actual core product. As far as I know, @capitanart was one of the concept artists for assassin's creed: origins - so yeah, sweet poster :)

The proof of concept in December was perhaps a bit too academic for even most developers to get excited about. This is a bigger deal though because once people can see the logic actually work as he said it would work that changes minds. Right now it seems a lot of developers either don't understand what is being worked on or they think it's impossible.

And who wouldn't think it's impossible? It's never been done before at least never like this.

Yeah that was pretty good

I was just thinking that someone should do a video on this... Awesome! You should consider making a step by step vlog on this for people to be able to follow along with the steps as well as additional ideas you might have. I wish people would think #Steemit through on something you mentioned in this video. We should all help each other be successful. Doing this not only reciprocates the support, but everyone becomes successful together. And even further, #Steemit then becomes more popular.

Do a video on my comment? Go home bot, you are drunk.

Awesome graphic that looks so cool. Really cool spaceman floating up there above the world. If you had to guess how long do you think until the demo?

Agreed - very poetic imagery. As for the demo, I was expecting by Q3 which is today. I think it'll take a few more weeks to clean up the bugs and all? Hard to say. The code is short, but this foundational tech has to be absolutely polished. Although for demo purposes.. I guess maybe the wait isn't so far away? Will see.

I think he said to sort out the bugs takes a few days but rewriting the TML in TML which I dont even know what that means or how long that would take..hoping end of year for the demo.we shall see.

(This is one of the best posts I have seen on here, especially the following paragraph really stands out:

'I'm looking to build a world where compassion and courage prevail over deception and fear, where technology brings transparency in our relationships finally giving honest cooperation the upper hand over any other types of human interaction.'

I give thanks for being living these exciting moments. I hope this marks our lives.

A pride appear between your lines @kevinwong

I give thanks for being living these exciting moments. I hope this marks our lives.
A pride appear between your lines

Same @capitanart, pleasure! More awesome art please :)

2j3qdo.jpg

Lol alien technology coming soon!

Given how long we've been eating shit, it's about time!

I am very glad you are talking about this because I believe your voice is likely to be heard. I know others have talked about this in the past, but I don't see this being taken as seriously as I would like it to be.

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