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RE: Tau is not like Bitcoin, nor is it like Ethereum, it's an extension of the web as we know it
Two stupid questions:
- Could Tauchain flexibility in programming languages usage lead to security concerns?
- How can Tauchain defend itself from intentionally wrong knowledge?
These are excellent questions. Lets start with the first one.
Tauchain's TML (Tau Meta Language) allows the community to define a secure programming language which is decidable. In terms of language security (LangSec) you have a paradigm called "security by correctness". Correctness is essentially referring to software which functions in a known way and where you can use tactics like formal verification or correct by construction to narrow the spectrum of possible behaviors of the software. By narrowing the spectrum or in another way of putting it, by mapping out all the possible states of the state machine, you can reduce unexpected behavior. In summary, due to TML being decidable and due to the ability to do things in the correct by construction way, you will not have the problem of programs behaving in ways not defined in the formal specification.
This problem is a problem I admit Tauchain will have a very difficult time with. It will be crucial for the earliest adopters to take their responsibility to the international community very seriously. Part of this responsibility in my opinion includes setting norms to determine what kind of discussions to stand behind or fuel and what kind of discussions to ignore or shun. Not every discussion, not every "Truth" not every piece of software, is a good idea, or legitimate, or helpful. I think it's all going to depend on the maturity of the people who get involved with Tauchain and if those who get involved are the immature types then Tauchain could sink in a swamp of lies, propaganda, and no amount of technology can make people care about the truth.
Won't that require an enormous amount of computational power? Will it be based on POW with its related energy consumption problems?
That's quite a risk. There is also the risk of involuntarily spreading biased knowledge (eg. https://www.ted.com/talks/joy_buolamwini_how_i_m_fighting_bias_in_algorithms)
Thank you and keep up the good work! =]
Yes it will. Fortunately computational power is not a scarce resource. Think of Bittorrent? The limiting factor in it's usage was not lack of storage space available but lack of bandwidth. I think in the case of Tau computational power will be commoditized easily.
I agree it is quite a risk. There is no great rewards in this world without great risks. I do not see any other way to provide access to the potential rewards without there being some risk involved. It's a matter of which risks the society is willing to take in order to get those rewards.
For example to teach people how to read and write was a great risk. For a long time in human history there were forces doing everything they could do to prevent people from being able to read and write (unless it's religious). Just as in some places for a long time women have not been allowed to drive for example.
Yet we know some people who learn to read and write abuse it by reading and writing the kind of speech which leads to genocide. We know some people who learn to drive get into car accidents. We even have statistics which show the odds, such as for a car accident death 1 in 103 (higher than gun assault). No one wants to ban cars.
Often the perceived risks are a lot different from the popular conception in the media. For example the risk of dying in a car accident is a lot higher than the risk of dying in a plane crash yet a lot more people are terrified of flying in a plane then driving a car. The statistics around mass shootings are another example where there is a lot of fear in the media about it but the actual likelihood of being killed in a mass shooting is actually no where near as high as a lot of other more probable causes of death.
There are also risks involved in not doing something. I do not know if Tau is actually the best thing to do or the most correct course of action. It's more a situation where Tau is the first and only attempt to bring wisdom to the crowd in a decentralized trust minimized manner. There is no similar attempt that I can find which will be universally accessible, peer to peer, bottom up approach, and which can scale discussion.
Tau may fail, if the community does not take the responsibility seriously. If it's treated as a crypto toy and not used for improving lives it may fail. Tau is not Bitcoin, but it is certainly possible that the community around Tau because many come from Bitcoin, could bring the limitations of Bitcoin to Tau, and this could limit the potential of Tau. It's really not known at this time what will happen but I don't think anything good is likely to happen if we don't actively try to bring out the good in all technological opportunities.
The risk of bias exists now but the solution to bias is to debias which is possible but is simply not being applied. It's not really up to me, so while I can express my opinion in my blog about what I think needs to happen it does not mean the community around the project is obligated to listen.
Reference
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/us/opioids-car-crash-guns.html
Thank you Dana.
I believe in the future of this project (and I’m going to invest more in it).
Good luck =}