Introducing Value Area Networks - Matched participants by shared values

This concept is possible only based on the design of Tauchain presented by Ohad. In his design for Tauchain he highlights the fact that any member of the social network will be allowed to input their worldview. It has been discussed by myself previously that moral values could be an important part of Tauchain in this setting.

A Value Area Network is a concept I'm introducing which is designated to mean a kind of network where all participants are matched according to shared values. These participants in the network (economic agents, bots, machines, humans, companies, whatever) should in theory be allowed to outline as much of their current values and as long as all participants are deemed to be in alignment by the consensus algorithm of Tau then they will be considered part of unified network.

The acronym VAN can be designated to stand for Value Area Network, not to be confused by Value Added Network. Unlike a LAN (Local Area Network) which is based on physical geography, the VAN is based on "social geography". People who are closer to each other socially on the moral and "concerns and values" level would represent a sort of shared location. In social science the concept of social proximity is defined mostly in geographical terms but in the digital age with a technology like Tau in existence the idea of closeness might not have to be restricted to the geographical definition.

Closeness in terms of how close your values align to another participant in a network would represent a distinct place on a sort of map. This distinct place would be represented or quantified by a score which indicates it's potential location on a spectrum of possible locations. Of course the mathematics behind this would have to be more clearly defined in future posts but this post is to introduce the concepts for future discussion.

My concerns and reasons behind thinking up VANs is based on that fact that while social media today does a pretty good job connecting billions of people to random people it also does a horrible job connecting socially compatible people to each other. It's not good enough to connect a bunch of random people. People want to connect to people who have compatible values with themselves as their values are constantly updating over time. Tauchain in theory is the only platform which is expected to have the features to make this idea a possibility.

Values in this context could be negotiated from or derived from beliefs or worldview using Tau discussion. The values then would over time be updating as the person updates their beliefs or worldview. This would be to go the emergent route of letting Tau try to identify the values of the participant based on what the participant said in discussions (avoiding contradictions). The other would be to let the participant explicitly enter their current values and over time let Tau help them to constantly update that over time.

These are features I hope to see developed over Tau in some form some day. If I'm in the position to bring these features into development (provided AGRS works as intended) then this could be one of my contributions. The key mechanism behind this feature would be a novel matchmaking algorithm which leverages the Tau Shared Knowledge Base and reasoning capabilities. The social values map feature could be deduced via the discussions had over time or it can simply be a checkbox setting where the participant chooses by checking boxes and sliding scales.

• I don't know if these ideas have been thought of before or if I'm the first to introduce them in this context. The algorithms to match persons according to values has existed before most likely. The ability to do it on a level of connecting computers or packet filtering level would be more novel. In other words it might be possible to only connect nodes which share values and to only share resources with nodes which share values. This would in theory put social values as the determining factor for resource allocation in a network or for determining favor in connectivity. Is this something people would want? Probably.
• The mission to bring people closer together is part of Facebook's mission. To connect the right participants to each other is the mission I would designate for a matchmaker algorithm over Tau.
• Any ideas expressed here depend on Tau getting built, being sufficiently decentralized, having enough privacy so people are willing to express their true values without social desirability bias playing an influence. And of course the social network features of Tau have to be operational before we can add this layer.