RE: Tauchain may allow for the development of the first "Smart Constitution"
Well Tauchain certainly isn't the first and won't be the last attempt to formalize governance on the blockchain itself - anyone remember Tezos? Yup Tezos is actually coming back as T2 sometime this year. Last I checked Tauchain also had some issues too.
And remember, we had the DAO which wasn't a bockchain with its own governance encoded on chain, but an org on a chain (Ethereum) with its own governance in contracts. Problem was they could never get enough votes to decide anything and DAO became a quagmire of inactivity. Until the famous hack that is which drained it of millions in funds and famously sparked the Ethereum Classic and Ethereum fork forcing the human nature of Ethereum governance to front and center stage.
The problem seems to me, that law as code is fine if you can describe all the things you want to legislate as code. Think of the US constitution, and then think of the thousands, if not millions of laws that have been created underneath it to make it actually a practical system. How do you decide if one law in code is a legitimate law - a subclass if you will - of the original "constitution" that the system started with? Take for instance the first amendment - seems pretty clear right:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
But somewhere along the line we figured out there are limits to rights in the Bill of Rights - such at commercial speech is limited, obscenity is limited, yelling "fire" is limited, incitement to specific criminal acts is limited etc. and I would think most people would agree those are useful things. But however would you have encoded that in code?
You note the ambiguity of English language for expressing laws (gun rights advocates will spend hours arguing about the meaning of a comma in the second amendment because it suits their interpretation) but you didn't mention when the effect or cause that is to be limited is a very human thing. We all know that famous quote about obscenity from a legal case Jacobellis v Ohio:
I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.
So what are we to do when a human can't even describe the thing and it takes a human to determine what is or isn't obscenity? Assuming people agree such things are necessary laws then how do we codify them? Do we train up a machine learning algorithm to get a high F1 score for determining obscenity and make that part of the blockchain? Or can we always call out to human-driven oracles who provide input to governance?
When your neighbor is having a loud party do we require a law that has expressly defined every environmental parameter of what defines a nuisance and have an Oracle feed all that data into the blockchain? Or do we just use an Oracle that is a front for human judges to resolve disputes - something like Kleros which offers a dispute resolution protocol and applies game theory to encourage good judging.
Whatever you think or happens I have to agree that blockchain governance is a fascinating field and arguably the most important one to be addressed and with the biggest potential for impact on human society. I honestly expect that in future years - maybe 50 years hence - we will all be living out our lives at the intersection of many blockchain governance strategies and fields. Everyone will be able to immediately asses what governance rules apply to anyone or any entity (including AIs) they interact with and act and transact appropriately. We might ever well end up with a constitutional convention that basically delegates pretty much everything to blockchain regulated governance. Of course people wishing to live like that will necessarily need to instrument the heck out of their lives - but by then no one will think twice about that and that could very well end up looking like living in an episode of Black Mirror as is already been implemented in China with their social credit system augmented by mass surveilance and monitoring of all communication: http://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-system-punishments-and-rewards-explained-2018-4
I hold Tezos so of course I remember. Tezos has the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of other platforms like EOS or Ethereum. Tezos being self amending at least has the main component necessary for a smart constitution but it's not enough by itself. You need also the ability to create rules which are consistent, which don't contradict.
On the topic of filtering speech this in my opinion is what collaborative filtering can best handle. Filtering basically isolates the noise (what you would subjectively interpret as obscenity) so that it is not brought to your attention. So yes you can filter just fine and probably far more effectively with something like Tauchain because you could unambiguously and precisely define exactly what you consider to be the noise vs what you consider to be most valuable (and prioritize accordingly).
The point is you will not have to worry about contradicting yourself, or for example the situation where a person claims they believe in absolute free speech under specific conditions yet they don't because they don't vote in that manner? If you believe in absolute free speech then what is obscenity? Obscenity is the speech you don't want to see, the information you don't want to consume, the spam. Ideally no one should be forced to consume or see information they consider to be noise.
References
In my opinion a way for filtering to work is simple. Collaborative filtering (up and down votes, etc) combined with stigmergy (follow the voters who share your values). This will allow you to see more of what you want to see and less of what you do not. This will also allow you to direct resources toward what aligns with your values at all times (this can even be a rule).