Could the verifier be allowed a global understanding using something akin to homomorphic encryption, though?
I'm thinking along the lines of your side note that propositions have many proofs (polyphenism) and agents have many identities (robustness). I worry that I've missed your point, though, because polyphenism isn't analogous to robustness, they're complements. So, I would have said: Just like propositions participate in many proofs, identities can employ many agents. But we're playing fast and loose with our bindings. "Agent" often means the object/thing, whereas "identity" means the attributes of that object/thing. So, maybe you accidentally flipped that as you went along in the post? In any case, I see the authentic human/organism as at least somewhat opaque to an infinitely extensible peek process, verification process. Their essence is always encrypted out of reach. Then we do verify that any communication is with them "up to taste" ... or fit to context purpose. So when we do this authentication and attempt to retain self-sovereignty, we're simply inferring some sort of *signature* that is as unique as their "soul", but is not a structural analogy to their (unique) soul. I can't help but think someone must already be working on a well-stated problem like this. SteveS mentioned Cardano awhile back. And I'm constantly on the hunt for distributed VMs I can actually use (you know, like you would use Linode <https://cloud.linode.com/linodes> but pay with some crypto coin instead of monthly draws from your credit card). It seems that somewhere in the smart contracts space, someone should already be working on this problem. Have any of you actually used such a dApp, paying with ADA or ETH or whatever? If so, what's more interesting re: this thread is the adversarial stance. If you're doing some computation, can I *hack* it and steal your computation (or your computational result)? On 10/20/21 5:27 PM, Jon Zingale wrote: > I suppose the slogan could be: > "Proofs are to propositions as identities are to agents", > and in the context of zero knowledge protocols, the parallel extends to: > > φ: Verifying a proof without exposing the proof. > ψ: Verifying an identity without exposing the identity. > > To the degree that φ is the case and that the formal analogy connecting > φ to ψ holds, I suspect ZKP is sufficient for establishing self-sovereign > identity. > > In practice, I imagine that to each agent a provable proposition (of > some significant computational complexity[κ]) is assigned. The statement > is then converted into a 3-coloring problem[З] while the proof is > transformed into an instance of one such 3-coloring. The rest is pressing > plates. It seems worth mentioning that just as a proposition may have > many proofs, an agent may have many identities. > > A thing that has always impressed me about ZKP is that the verification > process is constrained to be a local process. That is, at no point does > the verifier get a global picture[λ] of the proof (as that would give the > proof away) and instead, in the spirit of a Las Vegas algorithm, one > verifies only up to taste. > > For those interested, I highly recommend this numberphile episode: > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ovdoxnfFVc&ab_channel=Numberphile2 > <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ovdoxnfFVc&ab_channel=Numberphile2> > > [κ] Where the proposition is about products of RSA group elements, some > discrete log problem, or some other trapdoor function. > > [λ] In my much earlier post to Nick on limits of inference, I attempted > to connect this locality to physical limitations such as light cones, > and propositions to phenomena like spin. Unfortunately, EricC shrugged > and nothing more came of it ;) > > [З] > http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.419.8132&rep=rep1&type=pdf > > <http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.419.8132&rep=rep1&type=pdf> -- "Better to be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie." ☤>$ uǝlƃ .-- .- -. - / .- -.-. - .. --- -. ..--.. / -.-. --- -. .--- ..- --. .- - . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn UTC-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
