Hal writes
What is this stuff, reputation capital? What does it look like? How can it be measured? How much is it really worth?
jamesd@netcom.com (James A. Donald) writes:
Obviously none of these questions are answerable: So what?
Hal writes
No, my questions were not rhetorical at all. I do think that various people have come up with ideas for what they call reputation capital that are much more formalized and structured than what you are referring to. This doesn't mean that they are right and you wrong, just that there are a lot of different concepts floating around under this umbrella of a term.
No no: What is floating around are proposals for the structured handling of the *information* on which reputations are based, not proposals for the structured handling of reputations. Digital credentials, not digital reputations. Structured handling of *reputations* would be catastrophic. If you *define* reputations to be something formal and explicit, and say that the system will work because people guard their reputations, then reputations become something that can be most efficiently granted and withdrawn by some centralized authority. And then, as with fiat currency, the value of those "reputations" would in the end need to be backed by force in order to make the system work. I am complaining about dangerous carelessness in your use and definition of words. Your use of the word reputation is as fraught with frightful consequences as Marx's use of the word "value". Reputation based systems work for freedom, and coercion based systems work for centralized government, for obvious reasons that all of us agree upon. *Define* reputations to be something other than reputations, and you are kicking the crucial foundation out from under freedom. You are defining the foundation of freedom away, in a way precisely analogous to the way Marx defined the basis of capitalism away, though he did it maliciously and knowingly, and you are doing it accidentally.
As one example, consider how signed endorsements could be used to create and validate a reputation.
True. But signed endorsements are *not* a reputation.
I think this concept needs to be clarified and examined if it is to serve as one of the principle foundations of pseudonymous commerce.
No it should not be "clarified and examined". ... We already know what reputations are. "Defining" them is going to make them into meaningless nominalist hot air.
On the contrary, I think that a pseudonymous/anonymous world calls for a re-examination of the concept of reputations. Today there is no implementation of a transferrable credential, where I could for example prove that company XYZ considers me a good credit risk, without XYZ linking my present nom de guerre with the one I used when with them.
This is an illustration of the danger of redefining "reputation" as you appear to be doing. Obviously a blind signed credential transferable between digital pseudonyms would have no value to support a reputation, but by abandoning the correct usage of the word "reputation" you have obscured that fact from yourself. But what would have value was a credential whereby some authority signed *one* private key that you possessed at a certain time, without knowing either the private key or the public keys associated with that private key. But if you used that key to support multiple identities, you would then be stuffed because it would then create a link between Joe Robertson, software benchmarker, and Mike Hardcase, purveyor of underage Ceylonese virgins. Worse, it might create a link between Mike Hardcase and Joe Whatsyourpleasure, purveyor of Filipina whores, thereby substantially reducing the value of the Ceylonese virgins purveyed by Mike Hardcase, even though both Mike Hardcase and Joe Whatsyourpleasure both had excellent reputations until their reputations became linked.
If your on line personality is selling something, it would seem highly desirable to have dossiers built up about it.
Do we just say that "of course" dossiers of people's credit history and banks' lending history are the desirable and correct way to solve this problem, as we have today? I would prefer to see whether solutions could be derived in which more privacy is provided to the participants. Obviously total anonymity would make such lending virtually impossible, but perhaps there is some middle ground between that and a system of total identification. This is where Chaum is coming from with his credentials.
Exactly so: And Chaum talked of digital credentials, and the reputations of digital credentials. He *did not* talk about digital reputations. Use the word *credentials*, not the word *reputations*. If we were to start using the word *reputations* in the way that you have been using it, we will make errors with vastly more serious consequences that the errors that you have made. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because of the kind of animals that we James A. Donald are. True law derives from this right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. jamesd@netcom.com