On Sun, 25 Nov 2001, Tim May wrote:
For many years some of us have argued strongly for "reputation" as a core concept. Someone, perhaps even one of our own, even coined the phrase "reputation capital."
And for as many years many of us have seen that it's not as useful as it would first seem. The reality is that trust isn't transitive and as a result reputation isn't either.
Reputation is an easily understandable concept which explains a lot about how imperfect protocols in the real world nevertheless "work." I won't go into what reputation is, even as defined by folks like us.
It may be 'easily understood', but it's also easily misunderstood (by many).
But there are many aspects of reputation which lead to problems:
Reputation itself is a problem. Past behaviour (toward another) is not a reasonable predictor of future behavior (toward myself). -- ____________________________________________________________________ Day by day the Penguins are making me lose my mind. Bumper Sticker The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------