At 03:05 PM 11/25/01 -0800, 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."
I recently posted how ground squirrels have rep cap.
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 seemed to be something like hits & false alarm (and probably misses and correct rejections) counts for squirrels. The same info is of use to neurons. Various computer learning algorithms too. An efficient use of persistant state, one would expect.
1. The assumption that an agent or actor possesses a "reputation." A kind of scalar number attached to a person, a bank, an institution, or even a nym.
Two kinds of entities: one maintains reputations, the other doesn't. Guess which is exploited to extinction? ... Again CPunks -or other analysts- are not *advocating* nearly as much as some might like to believe; instead IMHO there is a public discussion going on about essentially inevitable trends we've observed.