At 01:14 PM 11/21/95 -0800, Wei Dai wrote:
The first step toward a theory of reputation is defining what reputation is. [...] If these interactions are mainly economic in nature, then we can represent Alice's reputation of Bob by a graph with the horizontal axis labeled price and the vertical axis labeled expected utility.
Any attempt to discuss and analyze reputations using morally neutral language is bound to wind up as boring long winded meaningless complicated word salad. You will wind up in the same place as the behaviorists did, going in ever diminishing epistemological circles until you vanish into the whichness of why and the whyness of which. Some things, for example reputations, behavior, or the principle of mathematical induction, necessarily involve concepts that are philosophically problematical. Any attempt to discuss these things while avoiding philosophically problematic concepts invariably degenerates into total fog. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd@echeque.com