Stephen D. Williams writes
Would someone care to create a mini-glossary, complete with author-noted alternate definitions of the current topics?
No. The problem is that Hal wants a definition of "Reputation" that is more objective, concrete, controllable measurable and well defined, whereupon I went ballistic because reputations do not have the properties that he thinks a good definition of reputation should have. Thus reputations, defined to have the nice properties that Hal would like them to have, would lack the crucial property of enforcing good conduct. Since we want "reputations" to serve in place of state violence, rather than serving in place of drivers licenses, I argued that the kind of definition that Hal was seeking would be catastrophically counter productive. We should propose credentialing systems, rather than define reputations. Of course what Hal really wanted to do was discuss credentialing systems, rather than get involved in a discussion of nominalism and realism etc. My objection was that by calling credentialling systems "reputations" he was obfuscating the crucial part of the process whereby credentials obtain value. This is an error akin to that of "the labor theory of value", and would lead to the same disastrous error that the labor theory of value leads to: We would end up proposing "non coercive" systems that would in reality require a great deal of coercion in order to work. By calling a credential a reputation, we imply that it automatically has value. Of course it does not. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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