Responding to msg by jamesd@netcom.com (James A. Donald) on Sun, 4 Sep 11:24 AM
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.
support a reputation, but by abandoning the correct usage of the word "reputation" you have obscured that fact from yourself.
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.
James, Your answers to Hal and Tim have been enlightening. And your attempt to move away from nominalism to improve precision of language and to ward off inadverdent undermining of fundamentals, is admirable, that is, if I understand your objections to Hal's proposals correctly. Perhaps to avoid counter-objections that matters of definition all to often lead back into nominalistic debates, you will be able to suggest practical examples of what you mean by "dangerous", "frightful", "serious consequences", "kicking the crucial foundation out from under freedom", and the like. Sometimes these melodramatic terms obscure rather than point toward concrete situations that will convey your intentions more effectively. Your strong feelings on these matters are clear, but I for one do not know what you would do in place of what Hal, and others, are proposing, to build and sustain reputations in the electronic realm. Not, to be sure, to undermine what is valid in brickspace, but how such firm foundations might be extended, even emulated occasionally, in the cyber realm. I don't yet see these efforts as threatening as you claim. When you get a chance, your specific examples would help. Thanks. John