At 6:05 am -0500 11/19/96, snow wrote:
Reputation could also eleminate the need for judges. If Matt Blaze, or Randall S. were to try to claim a specific bounty, people would be more likely to accept their claim than if I were to do so.
I'm not saying that Gauss *didn't* discover the normal distribution. I'm saying that he didn't have to *prove* he did. Of course not. He was the greatest mathematician of his time, and probably since. I'd call the event a reputation distortion.
With either system proposed (market based contracts v.s. bounty) you are paid for code. Let's face it, with reputation capital, losses (i.e. bad moves/actions/whatever) are far more costly than good moves pay. To use a sports analogy: If you fumble the ball, and allow the runner to score, more people are going to remember it than if you make a couple of baskets. What was the thing that killed Bushes chances of re-election against a rather weak canidate? One lie "No new taxes". If Gauss had been called on it, what would have happened? If the caller could _prove_ he was lying, what then? He still would have been the greatist mathmatician of the time, but he would have been seen as a liar and a crackpot. We know how that works don't we. Petro, Christopher C. petro@suba.com <prefered for any non-list stuff> snow@smoke.suba.com