At 6:45 AM 9/25/96, Greg Burk wrote:

I know, I said I was through arguing "reputation theory" and I really thought I was, but this latest impelled me to say more.

tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May) writes:

...

--Tim May, whose reputation is, like the list, whatever it is, for whatever reasons, and who thus needs no defenders

Indeed, your reputation needs no defenders among those of us who know you directly (if electronically)

But here's something for you to think over: If there are such things as negative reputations, why hasn't your reputation zoomed to godlike status upon the ... let us say unreserved... condemnations of the Poster With Nothing Better To Do, if s/he has a negative reputation (I presume you would say so)

First off, I certainly don't know what the precise "calculus of reputations" looks like. That is, how it adds, subtracts, how the reps of others factor in, etc. I think studying how it might work--and how it compares to other fields, such as movie reviews, music reviews, book reviews, etc.--might be an excellent Masters-level thesis for someone in sociology or even CS (if done with the proper slant). However, I would never think the calculus is something so simplistic as: "I rate Alice's reputation as very negative. Alice just said some bad things about Bob. Therefore, Bob's reputation will go up a great deal." More likely, something like: "Alice just said a bunch of things bad about Bob. Cool. Maybe this Bob person deserves a look." In other words, smaller steps, with diminishing returns. And with few sudden movements, except by direct judgment.

Or you could contend that there's no such thing as collective reputation, but I think there are two major flaws: His/her 1-to-1 "reputations" clearly add up to a collective consensus among us annoyed cpunk readers. Even if you contend that reputations in general do not behave collectively, it is no defense in this case at least. And I think if "reputation theory" predicts no collective behavior, it must be pretty weak.

I believe that, to first order, reputation is a tensor. Given N people, imagine this matrix: Alice Bob Charles Daphne Earl Fiona Gloria Harold Alice .99 -.21 .75 .94 .94 .83 -.03 .22 Bob .72 .96 -.02 .85 .71 -.60 .10 .32 Charles .82 .02 .97 .90 -.50 .42 -.10 .70 Daphne .45 .87 .23 .92 .74 .87 .11 .23 Earl .89 .54 .34 .90 .95 .23 .23 .46 Fiona .87 .50 .32 .68 -.34 .97 .78 -.15 Gloria .59 .78 -.23 .15 .29 -.30 -.80 .51 Harold .65 .03 .34 .78 .51 -.76 -.51 .97 This can be read thusly: Alice has a .99 rating of her own self, a negative .21 rating of Bob (or Bob's opinions, or his posts, or whatever is being rated), and so on. Bob has a .72 rating of Alice, a .96 rating of himself, etc. "Alice(Bob) = -.21" Now in this example I made up, some various observations can be made. Nearly everyone rates Harold pretty low, except for Harold. Thus, Harold's own opinions of others, if expressed, probably won't change too many other opinions. Nearly everyone rates Daphne very highly, and her opinions are read carefully. However, Gloria does not rate Daphne highly...but then Gloria rates her own stuff a negative .80, so Gloria has some psychological issues to deal with and others typically rate her pretty low. And so on. In the real world, I think we can see how such a matrix could be constructed, based on either direct inputs (votes) from people, or based on their apparently positive or negative comments, etc. (For example, it is fairly obvious that I might give Hal Finney a rating of .90, and Vulis a -.90. And so on, for others.) Now is there a "collective reputation"? There are various additive properties, with easily understandable meanings. (If Harold is in a lot of kill files, this says a lot, for example.) Anyway, as I said before, the "calculus of reputations" is not worked out, so far as I know. Some weeks back I suggested that the mathematics of belief as developed in "Dempster-Shafer belief theory" has some nice properties that make it seem a promising area to look into. ....

Because s/he can *never spend reputation down to zero*.

So you say. I see no reason reputations cannot be negative, in the sense that not only do I take the opinions of such a person very seriously, I tend in fact to believe the opposite opinion is more likely. This is a "negative " reputation. Thus, a reputation can be "spent down" to zero, and below.

Frankly, I think you should just admit that your reputation theory is flawed and rethink it. I would be interested in hearing it, but what you have now is IMHO badly flawed.

--Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."