Moving beyond "Reputation"--the Market View of Reality
For many years some of us have argued strongly for "reputation" as a core concept. Someone, perhaps even one of our own, even coined the phrase "reputation capital." Reputation is an easily understandable concept which explains a lot about how imperfect protocols in the real world nevertheless "work." I won't go into what reputation is, even as defined by folks like us. But there are many aspects of reputation which lead to problems: 1. The assumption that an agent or actor possesses a "reputation." A kind of scalar number attached to a person, a bank, an institution, or even a nym. 2. When in fact different people have different assessments of some agent's reputation. Thus suggesting strongly that reputation is not something attached as simply as above. 3. All of the nonsense about how "Alice's reputation has been harmed," deriving from the faulty notion of this scalar property attached to Alice. Aren't we stuck with reputation? No, a broader ontology of objects and beliefs about them is a better way to go. The "reputation of the dollar" is related to my belief, and the belief of billions of others around the planet, that for whatever reason a piece of paper with the right markings on it will in fact be accepted by billions of others, by millions of small banks and moneychangers, and even by the U.S. Government. And the related belief that loans, IOUs, promissory notes, bonds, and numerous other instruments denominated in these "dollars" will very likely be accepted or exchanged, blah blah, by millions or billions of other actors. Such is not the case with Monopoly money or even with E-gold. Thus, what is the "reputation of the dollar"? Is it because of foolproof anti-forgery measures? Is it because of the laws of the U.S.? Etc.? No, it is a kind of collective hallucination. Before James Donald freaks out and cites Objectivist arguments that Some Things Are Real, etc., let me point out that "collective hallucination" is mostly a cute phrase. In actuality, our perception of reality is more than just an opium dream. Empiricism, falsifiability, Popper, all that good stuff. But our monetary system is vastly less provably real than the world of atoms and stars is. Because money is fundamentally about bets on the future: will something be exchanged for something else, will governments support what they print, what will the dollar be worth in 5 years, etc. All crypto is economics. All money is based on belief. All a matter of "betting," of risk/benefit analysis. Related concepts, of course. Even slightly flawed protocols still "work," given the right embeddings in other systems. (For example, a common flaw cited with remailers is that if there is not enough cover traffic, traceability still exists. But exactly the same flaw exists with money: try getting untraceability with coins if only a few coins exist. Ditto for bearer bonds. Ditto for lots of things where the "protocol fails for small N" but works reasonably well--in the "betting" sense--when a lot of actors are trading a lot of coins and currency. The value of a monetary token is NOT something that is determined by precise mathematical protocols. It's a value based on _belief_ or _expectation_ about the behaviors of other actors, and about the future. Currency suspected of being counterfeit may sell for 10 cents on the dollar, to a sophisticated buyer, while currency suspected of being legit may or may not sell for at or near face value. (Even perfectly legit currency would sell at a discount in large quanties, probably, because a buyer would be a money launderer. Hence the discount for risk. That is, a market decision based on the obvious tradeoffs.) Back to reputations. Seen as part of a larger ecology of a "market construction of reality," there are no fixed or absolute values, no fixed or absolute truths. Some assertions are "many nines" likely to be true, and some are even constructed to be true (*) (* As in "2 + 2 = 4," though the streetwise person who says "What's the trick?" is realizing that even "known to be true" assertions may not be true, as in base 3. Magicians and con men have known this for a long time.) Thus, there is no fixed "reputation" of either a person, an idea, or a unit of value. Everything is a matter of belief, of expectation... Instead of an ontology of objects and their attached methods and property lists, including "reputations" and "monetary values," we should be thinking in terms of these objects as just other actors, with each actor maintaining his own internal model of "possible worlds" (how he thinks the other actors will behave, what he thinks may be future outcomes, what his own goals and expectations are). Seen this way, there is no "reputation" or "value" that is universal. Everything is relative. Everything is seen through the light of internal states/possible worlds. This is the market view of reality. There is no "Reality." Just ensembles of actors, various facets, incomplete knowledge...all lubricated by betting. Every street kid knows this. Digital money is just one facet of this worldview. --Tim May "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -- Nietzsche
On Sun, Nov 25, at 03:05PM, Tim May wrote | Thus, what is the "reputation of the dollar"? Is it because of foolproof | anti-forgery measures? Is it because of the laws of the U.S.? Etc.? | | No, it is a kind of collective hallucination. It is not a "Collective hallucination" unless you take into account the fact that the dollar (substittute your local fiat currency here) is nothing more than a piece of paper issued by the US government with no guarantees whatsoever of its redeemability at any given point in time. | All crypto is economics. All money is based on belief. All a matter of | "betting," of risk/benefit analysis. Related concepts, of course. Money isn't so much a "belief" as it is a medium of exchange. I do agree that it is the de facto medium of exchange because of the belief that people put into the fact that they will be able to exchange it for other things later on, but I believe that is actually besides the point depending on how you refer to money. Money as was the case 150 years ago was not really a betting idea. Money was gold, gold was money and gold was not only money, it was also a tangible item in and of itself. Perhaps during the times of 100% gold backed currency (I mean the Rothbard idea of banks being nothing more than warehouses) there was belief system somewhere, but even then, "money" was actually gold substitute, the "dollar" meant nothing more than a certain quantity of gold. Perhaps in todays world you are right in the idea that money is nothing more than a hallucination, I agree with that statement even. But I would venture into saying that the world we live in today is a hystorical exception, in no other time than in the last hundred (ok, hundred and one, almost two) was money represented in such meaningless terms as it is now, with nothing to back it up. (even gold was never backed up by anything other than belief in its tradeability, but then gold is "useful" and "valued" for others uses than trading. What "use" is a dollar bill? Perhaps the Swiss Franc has artistic value, but if you're not cold and in dire need of something to burn for warmth, todays "money" is for all intents and purposes useles.) | Back to reputations. | Thus, there is no fixed "reputation" of either a person, an idea, or a | unit of value. Everything is a matter of belief, of expectation... There is nothing fixed in this world, if you have no boundries set. If everything is a belief or expectation, I would have to say that some beliefs and some expectations are stronger than others...some by orders of magnatude. | Digital money is just one facet of this worldview. I would still say that the reputation problem is one of the greatest of the problems facing digital money, govenments aside. Perhaps the problem should be referred to as bad PR instead. (Digital money needs a better marketting department.) No offense intended, but other than a few points in the email, I failed to miss the punchline. --Gabe -- Churchill, Winston Leonard Spencer --On the eve of Britain's entry into World War II: "If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be even a worse fate. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
There is nothing fixed in this world, if you have no boundries set. If everything is a belief or expectation, I would have to say that some beliefs and some expectations are stronger than others...some by orders of magnatude.
Are you saying that governments are providing a valuable service by propping up arbitrary prohibitions and thus establish a value system against which we can bang our heads ? ===== end (of original message) Y-a*h*o-o (yes, they scan for this) spam follows: Yahoo! GeoCities - quick and easy web site hosting, just $8.95/month. http://geocities.yahoo.com/ps/info1
On Sun, Nov 25, at 05:24PM, Morlock Elloi wrote: | Are you saying that governments are providing a valuable service by propping up | arbitrary prohibitions and thus establish a value system against which we can | bang our heads ? If you got that out of the quote you left in the email I am lost ;-p But as a general rule, no. Keeping in mind of course that "value" is subjective, because arbitrary regulations are in fact very valuable, ask the Kennedys. The problem with prohibitions (which are never arbitrary) is that they make for an uneven playing field in the great game of "The free Market" thus hurting the whole, but often there are those (few though they may be) who profit from prohibitions. --Gabe -- Churchill, Winston Leonard Spencer --On the eve of Britain's entry into World War II: "If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be even a worse fate. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
On Sun, 25 Nov 2001, Morlock Elloi wrote:
Are you saying that governments are providing a valuable service by propping up arbitrary prohibitions and thus establish a value system against which we can bang our heads ?
You misrepresent, governments don't (in general) make 'arbitrary prohibitions'. -- ____________________________________________________________________ Day by day the Penguins are making me lose my mind. Bumper Sticker The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
On Mon, 26 Nov 2001, Jim Choate wrote:
You misrepresent, governments don't (in general) make 'arbitrary prohibitions'.
What, pray tell, governments have you been studying? While I will agree that it is not the "job" of government to make arbitrary prohibitions, it _is_ within their *nature*. Furthermore, all groups which can be said to be acting in a government-like manner, i.e., in a control state, tend to devolve into this behaviour very quickly. I would go as far as to hypothesize that formalized government may well be a group-agreed "scapegoat" [agent] for this behaviour. -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org If Governments really want us to behave like civilized human beings, they should give serious consideration towards setting a better example: Ruling by force, rather than consensus; the unrestrained application of unjust laws (which the victim-populations were never allowed input on in the first place); the State policy of justice only for the rich and elected; the intentional abuse and occassionally destruction of entire populations merely to distract an already apathetic and numb electorate... This type of demogoguery must surely wipe out the fascist United States as surely as it wiped out the fascist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The views expressed here are mine, and NOT those of my employers, associates, or others. Besides, if it *were* the opinion of all of those people, I doubt there would be a problem to bitch about in the first place... --------------------------------------------------------------------
On Mon, 26 Nov 2001 measl@mfn.org wrote:
On Mon, 26 Nov 2001, Jim Choate wrote:
You misrepresent, governments don't (in general) make 'arbitrary prohibitions'.
What, pray tell, governments have you been studying?
A bunch, something like 5000 years of recorded history. Please demonstrate a government that in general make 'arbitrary decision'. Not that doesn't mean decisions you don't like, or reasons you don't like. Just plain simple arbitrary decisions.
While I will agree that it is not the "job" of government to make arbitrary prohibitions, it _is_ within their *nature*.
A governments job is to do whatever it's chartered to do. If it works it lasts longer, if it fails it doesn't last as long.
Furthermore, all groups which can be said to be acting in a government-like manner, i.e., in a control state, tend to devolve into this behaviour very quickly.
People.
I would go as far as to hypothesize that formalized government may well be a group-agreed "scapegoat" [agent] for this behaviour.
You're free to hypothesize to your hearts and brains content. Fortunately a hypothesis is worthless until it's tested. Where's your data? -- ____________________________________________________________________ Day by day the Penguins are making me lose my mind. Bumper Sticker The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
On Sun, 25 Nov 2001, Gabriel Rocha wrote:
On Sun, Nov 25, at 03:05PM, Tim May wrote | Thus, what is the "reputation of the dollar"? Is it because of foolproof | anti-forgery measures? Is it because of the laws of the U.S.? Etc.? | | No, it is a kind of collective hallucination.
It is not a "Collective hallucination"
If you use the work 'reputation' to mean that the past behaviour is a reasonable indicator of future behavior (as most CACL use it) then it is most certainly a shared hallucination. In fact it's not even 'economic', it's 'emotional' in nature. -- ____________________________________________________________________ Day by day the Penguins are making me lose my mind. Bumper Sticker The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
At 03:05 PM 11/25/01 -0800, Tim May wrote:
For many years some of us have argued strongly for "reputation" as a core concept. Someone, perhaps even one of our own, even coined the phrase "reputation capital."
I recently posted how ground squirrels have rep cap.
Reputation is an easily understandable concept which explains a lot about how imperfect protocols in the real world nevertheless "work." I won't go into what reputation is, even as defined by folks like us.
It seemed to be something like hits & false alarm (and probably misses and correct rejections) counts for squirrels. The same info is of use to neurons. Various computer learning algorithms too. An efficient use of persistant state, one would expect.
1. The assumption that an agent or actor possesses a "reputation." A kind of scalar number attached to a person, a bank, an institution, or even a nym.
Two kinds of entities: one maintains reputations, the other doesn't. Guess which is exploited to extinction? ... Again CPunks -or other analysts- are not *advocating* nearly as much as some might like to believe; instead IMHO there is a public discussion going on about essentially inevitable trends we've observed.
On Sunday, November 25, 2001, at 07:30 PM, David Honig wrote:
At 03:05 PM 11/25/01 -0800, Tim May wrote:
For many years some of us have argued strongly for "reputation" as a core concept. Someone, perhaps even one of our own, even coined the phrase "reputation capital."
I recently posted how ground squirrels have rep cap.
I read that. I thought a better description was the more traditional one: squirrels can learn.
Again CPunks -or other analysts- are not *advocating* nearly as much as some might like to believe; instead IMHO there is a public discussion going on about essentially inevitable trends we've observed.
I have no problem being characterized as an "advocate." But I also agree that many of the media frenzies are about things most clueful people knew were nearly inevitable. (Just today there was discussion on CNN about how technical papers on cloning may need to be restricted. More forbidden knowledge. Cf. discussions in 1992 on medical information data havens. In the words of the Big Brother fan we heard from recently, "The government should certainly follow and monitor anyone who buys books on cloning.") --Tim May "The Constitution is a radical document...it is the job of the government to rein in people's rights." --President William J. Clinton
On 25 Nov 2001, at 19:30, David Honig wrote:
At 03:05 PM 11/25/01 -0800, Tim May wrote:
For many years some of us have argued strongly for "reputation" as a core concept. Someone, perhaps even one of our own, even coined the phrase "reputation capital."
I recently posted how ground squirrels have rep cap.
It was interesting, but unless I misread it (a distinct possibility) the squirrels didn't really have something we'd call a reputation. The squirrels would remember "that squirrel keeps claiming there's a stuffed badger when there is no stuffed badger" and would ignore his warnings, but a real reputation system would be more like a new squirrel shows up and the experienced squirrels tell the new squirrel which squirrels are reliable and which aren't. I don't think squirrels are capable of that. The idea of a universal scalar reputation would be that every squirrel in the world has the same opinion of every other squirrel's reliability. I don't think anything like that exists in any species. George
1. The assumption that an agent or actor possesses a "reputation." A kind of scalar number attached to a person, a bank, an institution, or even a nym.
Two kinds of entities: one maintains reputations, the other doesn't. Guess which is exploited to extinction?
But that's not the issue. The point is that repution ins't a simple scalar i.e. one can have a repuation as being highly informed in certain circles and be considered a complete nutter in others, or considered extremely well informed on certain topics and woefully misinformed on others. Even a reputation for morality implies conforming to a specific idea as to what moral behavior is. George
...
Again CPunks -or other analysts- are not *advocating* nearly as much as some might like to believe; instead IMHO there is a public discussion going on about essentially inevitable trends we've observed.
At 03:54 PM 11/26/01 -0800, georgemw@speakeasy.net wrote:
On 25 Nov 2001, at 19:30, David Honig wrote:
I recently posted how ground squirrels have rep cap.
It was interesting, but unless I misread it (a distinct possibility) the squirrels didn't really have something we'd call a reputation. The squirrels would remember "that squirrel keeps claiming there's a stuffed badger when there is no stuffed badger" and would ignore his warnings, but a real reputation system would be more like a new squirrel shows up and the experienced squirrels tell the new squirrel which squirrels are reliable and which aren't. I don't think squirrels are capable of that.
Aha. I have learned something then; I didn't realize that reps must be somewhat infectious. But infectious-reps require a decent medium, e.g., a decent language; squirrels don't really have the degrees of freedom. Though it must be obvious to new squirrels (eg by observing other more seasoned squirrels lack of reaction) that no one takes Spoofie Squirrel seriously. In any case, each squirrel certainly believes their own set of experiences (and reputations inferred therefrom) and so would advocate the adoption of its experience, if sufficiently verbal to do so. Much like primates. In any case, "Spoofie is unreliable about badgers" seems to me to be a reputation. At one extreme of opinion, reps are personal; at the other they are objective and are therefore worth transferring amongst members of so-equipt species. Nature *does* have joints at which it can be carved; high-rep people will tend to recommend other high-rep people and the UFO types will cross reference the Bigfoot folks. Such is the nature of peer review, of cultural epistemology. There are objective parts of reputation, even if no objective agreement on the *sign* of the quality. Crypto/tech will only elaborate what is innate or natural in social critters.
On Mon, 26 Nov 2001, David Honig wrote:
Aha. I have learned something then; I didn't realize that reps must be somewhat infectious. But infectious-reps require a decent medium, e.g., a decent language; squirrels don't really have the degrees of freedom. Though it must be obvious to new squirrels (eg by observing other more seasoned squirrels lack of reaction) that no one takes Spoofie Squirrel seriously.
You're going to learn something else. Once squirrels grow up they don't look to 'other' squirrels for behaviour. It's already set. Squirrels can't learn to solve problems by watching other squirrels. Outside of birds and people, there aren't a lot of animals outside of primates and cetacians that do learn by observation (and this can be, and has been, proven by observation). At most a given squirrel is doing a correlation analysis on whether they (and I challenge you to demonstrate a squirrel has an 'I', which is necessary before they can have a 'they') see a problem or not. After enough false alarms the squirrel HABITUATES and ceases to respond to that call FOR A SHORT TIME PERIOD. You can also find may studies on this involving Meerkats and Chimps (there are lots of studies of chimps - three calls - snake, cheetah, bird). -- ____________________________________________________________________ Day by day the Penguins are making me lose my mind. Bumper Sticker The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks, Tim, for posting an interesting essay. You say:
2. When in fact different people have different assessments of some agent's reputation. Thus suggesting strongly that reputation is not something attached as simply as above.
To expand on this: It seems that using "reputation capital" to describe a multifaceted information space such as even the most wretched of cypherpunks posters does not do that person justice. Even if someone is generally correct and truth-telling, he may also be immoral or a fan of invasive police measures or immature in debate or prone to violations of netiquette -- any of which might lower his reputation capital. Sure, one can say: let's just have a complicated reputation space (think an array of arrays) for each one of these characteristics. To use a silly example: * truthtelling [0-255] * maturity [0-255] * morality [0-255] * netiquette [0-255] * spelling [0-255] * etc. But that quickly becomes burdensome to use as a shorthand. It seems to me that reputation capital is a term that has limited value when applied to something as subjective as the areas above: having an article published in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal (or the Journal of Socialist Doctrine) may lower your reputation capital among some people and raise it among others. This is the nature of subjectivity. Reputation capital is more valuable a term when describing traits that are less subjective. When dealing with an online ecash bank, you may want truthfulness and reliability and good customer service (for example), which are less subjective than "interesting political opinions." -Declan On Sun, Nov 25, 2001 at 03:05:18PM -0800, Tim May wrote:
For many years some of us have argued strongly for "reputation" as a core concept. Someone, perhaps even one of our own, even coined the phrase "reputation capital."
Reputation is an easily understandable concept which explains a lot about how imperfect protocols in the real world nevertheless "work." I won't go into what reputation is, even as defined by folks like us.
But there are many aspects of reputation which lead to problems:
1. The assumption that an agent or actor possesses a "reputation." A kind of scalar number attached to a person, a bank, an institution, or even a nym.
2. When in fact different people have different assessments of some agent's reputation. Thus suggesting strongly that reputation is not something attached as simply as above.
3. All of the nonsense about how "Alice's reputation has been harmed," deriving from the faulty notion of this scalar property attached to Alice.
Aren't we stuck with reputation?
No, a broader ontology of objects and beliefs about them is a better way to go.
The "reputation of the dollar" is related to my belief, and the belief of billions of others around the planet, that for whatever reason a piece of paper with the right markings on it will in fact be accepted by billions of others, by millions of small banks and moneychangers, and even by the U.S. Government. And the related belief that loans, IOUs, promissory notes, bonds, and numerous other instruments denominated in these "dollars" will very likely be accepted or exchanged, blah blah, by millions or billions of other actors. Such is not the case with Monopoly money or even with E-gold.
Thus, what is the "reputation of the dollar"? Is it because of foolproof anti-forgery measures? Is it because of the laws of the U.S.? Etc.?
No, it is a kind of collective hallucination.
Before James Donald freaks out and cites Objectivist arguments that Some Things Are Real, etc., let me point out that "collective hallucination" is mostly a cute phrase. In actuality, our perception of reality is more than just an opium dream. Empiricism, falsifiability, Popper, all that good stuff. But our monetary system is vastly less provably real than the world of atoms and stars is. Because money is fundamentally about bets on the future: will something be exchanged for something else, will governments support what they print, what will the dollar be worth in 5 years, etc.
All crypto is economics. All money is based on belief. All a matter of "betting," of risk/benefit analysis. Related concepts, of course.
Even slightly flawed protocols still "work," given the right embeddings in other systems. (For example, a common flaw cited with remailers is that if there is not enough cover traffic, traceability still exists. But exactly the same flaw exists with money: try getting untraceability with coins if only a few coins exist. Ditto for bearer bonds. Ditto for lots of things where the "protocol fails for small N" but works reasonably well--in the "betting" sense--when a lot of actors are trading a lot of coins and currency.
The value of a monetary token is NOT something that is determined by precise mathematical protocols. It's a value based on _belief_ or _expectation_ about the behaviors of other actors, and about the future. Currency suspected of being counterfeit may sell for 10 cents on the dollar, to a sophisticated buyer, while currency suspected of being legit may or may not sell for at or near face value. (Even perfectly legit currency would sell at a discount in large quanties, probably, because a buyer would be a money launderer. Hence the discount for risk. That is, a market decision based on the obvious tradeoffs.)
Back to reputations.
Seen as part of a larger ecology of a "market construction of reality," there are no fixed or absolute values, no fixed or absolute truths. Some assertions are "many nines" likely to be true, and some are even constructed to be true (*)
(* As in "2 + 2 = 4," though the streetwise person who says "What's the trick?" is realizing that even "known to be true" assertions may not be true, as in base 3. Magicians and con men have known this for a long time.)
Thus, there is no fixed "reputation" of either a person, an idea, or a unit of value. Everything is a matter of belief, of expectation...
Instead of an ontology of objects and their attached methods and property lists, including "reputations" and "monetary values," we should be thinking in terms of these objects as just other actors, with each actor maintaining his own internal model of "possible worlds" (how he thinks the other actors will behave, what he thinks may be future outcomes, what his own goals and expectations are). Seen this way, there is no "reputation" or "value" that is universal. Everything is relative. Everything is seen through the light of internal states/possible worlds.
This is the market view of reality. There is no "Reality." Just ensembles of actors, various facets, incomplete knowledge...all lubricated by betting. Every street kid knows this.
Digital money is just one facet of this worldview.
--Tim May "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -- Nietzsche
At 10:28 AM 11/26/01 -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote:
It seems to me that reputation capital is a term that has limited value when applied to something as subjective as the areas above: having an article published in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal (or the Journal of Socialist Doctrine) may lower your reputation capital among some people and raise it among others. This is the nature of subjectivity.
Indeed, even when there are objective measures, all parties may not agree because they may not agree on those measures. If Alice Squirrel makes an alarm call and Bob Squirrel sees a threat, but Charlie Squirrel doesn't see it, Bob and Charlie will have different stats for Alice's alarm-call reputation. But rep cap as an idea is surely *stronger* when you keep separate numbers for different qualities -reliable vs. interesting posts, for instance. This is *necessary* since individuals vary greatly within themselves. Politicians with excellent reps on issue A and mediocre reps on issue B, for instance. Perhaps though authors should mention the *attribute* whose reputation is estimated when its not obvious. Similarly authors should state *who* is doing the estimating when its not clear its the author.
Reputation capital is more valuable a term when describing traits that are less subjective. When dealing with an online ecash bank, you may want truthfulness and reliability and good customer service (for example), which are less subjective than "interesting political opinions."
But what counts as "good customer service" varies by culture and person, much like whether WSJ publication helps or hurts.
At 08:15 AM 11/26/2001 -0800, David Honig wrote, quoting me:
Reputation capital is more valuable a term when describing traits that are less subjective. When dealing with an online ecash bank, you may want truthfulness and reliability and good customer service (for example), which are less subjective than "interesting political opinions."
But what counts as "good customer service" varies by culture and person, much like whether WSJ publication helps or hurts.
True, in part, but it's far less subjective. We can measure GCS by time-to-answer-phone, number-of-busy-signals, etc. Other metrics, like is-your-bank-account-available-or-not, are even less subjective. -Declan
On Monday, November 26, 2001, at 07:28 AM, Declan McCullagh wrote:
Thanks, Tim, for posting an interesting essay. You say:
Thanks for the thanks. It's just a facet of what I've been thinking about for a long time. I was bored so I just dashed off the piece, more to help crystallize thoughts than to lay out a convincing case. If others are partly convinced, so much the better. If nothing else, it's my stake in the ground that "reputation capital" is the _wrong_ focus. Since it's thrown around a lot here, someone ought to point out the many limitations of the concept.
2. When in fact different people have different assessments of some agent's reputation. Thus suggesting strongly that reputation is not something attached as simply as above.
To expand on this: It seems that using "reputation capital" to describe a multifaceted information space such as even the most wretched of cypherpunks posters does not do that person justice. Even if someone is generally correct and truth-telling, he may also be immoral or a fan of invasive police measures or immature in debate or prone to violations of netiquette -- any of which might lower his reputation capital.
Sure, one can say: let's just have a complicated reputation space (think an array of arrays) for each one of these characteristics. To use a silly example: * truthtelling [0-255] * maturity [0-255] * morality [0-255] * netiquette [0-255] * spelling [0-255] * etc.
This is not really an "array of arrays," just a garden variety n-space. And _not_ a vector space, because vector addition does not work. More of a tensor, in that the axes are independent. (The canonical tensor being the stress-energy tensor for a solid material, for example. The stress in the X axis and the stress in the Y axis do NOT "vector sum" to some resultant stress.) Anyway, I digress. I agree that a person may have various of these components. If I am betting on whether Alice will have few spelling mistakes in a post, I would look at her "spelling [0-255]" measure.
But that quickly becomes burdensome to use as a shorthand.
Though the place we need shorthand is for ordinary human to human communication, and for this it is enough to just say "Alice is a poor speller" or "Declan writes good articles." For a machine, maintaining such data bases is trivial. Not that I think this is especially useful. Think of just one of these facets, one of the most important ones: credit worthiness. Essentially, the basis of a bet on whether Bob will repay a loan.
It seems to me that reputation capital is a term that has limited value when applied to something as subjective as the areas above: having an article published in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal (or the Journal of Socialist Doctrine) may lower your reputation capital among some people and raise it among others. This is the nature of subjectivity.
Which is why I balk at schemes to grade Cypherpunks posts on the basis of "reputation capital" (an idea which bubbles up every couple of years, though no one ever bothers to implement it). Each person has his or her own idea of who they want to read, embodied in a) who they read vs. who they skim vs. who they hit "Delete" on, and b) their kill files. And who they write replies to.
Reputation capital is more valuable a term when describing traits that are less subjective. When dealing with an online ecash bank, you may want truthfulness and reliability and good customer service (for example), which are less subjective than "interesting political opinions."
The direction I'm going is all about digital money. My claim is that a belief ontology (risk, bets, futures, insurance, moneychanging, re-insurance, discounts, etc.) solves many if not all of the "thorny" problems often cited with digital money. The underlying mathematics, important as it is, just becomes another part of the calculation of beliefs. It doesn't matter to me much that folks use the term "reputation capital" loosely to describe actual people...that's just wordage. More important is the application of probabalistic reasoning to digital economies. Maybe I'll have something to show along these lines some day. --Tim May
On 25 Nov 2001, at 15:05, Tim May wrote:
For many years some of us have argued strongly for "reputation" as a core concept. Someone, perhaps even one of our own, even coined the phrase "reputation capital."
Reputation is an easily understandable concept which explains a lot about how imperfect protocols in the real world nevertheless "work." I won't go into what reputation is, even as defined by folks like us.
But there are many aspects of reputation which lead to problems:
1. The assumption that an agent or actor possesses a "reputation." A kind of scalar number attached to a person, a bank, an institution, or even a nym.
2. When in fact different people have different assessments of some agent's reputation. Thus suggesting strongly that reputation is not something attached as simply as above.
3. All of the nonsense about how "Alice's reputation has been harmed," deriving from the faulty notion of this scalar property attached to Alice.
I don't think this follows. If I say "Alice ripped me off", Alice's reputation may well suffer even if reputation isn't a scalar property. People who consider my word as being worthless won't lower their opinion of Alice, but somebody might.
The value of a monetary token is NOT something that is determined by precise mathematical protocols. It's a value based on _belief_ or _expectation_ about the behaviors of other actors, and about the future. Currency suspected of being counterfeit may sell for 10 cents on the dollar, to a sophisticated buyer, while currency suspected of being legit may or may not sell for at or near face value.
Doesn't the concept of "selling for face value" imply that there's a currency known to be legit? I mean, if I'm trading paper for paper I ought to expect to average 1 for 1. Somehow this reminds me of a story I once read where one crook was selling another crook what was purported to be high quality counterfeit money but was actually the proceeds from a bank heist (the irony being that the "real" money was worth considerably less than the counterfeit).
Instead of an ontology of objects and their attached methods and property lists, including "reputations" and "monetary values," we should be thinking in terms of these objects as just other actors, with each actor maintaining his own internal model of "possible worlds" (how he thinks the other actors will behave, what he thinks may be future outcomes, what his own goals and expectations are). Seen this way, there is no "reputation" or "value" that is universal. Everything is relative. Everything is seen through the light of internal states/possible worlds.
I believe what you are saying here is true, but I don't see what recognizing this gets you. In principle, if there's a digital currency which is allegedly redeemable for dollars and I think that there's about a 50-50 chance that I'll actually be able to redeem the currency then I ought to be willing to accept it at 50% face value, but in practice evaluating probabilities like that is pretty hard, and I'm pretty much always going to be coming up with probabilities close to one or close to zero that any kind of "backed" currency is good.
This is the market view of reality. There is no "Reality." Just ensembles of actors, various facets, incomplete knowledge...all lubricated by betting. Every street kid knows this.
Digital money is just one facet of this worldview.
Again, I don't see where this gets us. George
--Tim May "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -- Nietzsche
On Sun, 25 Nov 2001, Tim May wrote:
For many years some of us have argued strongly for "reputation" as a core concept. Someone, perhaps even one of our own, even coined the phrase "reputation capital."
And for as many years many of us have seen that it's not as useful as it would first seem. The reality is that trust isn't transitive and as a result reputation isn't either.
Reputation is an easily understandable concept which explains a lot about how imperfect protocols in the real world nevertheless "work." I won't go into what reputation is, even as defined by folks like us.
It may be 'easily understood', but it's also easily misunderstood (by many).
But there are many aspects of reputation which lead to problems:
Reputation itself is a problem. Past behaviour (toward another) is not a reasonable predictor of future behavior (toward myself). -- ____________________________________________________________________ Day by day the Penguins are making me lose my mind. Bumper Sticker The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
At 09:42 PM 11/26/01 -0600, Jim Choate wrote:
Reputation itself is a problem. Past behaviour (toward another) is not a reasonable predictor of future behavior (toward myself).
Yes but your past behavior towards this list *is* empirically a reasonable predictor of the value of your present and future posts.
On Mon, 26 Nov 2001, Jim Choate wrote:
On Sun, 25 Nov 2001, Tim May wrote:
For many years some of us have argued strongly for "reputation" as a core concept. Someone, perhaps even one of our own, even coined the phrase "reputation capital."
And for as many years many of us have seen that it's not as useful as it would first seem. The reality is that trust isn't transitive and as a result reputation isn't either.
Absolutely. I may trust you, but I might not trust (or even know) your best friend.
Reputation is an easily understandable concept which explains a lot about how imperfect protocols in the real world nevertheless "work." I won't go into what reputation is, even as defined by folks like us.
It may be 'easily understood', but it's also easily misunderstood (by many).
In what way?
But there are many aspects of reputation which lead to problems:
Reputation itself is a problem. Past behaviour (toward another) is not a reasonable predictor of future behavior (toward myself).
Yup, apparently there have been recent cases of high-rep sellers on ebay who when ready to give up the ebay game put up auctions for high priced items that they never deliver, effectively stealing the money. It would be interesting to figure out an effective way to prevent this. Now ebay and things such as paypal, Visa/Master Card have measures against this type of fraud, but they usually just eat the losses of the bidder. ----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--------------------------- + ^ + :Surveillance cameras|Passwords are like underwear. You don't /|\ \|/ :aren't security. A |share them, you don't hang them on your/\|/\ <--*-->:camera won't stop a |monitor, or under your keyboard, you \/|\/ /|\ :masked killer, but |don't email them, or put them on a web \|/ + v + :will violate privacy|site, and you must change them very often. --------_sunder_@_sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------
On Sun, Nov 25, 2001 at 03:05:18PM -0800, Tim May wrote:
For many years some of us have argued strongly for "reputation" as a core concept. Someone, perhaps even one of our own, even coined the phrase "reputation capital."
Reputation is an easily understandable concept which explains a lot about how imperfect protocols in the real world nevertheless "work." I won't go into what reputation is, even as defined by folks like us.
But there are many aspects of reputation which lead to problems:
1. The assumption that an agent or actor possesses a "reputation." A kind of scalar number attached to a person, a bank, an institution, or even a nym.
But there is a scalar number attached to a person which deserves the name "reputation capital", namely his own judgement of what his reputation is worth. The idea of reputation capital solves an important problem: How do we prevent nyms from doing bad things, disappearing, and coming back under a different nym? If a nym has a positive reputation capital, then disappearing is costly, so that provides a disincentive to do bad things.
2. When in fact different people have different assessments of some agent's reputation. Thus suggesting strongly that reputation is not something attached as simply as above.
Yes, that's why we should distinguish between reputation and reputation capital.
3. All of the nonsense about how "Alice's reputation has been harmed," deriving from the faulty notion of this scalar property attached to Alice.
But "Alice's reputation capital has been harmed" is not nonsense. That just means Alice thinks her reputation is now worth less than before.
Aren't we stuck with reputation?
No, a broader ontology of objects and beliefs about them is a better way to go.
The "reputation of the dollar" is related to my belief, and the belief of billions of others around the planet, that for whatever reason a piece of paper with the right markings on it will in fact be accepted by billions of others, by millions of small banks and moneychangers, and even by the U.S. Government. And the related belief that loans, IOUs, promissory notes, bonds, and numerous other instruments denominated in these "dollars" will very likely be accepted or exchanged, blah blah, by millions or billions of other actors. Such is not the case with Monopoly money or even with E-gold.
Thus, what is the "reputation of the dollar"? Is it because of foolproof anti-forgery measures? Is it because of the laws of the U.S.? Etc.?
No, it is a kind of collective hallucination.
There are lots of situations where Alice does X only because she expects Bob to do Y, and Bob does Y only because he expects Alice to do X. Money is an example of this, and so are virtually all other social phenomena. I would call this collective reality, not collective hallucination.
Before James Donald freaks out and cites Objectivist arguments that Some Things Are Real, etc., let me point out that "collective hallucination" is mostly a cute phrase. In actuality, our perception of reality is more than just an opium dream. Empiricism, falsifiability, Popper, all that good stuff. But our monetary system is vastly less provably real than the world of atoms and stars is. Because money is fundamentally about bets on the future: will something be exchanged for something else, will governments support what they print, what will the dollar be worth in 5 years, etc.
I don't see why our monetary system is less provably real than the world of atoms and stars. Every proton in an atom can spontaneously decay. Everyone in the world can spontaneously decide to stop accepting US dollars as payment. It's all a matter of probabilities.
All crypto is economics. All money is based on belief. All a matter of "betting," of risk/benefit analysis. Related concepts, of course.
All crypto is economics. Unfortunately the economics doesn't seem to favor much of the more advanced crypto we're interested in. Just to cite one example, there are a small number of people who value privacy very highly, and a larger number of people who value privacy somewhat. But there's no way to charge them different prices to provide the same untraceable communcation services to them. Since you need a large number of users to provide cover traffic, you have to charge a low price for everyone, and that doesn't seems to be a profitable business. Anonymous ecash seems to have this problem, plus many more. I think we may have been mislead by the extremely favorable economics of basic crypto (i.e. exponential attack/defense cost ratios for encryption and authentication) into thinking that all crypto have favorable economics.
Even slightly flawed protocols still "work," given the right embeddings in other systems. (For example, a common flaw cited with remailers is that if there is not enough cover traffic, traceability still exists. But exactly the same flaw exists with money: try getting untraceability with coins if only a few coins exist. Ditto for bearer bonds. Ditto for lots of things where the "protocol fails for small N" but works reasonably well--in the "betting" sense--when a lot of actors are trading a lot of coins and currency.
The value of a monetary token is NOT something that is determined by precise mathematical protocols. It's a value based on _belief_ or _expectation_ about the behaviors of other actors, and about the future. Currency suspected of being counterfeit may sell for 10 cents on the dollar, to a sophisticated buyer, while currency suspected of being legit may or may not sell for at or near face value. (Even perfectly legit currency would sell at a discount in large quanties, probably, because a buyer would be a money launderer. Hence the discount for risk. That is, a market decision based on the obvious tradeoffs.)
Back to reputations.
Seen as part of a larger ecology of a "market construction of reality," there are no fixed or absolute values, no fixed or absolute truths. Some assertions are "many nines" likely to be true, and some are even constructed to be true (*)
(* As in "2 + 2 = 4," though the streetwise person who says "What's the trick?" is realizing that even "known to be true" assertions may not be true, as in base 3. Magicians and con men have known this for a long time.)
Thus, there is no fixed "reputation" of either a person, an idea, or a unit of value. Everything is a matter of belief, of expectation...
Instead of an ontology of objects and their attached methods and property lists, including "reputations" and "monetary values," we should be thinking in terms of these objects as just other actors, with each actor maintaining his own internal model of "possible worlds" (how he thinks the other actors will behave, what he thinks may be future outcomes, what his own goals and expectations are). Seen this way, there is no "reputation" or "value" that is universal. Everything is relative. Everything is seen through the light of internal states/possible worlds.
This is the market view of reality. There is no "Reality." Just ensembles of actors, various facets, incomplete knowledge...all lubricated by betting. Every street kid knows this.
Isn't this just standard Baysian probability theory/decision theory/game theory? Where are you going with this?
On Thu, 29 Nov 2001, Wei Dai wrote:
But there is a scalar number attached to a person which deserves the name "reputation capital", namely his own judgement of what his reputation is worth.
What's your number? People don't think of themselves as a '5'. Even Hitler thought he was the good guy in the fight. 'good', 'bad', etc. are most certainly NOT scalar.
The idea of reputation capital solves an important problem
It solves nothing, it adds a redundent factor that does nothing but mislead. -- ____________________________________________________________________ Day by day the Penguins are making me lose my mind. Bumper Sticker The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
At 06:41 PM 11/29/01 -0600, Jim Choate wrote:
On Thu, 29 Nov 2001, Wei Dai wrote:
But there is a scalar number attached to a person which deserves the name "reputation capital", namely his own judgement of what his reputation is worth.
What's your number?
People don't think of themselves as a '5'. Even Hitler thought he was the good guy in the fight.
And Hitler probably valued his reputation. So what?
On Thu, 29 Nov 2001, David Honig wrote:
And Hitler probably valued his reputation. So what?
Hitler didn't value his reputation, he was Hitler. What he did was justified. He was an angel among men. There's a moral in there if you look for it. -- ____________________________________________________________________ Day by day the Penguins are making me lose my mind. Bumper Sticker The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
-- On Thu, 29 Nov 2001, Wei Dai wrote:
But there is a scalar number attached to a person which deserves the name "reputation capital", namely his own judgement of what his reputation is worth.
On 29 Nov 2001, at 18:41, Jim Choate wrote:
People don't think of themselves as a '5'. Even Hitler thought he was the good guy in the fight.
He was, however, well aware of that everyone else was so deluded as to think otherwise. Thus he would correctly value his reputation capital as near zero. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG s07NDk+HLPwQqk0aT0IBcIx5EQfImpm5mb5DUKq 4lvjOPV14Sjf0RQg42giSGp3BgMoPgeanqdeb+rKy
Jim Choate wrote:
On Thu, 29 Nov 2001, Wei Dai wrote:
But there is a scalar number attached to a person which deserves the name "reputation capital", namely his own judgement of what his reputation is worth.
What's your number?
People don't think of themselves as a '5'. Even Hitler thought he was the good guy in the fight.
Hitler wasn't the only one who thought he was a good guy. He was a Catholic in good standing throughout his life, and viewed extermination of Jews as holy work. After the failed assassination attempt in 1939, when Hitler's views on and plans for Jews were widely known, the Pope send him congratulations, and several cardinals and bishops were also pleased.
'good', 'bad', etc. are most certainly NOT scalar.
Nor are they transitive. See above. -- Steve Furlong, Computer Condottiere Have GNU, will travel
On 29 Nov 2001, at 16:11, Wei Dai wrote:
On Sun, Nov 25, 2001 at 03:05:18PM -0800, Tim May wrote:
But there is a scalar number attached to a person which deserves the name "reputation capital", namely his own judgement of what his reputation is worth.
Even this is not a scalar. Since reputation cannot be bought and sold, the idea that it is worth a specific well defined amount is false.
The idea of reputation capital solves an important problem: How do we prevent nyms from doing bad things, disappearing, and coming back under a different nym? If a nym has a positive reputation capital, then disappearing is costly, so that provides a disincentive to do bad things.
Claiming you have a concept called reputation capital doen't really solve the problem, it just moves it back a step, leading to questions like how does one aquire/lose reputation capital, how does one discover another's reputation, how does one ensure that a party violating an agreement actually will lose reputation capital, and so on. These questions can be answered, at least sometimes, but usually answering them will make it clear that reputation capital isn't a single number. The idea that a party to a transaction will lose more in reputation capital by failing to honor his obligations than he will gain is a very useful concept. The idea that a nym has a fixed amount of reputation capital and will lose it all with a single failure to comply might be useful in certain simplified models, but it doesn't accurately reflect most real world situations.
2. When in fact different people have different assessments of some agent's reputation. Thus suggesting strongly that reputation is not something attached as simply as above.
Yes, that's why we should distinguish between reputation and reputation capital.
well, maybe. But if we define reputation capital the way you did (the value one places on one's own reputation) then it's important to be aware that one can only know the value of one's own reputation capital.
3. All of the nonsense about how "Alice's reputation has been harmed," deriving from the faulty notion of this scalar property attached to Alice.
But "Alice's reputation capital has been harmed" is not nonsense. That just means Alice thinks her reputation is now worth less than before.
right.
Aren't we stuck with reputation?
No, a broader ontology of objects and beliefs about them is a better way to go.
The "reputation of the dollar" is related to my belief, and the belief of billions of others around the planet, that for whatever reason a piece of paper with the right markings on it will in fact be accepted by billions of others, by millions of small banks and moneychangers, and even by the U.S. Government. And the related belief that loans, IOUs, promissory notes, bonds, and numerous other instruments denominated in these "dollars" will very likely be accepted or exchanged, blah blah, by millions or billions of other actors. Such is not the case with Monopoly money or even with E-gold.
Thus, what is the "reputation of the dollar"? Is it because of foolproof anti-forgery measures? Is it because of the laws of the U.S.? Etc.?
No, it is a kind of collective hallucination.
There are lots of situations where Alice does X only because she expects Bob to do Y, and Bob does Y only because he expects Alice to do X. Money is an example of this, and so are virtually all other social phenomena. I would call this collective reality, not collective hallucination.
So would I, but this is just a disagreement over the terminolgy, not the concepts.
I don't see why our monetary system is less provably real than the world of atoms and stars. Every proton in an atom can spontaneously decay. Everyone in the world can spontaneously decide to stop accepting US dollars as payment. It's all a matter of probabilities.
I think you're going way too far. Proton decay has never been observed in the real world, and people have looked for it really hard. Whereas a whole lot of governments (including the US government) have attempted to solve their debt problems by printing a lot of paper currency, devaluing the existing currency in the process.
Since you need a large number of users to provide cover traffic, you have to charge a low price for everyone, and that doesn't seems to be a profitable business.
I'm not convinced that you do. As I've said before, there are two fundamentally different ways of maintaining anonymity with some sort of digital bearer certificate 1) you can ensure the "bank" can't identify the certifcates as the ones you bought when they're cashed in or 2) you can see to it that the bank doesn't know who "you" are when you buy the certificates in the first place. Number 2 still seems more natural to me. George
On Thu, Nov 29, 2001 at 07:53:02PM -0800, georgemw@speakeasy.net wrote:
Even this is not a scalar. Since reputation cannot be bought and sold, the idea that it is worth a specific well defined amount is false.
If you own a nym, you can easily sell its reputation. Just give the private key to the buyer.
well, maybe. But if we define reputation capital the way you did (the value one places on one's own reputation) then it's important to be aware that one can only know the value of one's own reputation capital.
Yes, I see that as the biggest problem with reputation capital, which is why I proposed a different way of providing disincentives for nyms to do bad things. See http://www.eskimo.com/~weidai/bmoney.txt.
2) you can see to it that the bank doesn't know who "you" are when you buy the certificates in the first place.
How do you propose to do that?
On Fri, Nov 30, 2001 at 12:14:13PM -0800, Wei Dai wrote: | On Thu, Nov 29, 2001 at 07:53:02PM -0800, georgemw@speakeasy.net wrote: | > Even this is not a scalar. Since reputation cannot be bought | > and sold, the idea that it is worth a specific well defined amount is | > false. | | If you own a nym, you can easily sell its reputation. Just give the | private key to the buyer. How does the buyer ensure that I haven't kept a copy? If what I'm selling is a nym, then without the nym, I am anonymous. Adding layers of nymity for reputation with partial disclosure seems a complex and failure-prone approach. Adam -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume
Simple. Once the buyer has the keys she issues an email saying "I'm changing my keys, here's the new public key" and signs it with the old key - thus proving that the nym's original message was valid, thus invalidating the old one. Duh! ----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--------------------------- + ^ + :Surveillance cameras|Passwords are like underwear. You don't /|\ \|/ :aren't security. A |share them, you don't hang them on your/\|/\ <--*-->:camera won't stop a |monitor, or under your keyboard, you \/|\/ /|\ :masked killer, but |don't email them, or put them on a web \|/ + v + :will violate privacy|site, and you must change them very often. --------_sunder_@_sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------ On Fri, 30 Nov 2001, Adam Shostack wrote:
On Fri, Nov 30, 2001 at 12:14:13PM -0800, Wei Dai wrote: | On Thu, Nov 29, 2001 at 07:53:02PM -0800, georgemw@speakeasy.net wrote: | > Even this is not a scalar. Since reputation cannot be bought | > and sold, the idea that it is worth a specific well defined amount is | > false. | | If you own a nym, you can easily sell its reputation. Just give the | private key to the buyer.
How does the buyer ensure that I haven't kept a copy? If what I'm selling is a nym, then without the nym, I am anonymous. Adding layers of nymity for reputation with partial disclosure seems a complex and failure-prone approach.
Adam
-- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume
On 30 Nov 2001, at 13:34, Sunder wrote:
Simple. Once the buyer has the keys she issues an email saying "I'm changing my keys, here's the new public key" and signs it with the old key - thus proving that the nym's original message was valid, thus invalidating the old one. Duh!
Any sort of protocol along these lines will only be successful if people are willing to accept the buying and selling of keys along with associated reputations as valid. I don't think people will. A message along the lines of "I've discovered my key has been compromised, so I'm changing it, but I'm signing it with the old (admittedly compromised) key" should not be believed. The message can as easily come from the compromisor as compromisee, more easily in fact, since a nym thief will doubtless know he's stolen a nym before the victim realizes it. The proper response to such a message would be to indeed view the old key as compromised, but to put no confidence in the "new key" unless it can be verified via an inpendent channel. For a pure pseudonym (not in any way attached to any known physical entity) I'm not sure there is an indendent channel. George George
On Thursday, November 29, 2001, at 07:53 PM, georgemw@speakeasy.net wrote:
On 29 Nov 2001, at 16:11, Wei Dai wrote:
On Sun, Nov 25, 2001 at 03:05:18PM -0800, Tim May wrote: But there is a scalar number attached to a person which deserves the name "reputation capital", namely his own judgement of what his reputation is worth. Even this is not a scalar. Since reputation cannot be bought and sold, the idea that it is worth a specific well defined amount is false.
What makes you think a reputation cannot be bought and sold? Ever hear of Public Relations firms? Politicians? Both are in the business of buying and selling reputations. -- "Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you deal with are half-wits."--Chris Klein
On 30 Nov 2001, at 22:05, Petro wrote:
On Thursday, November 29, 2001, at 07:53 PM, georgemw@speakeasy.net wrote:
Even this is not a scalar. Since reputation cannot be bought and sold, the idea that it is worth a specific well defined amount is false.
What makes you think a reputation cannot be bought and sold?
Ever hear of Public Relations firms? Politicians?
Both are in the business of buying and selling reputations.
Not exactly. You can pay a PR firm to try and help improve your reputation, but that's not the same thing a reputation pre-assembled and gift wrapped. Most likely they'll just tell you to wear more earth tones, which won't actually help. I'm surprised I've gotten so much disagreement over this, particularly since my original statement was much weaker than it could have been. For reputation to have a single well defined value it is necessary but not sufficient that there be a market in reputations; it must be a COMMODITIZED market. think that can happen? Reputation is essentially a kind of credential. If I've got a piece of paper that says I can speak Navajo (hypthetical, I can't really) and I sell that piece of paper, I won't lose the ability to speak Navajo, nor will the purchaser gain it. A market in such pieces of paper would be self-destructive, since knowledge that such papers are commonly bought and sold would quickly make the papers themselves worthless. George
-- "Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you deal with are half-wits."--Chris Klein
-- On 1 Dec 2001, at 8:18, georgemw@speakeasy.net wrote:
I'm surprised I've gotten so much disagreement over this, particularly since my original statement was much weaker than it could have been. For reputation to have a single well defined value it is necessary but not sufficient that there be a market in reputations; it must be a COMMODITIZED market.
Not so. Something has a single well defined value to its possessor without any need for it to be commoditized. For an item to have a single well defined market value it needs to be commoditized, but that is a different issue. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG U5GMQeSNlQCQl5JIYhGl4zYPDycgMVdHUxmfk+l2 4S5Ss0+J1kdE7tCI/aRLeU8oLqXOwYgyIK3jX5qqJ
On 1 Dec 2001, at 12:56, jamesd@echeque.com wrote:
-- On 1 Dec 2001, at 8:18, georgemw@speakeasy.net wrote:
I'm surprised I've gotten so much disagreement over this, particularly since my original statement was much weaker than it could have been. For reputation to have a single well defined value it is necessary but not sufficient that there be a market in reputations; it must be a COMMODITIZED market.
Not so.
Something has a single well defined value to its possessor without any need for it to be commoditized.
For an item to have a single well defined market value it needs to be commoditized, but that is a different issue.
We're not disagreeing. By a "single" value I meant a universally agreed upon value. It's likely true that the owner of any item will have a single value that he thinks he'll be out if that item is destroyed (I can't see how there could be more than one), but unless the item is a commodity, nobody else will know for sure what that value is. George
--digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG U5GMQeSNlQCQl5JIYhGl4zYPDycgMVdHUxmfk+l2 4S5Ss0+J1kdE7tCI/aRLeU8oLqXOwYgyIK3jX5qqJ
On Saturday, December 1, 2001, at 01:40 PM, georgemw@speakeasy.net wrote:
On 1 Dec 2001, at 12:56, jamesd@echeque.com wrote:
-- On 1 Dec 2001, at 8:18, georgemw@speakeasy.net wrote:
I'm surprised I've gotten so much disagreement over this, particularly since my original statement was much weaker than it could have been. For reputation to have a single well defined value it is necessary but not sufficient that there be a market in reputations; it must be a COMMODITIZED market.
Not so.
Something has a single well defined value to its possessor without any need for it to be commoditized.
For an item to have a single well defined market value it needs to be commoditized, but that is a different issue.
We're not disagreeing. By a "single" value I meant a universally agreed upon value.
If there is a "universally agreed upon value" for something, and someone values it differently, is it still "universal"? Nope. What there may be are market-clearing prices, in various markets and at various times, but this has nothing to do with "universally agreed-upon values." --Tim May "The State is the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else." --Frederic Bastiat
At 1:46 PM -0800 on 12/1/01, Tim May wrote:
What there may be are market-clearing prices, in various markets and at various times, but this has nothing to do with "universally agreed-upon values."
Amen. The "worth" of anything is what the market pays for it. Period. I expect that "reputation" is something very close to "goodwill", which is a polite accounting fiction to deal with the fact that the calculated "worth", of an asset as carried on the books of a purchased entity, is less than what the market paid for it. Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 6:09 PM -0500 on 12/1/01, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
I expect that "reputation" is something very close to "goodwill", which is a polite accounting fiction to deal with the fact that the calculated "worth", of an asset as carried on the books of a purchased entity, is less than what the market paid for it.
To go a little further, that calculation, like depreciation, is usually done at the behest of some taxing authority or another. (No, not always, of course -- transferring an asset's ownership on the books of one component of the same enterprise to another with its own books, and then accounting for that on the books of the whole enterprise, called transfer pricing, is one of the core problems of finance, a problem which led to much of what we call modern finance, including a Nobel or two...) Depreciation of an asset is usually a marvellous way for government to control a business, since, of course, the amortization/depreciation of capital against a revenue stream is pretty much what the average large industrial concern is about. Accounting for "goodwill" has caused the most bizarre regulatory-driven book-keeping shenanigans than practically anything else. Irony is a wonderful thing, however. It may be that if we can figure out how to do bearer ownership of assets, using various blinded, or mostly blinded cryptographic transaction protocols, we'll collapse the difference between calculated asset value, ala depreciation, transfer-pricing, and "goodwill", and the *real* value of something, which is its price, discovered in a free market. The more I've thought about this over the past few years, the more I think that "reputation" as a *calculated* value, is probably a wild-goose chase. But you can't blame a bunch of crypto-engineers for trying, I suppose. Cheers, RAH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 7.0 iQEVAwUBPAl1IMUCGwxmWcHhAQHokwgAlGPp34cjDJxMYoPs9V5T5Jif6sn6P1zH suWRYqDCxpK7J9iOLHLfUSQEAUzdnenrrImuUeDqmbyoPMQ8Az+XUv+h65gwNjrG g8z87tzykVzS8DD2vDfhUl+h4aWvWq559W1A9tcQCQwC+Qh2a84LejJD76FDZX9F k0t3kxNO75obC22VTCuL2jwbFrssDKyQp51dGC5hSQIvV7QITu+ywY8UKObwiM99 30FvVDX3tqDpzJ03Ok4KgoSHG4Dp+lo3yreNKqv4UR/zIY2+E5JfzUg4Gvz6nBrc LvNiTOTJTKbca54Xn7QFwkicpJb77haV89Apvc1EgOshBVbIIUtPZQ== =OXo7 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Tim May wrote: [...]
We're not disagreeing. By a "single" value I meant a universally agreed upon value.
If there is a "universally agreed upon value" for something, and someone values it differently, is it still "universal"?
Nope.
What there may be are market-clearing prices, in various markets and at various times, but this has nothing to do with "universally agreed-upon values."
Tim got it right here. The market value of anything is not a universally agreed price, it is any price at which a buyer and a seller can agree to do business. All the discussion about certificates of speaking Navajo or whatever are slightly beside the point. If personal reputation, as such, has a market value it isn't the money you'd get by selling the reputation, because as everyone else already pointed out, if you could sell it, it wouldn't really be a reputation. The market value of a personal reputation is the extra money you could get by selling something else, backed by that reputation. That sort of reputation is used in real markets every day. I need to get the hot water boiler in my flat fixed. I would be prepared to pay more money to a plumber with whatever certificates of plumberhood plumbers have than I would to someone I just happened to meet down the pub. I might be happy to spend even more on someone who had done good work for friends of mine. That sort of reputation has cash value. It is even more important in pseudo-markets, like the ones in board memberships of large corporations, or in public offices in the gift of elected politicians. The kind of people who are called, in England, "The Great and the Good" - an odd mixture of retired businessmen who have made enough money, politicians who know they will never get to the top, academics looking to increase their public profile, and the well-meaning offspring of rich and respectable families. Such people sit on committees, and boards, and commissions, and inquiries, they run charities, and schools, and hospitals, and can make a career out of nothing but reputation. Famous for not even being famous any more. Over here in Britain we get them worse than you Americans do do (though you get them pretty bad, if the list of achievements of the board members of a couple of US companies I have shares in is anything to go by) - we have institutonalised it as the House of Lords. Yuck. Ken Brown
On 3 Dec 2001, at 13:44, Ken Brown wrote:
All the discussion about certificates of speaking Navajo or whatever are slightly beside the point. If personal reputation, as such, has a market value it isn't the money you'd get by selling the reputation, because as everyone else already pointed out, if you could sell it, it wouldn't really be a reputation.
Well, I thought so, but apparently not everyone does, since there's been a certain amount of discussion as to whether a nym might be sold (with associated reputation) and if so how it might be accomplished.
The market value of a personal reputation is the extra money you could get by selling something else, backed by that reputation.
OK, I like this as the basis of the value of a repuation in the specific context of an entity that sells goods and services. I think the concept of reputation in the sense of, say, something that helps you identify posts worth reading is sufficiently different as to merit separate discussion. But back to your above statement. Obviously the value of the rep isn't the extra you get from a single transaction. Does it seem reasonable to say that the total value of the rep should be the total annual extra you get from having the rep times some constant? I think technically it should be the discounted future value stream, but I think that works out to be pretty much the same thing. George
On Monday, December 3, 2001, at 09:26 AM, georgemw@speakeasy.net wrote:
On 3 Dec 2001, at 13:44, Ken Brown wrote:
All the discussion about certificates of speaking Navajo or whatever are slightly beside the point. If personal reputation, as such, has a market value it isn't the money you'd get by selling the reputation, because as everyone else already pointed out, if you could sell it, it wouldn't really be a reputation.
Well, I thought so, but apparently not everyone does, since there's been a certain amount of discussion as to whether a nym might be sold (with associated reputation) and if so how it might be accomplished.
This is "the reputation of a reputation." As soon as people tumble to the fact that "Tom Clancy" has sold his nym/reputation to some hack writer, that is, let them put his name on their words, then the reputation of "Tom Clancy" falls. Nothing new here. "Fisher" was a respected (high reputation) name in stereo equipment. (I don't like the term "reputation," due to issues I've discussed here, but I'm using it in the commonly understood sense.) The name Fisher was bought by a Taiwan maker of equipment, and one can now see "Fisher" on boxes at Costco and Best Buy. Draw your own conclusions. My own sense is that no one is fooled: those young enough not to know what "Fisher" once was don't care. Those old enough to know aren't fooled. I expect the brand name Fisher sold for very little money, reflecting all of these issues. Lots of issues here. I'm still composing a longer essay in response to Wei Dai's and others' points. Some delays. --Tim May --Tim May, Occupied America "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759.
On Mon, 3 Dec 2001, Tim May wrote:
This is "the reputation of a reputation."
As soon as people tumble to the fact that "Tom Clancy" has sold his nym/reputation to some hack writer, that is, let them put his name on their words, then the reputation of "Tom Clancy" falls.
Nothing new here. "Fisher" was a respected (high reputation) name in stereo equipment. (I don't like the term "reputation," due to issues I've discussed here, but I'm using it in the commonly understood sense.)
The name Fisher was bought by a Taiwan maker of equipment, and one can now see "Fisher" on boxes at Costco and Best Buy.
Draw your own conclusions. My own sense is that no one is fooled: those young enough not to know what "Fisher" once was don't care. Those old enough to know aren't fooled. I expect the brand name Fisher sold for very little money, reflecting all of these issues.
It seems to me that the sale of the "reputation" is a red herring in these cases. Tim's giving examples of instances where a particular brand's reputation for a given level of quality became devalued when the brand's product became inferior to products previously sold under the same brand name. I suspect that buyers of Fisher would find the sale of the name unimportant, if the new Taiwanese owners continued to produce equipment of the same caliber as the old Fisher. It takes significantly longer to build a brand reputation than it does to lose it. By purchasing another's name, one attempts to cut the "brand building" stage short -- but it is necessary to live up to the expectations associated with that brand. -MW-
At 10:17 AM 12/3/01 -0800, Tim May wrote:
As soon as people tumble to the fact that "Tom Clancy" has sold his nym/reputation to some hack writer, that is, let them put his name on their words, then the reputation of "Tom Clancy" falls.
I was coming to that conclusion thanks to the public exchange of certain extremely-high-rep folks here. The conclusion: you can't sell a nym. Nyms are best managed by their initiator. You can sell a nym's recommendation reliably but not a nym. Is this true? A grasshopper,
-- georgemw@speakeasy.net wrote:
For reputation to have a single well defined value it is necessary but not sufficient that there be a market in reputations; it must be a COMMODITIZED market.
James A. Donald:
Something has a single well defined value to its possessor without any need for it to be commoditized.
georgemw@speakeasy.net wrote:
We're not disagreeing. By a "single" value I meant a universally agreed upon value.
Strictly speaking, nothing has a single universally agreed value, not even a single universally agreed exchange value, though commodity goods come close. Exchange value is a discovery process, which can never be entirely completed. Our main interest in reputations is that the value of someone's reputation will stop them from doing bad things. For example an auctioneer with a reasonable nym on ebay will get about six percent better prices in auctions than someone with a crappy nym. If one regularly auctions stuff, that is worth serious money. Now reflect that if someone has a good established name on ebay he can sell it, which is why most sellers do not use true names. Of course the buyer, having paid serious money for the name, will usually continue to behave as well as the person who earned the reputation. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG YpkuiCiQKlQNtG6KCw8TrfRj0dRYxgS6RmoIHl44 45BtPAvKM5c1B3GhThLZN0NSLAVL5uag5zYdRmrw3
On Sun, 2 Dec 2001 jamesd@echeque.com wrote:
Our main interest in reputations is that the value of someone's reputation will stop them from doing bad things.
Actually not, most folks use reputations to do away with security checks they would use othewise. It's a sellers cost cutting measure. If you have a 'good' reputation my cost of diong secure and reliable business will probably(!!!) be lower. -- ____________________________________________________________________ Day by day the Penguins are making me lose my mind. Bumper Sticker The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
On Sun, Dec 02, at 12:29PM, Jim Choate wrote: | Actually not, most folks use reputations to do away with security checks | they would use othewise. It's a sellers cost cutting measure. If you have | a 'good' reputation my cost of diong secure and reliable business will | probably(!!!) be lower. I know trying to educate you to the ways of the world is a futile effort, but I can't resist sometimes. How does my great wonderful reputation reduce the cost of doing business with me? It may well give me more business, but certainly not chaper business. I don't care how reliable you are, if you start skimping on security your reliability goes down in my book. --Gabe -- Churchill, Winston Leonard Spencer --On the eve of Britain's entry into World War II: "If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be even a worse fate. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
On Sun, 2 Dec 2001, Gabriel Rocha wrote:
I know trying to educate you to the ways of the world is a futile effort, but I can't resist sometimes. How does my great wonderful reputation reduce the cost of doing business with me?
Ask your bank with regard to loans, for example. Once I got the info in their computers and 'vetted' my 'reputation' to their satisfaction they now loan me sums of money with nothing more than a drivers license & an account number (which I only have to say) I don't even have to sign a document. Ask the gas station which uses the new pumps that use credit and debit cards. Ask your grocer about all those nifty 'discounts' if you will put yourself in their database. and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on ... ...
It may well give me more business, but certainly not chaper business.
See above.
I don't care how reliable you are, if you start skimping on security your reliability goes down in my book. --Gabe
It is the LEVEL or EXTENT of the security. There is not a single state of 'security'. -- ____________________________________________________________________ Day by day the Penguins are making me lose my mind. Bumper Sticker The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
on Sun, Dec 02, 2001 at 12:29:07PM -0600, Jim Choate (ravage@ssz.com) wrote:
On Sun, 2 Dec 2001 jamesd@echeque.com wrote:
Our main interest in reputations is that the value of someone's reputation will stop them from doing bad things.
Actually not, most folks use reputations to do away with security checks they would use othewise. It's a sellers cost cutting measure. If you have a 'good' reputation my cost of diong secure and reliable business will probably(!!!) be lower.
Empirically demonstrated, on eBay, per the Economist. Premium content online: http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=S%26%2BX8%2EQQ%23%25%0A Nutshell summary: reputation nets a 6.8% price advantage (a photo gets you 11.3%). Peace. -- Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html
At 08:18 AM 12/1/01 -0800, georgemw@speakeasy.net wrote:
On 30 Nov 2001, at 22:05, Petro wrote:
What makes you think a reputation cannot be bought and sold? Ever hear of Public Relations firms? Politicians? Both are in the business of buying and selling reputations.
Not exactly. You can pay a PR firm to try and help improve your reputation, but that's not the same thing a reputation pre-assembled and gift wrapped. Most likely they'll just tell you to wear more earth tones, which won't actually help.
George, Petro is *way* off here. A PR firm/psyop division can only try to promote an opinion. They cannot control others' estimations of their clients' reputations. Consider a PR firm that fucks up. A pile of little baby arms, to excerpt Coppola. Yes, a good psyop operation can deny negative information, promote the positive, and thereby influence the population. That is a matter of information flow & control; the reps (which are distributed in the minds of subscribers) are not directly controlled. I suggest recognizing the distinction between controlling info and slant (psyops and Dan Rather and Turner and Murdoch, I don't actually follow that stuff) and controlling reps which can't be done directly (but which can be measured). The fact that info & slant *can* influence distributed reps is why psyops folks have jobs. Finally the reps which can (or can't) be bought and sold (the subject of an amazingly advanced thread, presently) is distinct from control of info and reps thereof. Petro is unfortunately mixing 'selling-of-nym-reps' with 'PR's effect of reps in a given population'. With all due respect.
On Fri, 30 Nov 2001, Petro wrote:
Both are in the business of buying and selling reputations.
Actually they're in the business of buying and selling 'impressions', not reputations. -- ____________________________________________________________________ Day by day the Penguins are making me lose my mind. Bumper Sticker The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
participants (18)
-
Adam Shostack -
David Honig -
Declan McCullagh -
Gabriel Rocha -
georgemw＠speakeasy.net -
jamesd＠echeque.com -
Jim Choate -
Karsten M. Self -
Ken Brown -
measl＠mfn.org -
Meyer Wolfsheim -
Morlock Elloi -
Petro -
R. A. Hettinga -
Steven Furlong -
Sunder -
Tim May -
Wei Dai