Moving beyond "Reputation"--the Market View of Reality

[georgemw at speakeasy.net]

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