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

[Declan McCullagh]

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