15.3.1. The claim by many of us that "reputations" will take care of
many problems in crypto anarchic markets is disputed by some
(notably Eric Hughes). To be sure, it will not be a trivial
issue. Institutions take years or decades to evolve.
15.3.2. However, think of how often we use reputations: friends,
books, movies, restaurants, etc
15.3.3. Reputations and other institutions will take time to evolve.
Saying "the market will talke care of things" may be true,
but this may take time. The "invisible hand" doesn't
necessarily move swiftly.
15.3.4. "What are 'reputations' and why are they so important?"
- a vague concept related to degree of believability, of
trust, etc.
+ "we know it when we see it"
- (sorry for the cop out, but I don't have a good
definition handy....James Donald says studying reputatons
is "nominalist hot air" [1994-09-02], but I think it's
quite important)
+ obvious, in ordinary life, but in the cyberspatial context
- reputation-based systems
- escrow, expectations
- "reputation capital"
- like book or music recommendations
- web of trust (is different than just "trust"---tensor,
rather than scalar)
+ Actually very common: how most of us deal with our friends,
our enemies, the books we read, the restaurants we
frequent, etc.
- we mentally downcheck and upcheck on the basis of
experience; we learn
- Are there examples?
- Eric's objections
15.3.5. "How are reputations acquired, ruined, transferred, etc.?"
+ First, reputations are not "owned" by the person to whom
they are attached by others
+ the algebra is tricky...maybe Eric Hughes or one of the
other pure math types can help straighten out the
"calculus of reputations"
- reputations are not symmetric: just because Alice
esteems Bob does mean the reverse is so
- reputations are not transitive, though they are
partially transitive: if Alice esteems Bob and Bob
esteems Charles, this may cause Alice to be somewhat
more esteemful of Charles.
- a tensor matrix?
- a graph?
+ Any holder of a reputation can "spend" some of his
reputation capital
- in praise or criticism of another agent
- in reviews (think of Siskel and Ebert "spending" some of
their reputation capital in the praise of a movie, and
how their own reptutations will go up and down as a
function of many things, including especially how much
the viewing audience agrees with them)
15.3.6. "Are they foolproof? Are all the questions answered?"
- Of course not.
- And Eric Hughes has in the past said that too much
importance is being invested in this idea of reputations,
though many or even most of us (who comment on the matter)
clearly think otherwise.
- In any case, much more study is needed. Hal Finney and I
have debated this a couple of times (first on the
Extropians list, then a couple or more times on the
Cypherpunks list), and we are mostly in agreement that this
area is very promising and is deserving of much more
thought--and even experimentation. (One of my interests in
crypto simulations, in "protocol ecologies," is to simulate
agents which play games involving reputations, spoofing,
transfers of reputations, etc.)
15.3.7. Reputations have many aspects
+ the trading firm which runs others people's money is
probably less "reputable" in an important sense than the
trading firm in which partners have their own personal
fortunes riding....or at least I know which one I'd trust!
- (But how to guarantee one isn't being fooled, by a spoof,
a sham? Hard to say. Perhaps the "encrypted open books"
protocol Eric Hughes is working on will be of use here.)
By Tim May, see README
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