Re: \"Reputations\" are more than just nominalist hot air

Responding to msg by jamesd@netcom.com (James A. Donald) on 
Sat, 3 Sep 11:51 PM

>I really do not want to digress onto the issue of 
>nominalism and  legal positivism, which is seriously 
>off topic, but a similar approach on other matters has 
>led to the catastrophic collapse  of societies in the 
>past, and I would claim that it is having  something of 
>that effect in the present.

*  *  *

>If such a system was to serve the function that 
>reputations now serve  in the real world, it would lead 
>to consequences very different from  those intended or 
>desired by Hal.


Your elaboration of this claim, to echo Tim's later post,  
would be welcomed.

Tim has mentioned before that "off topic" is solved by artful 
weaving.  Please do.


John

I wrote: 
> > I really do not want to digress onto the issue of 
> > nominalism and  legal positivism, which is seriously 
> > off topic, but a similar approach on other matters has 
> > led to the catastrophic collapse  of societies in the 
> > past, and I would claim that it is having  something of 
> > that effect in the present.
> 
> *  *  *
> 
> > If such a system was to serve the function that 
> > reputations now serve  in the real world, it would lead 
> > to consequences very different from  those intended or 
> > desired by Hal.

John Young writes
> Your elaboration of this claim, to echo Tim's later post,  
> would be welcomed.

Hal seems to be asking questions which implicitly define
a reputation to be some kind of credential.

This is like *defining* money as fiat money, as governments
are prone to do, or *defining* the value of a good to be its
labor content, as Marx did.

If you assume that the two are the same, then the two will
cease to be the same, the system will screw up, and you will 
need coercion (legal tender laws) to make fiat money work
as if it was actual money, and to make credentials act as 
if they were actual reputations.




-- 
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our
property, because of the kind of animals that we              James A. Donald
are.  True law derives from this right, not from
the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.                jamesd@netcom.com

jamesd@netcom.com (James A. Donald) writes:

>Hal seems to be asking questions which implicitly define
>a reputation to be some kind of credential.

I tried to post something on this last night, but Toad apparently
hiccupped and lost it.  My suggestion was that we do not discuss
"reputations", where I think James is right that the term already
refers to an opinion someone holds in his mind, but rather "reputation
capital" or perhaps "reputation credentials", which are information
structures which may be used to establish or support a reputation.
The example I used last night was that "reputation capital" is not 
"reputation" any more than the "liberty bell" is "liberty".

Then perhaps we can avoid arguing about what a reputation is, and instead
focus on the interesting issue of what the role of cryptography will be
in establishing reputations in a possibly-pseudonymous business network.

Hal