Re: MUD anyone?

I second many of the comments about the difficulties in coding a reasonably
plausible game or MUD for exploring list ideas.

Just about four years ago exactly, at the first meeting of what was to
become the Cypherpunks group, we "played" the "Crypto Anarchy Game." Based
solely on paper tokens, like Monopoly, the idea was to introduce people to
concepts like digital money, anonymous remailers, information markets, and
so on. Sealed envelopes represented remailed messages, with "mixing" done
by hand.

Lots of imperfections, lots of stalls and dead ends, lots of confusion.
Protocols were imperfectly enforced, messages got lost (literally "dropped
on the floor"), and the game eventually ended in laughter, confusion, and
silliness. But it was deemed useful by most present, as it made more real
the abstractions talked about in the morning session.

Coding nearly any of the core cryptographic concepts for use in an online
game, even without a real crypto core (e.g., using other trust mechanisms)
is likely to be almost as big a job as actually coding the concepts for
real-world use. Could be very educational, and a useful dry run for later
real-world reification of concepts, but by no means easy.

I'm not trying to discourage anyone. Go for it! But it's a _big_ project.

And as Jim Bell noted, there are all sorts of costs which are not properly
accounted for. I would not, for example, expect anything interesting to
emerge out of the simulation of "assassination politics" in such a game, as
the costs, dangers, moral issues, and whatnot are not properly
accounted-for in such a MUD-type simulation. (No more so than in a fantasy
role-playing game, where characters die routinely...)

And as a last note, we had a couple of "hits" bought anonymously back then,
during the game, in '92.

(Hint: One doesn't need a Bell-style infrastructure for bidding on the
death of politicians to raise the money for a hit....many interested
parties would surely pay the $5000 (or less, say some) to buy a hit if the
risks were lowered. And to paraphrase Bell, "I know a way to lower the
risks.")

--Tim May


We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Licensed Ontologist         | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

Tim May wrote:
> I second many of the comments about the difficulties in coding a reasonably
> plausible game or MUD for exploring list ideas.

["Crypto Anarchy Game." value and difficulties stuff snipped]

> Coding nearly any of the core cryptographic concepts for use in an online
> game, even without a real crypto core (e.g., using other trust mechanisms)
> is likely to be almost as big a job as actually coding the concepts for
> real-world use. Could be very educational, and a useful dry run for later
> real-world reification of concepts, but by no means easy.

I don't think it's quite that hard, so I tried to implement asymetric key
cryptography:

20 minutes, to write and debug:

(d encrypt (l (message key)
              (l (n) (if (= key n) message))))

(d makekey (l () (d dkey ())
                 (l (n) (if (!= dkey ()) (encrypt n dkey)
                                         (set dkey n)))))

(d keypair (l () (d a (makekey)) (d b (makekey)) (a b) (b a) (list a b)))

(d keys (keypair))

(d p "Squeamish Ossifrage")
(d c ((car keys) p))
(c (cadr keys))
"Squeamish Ossifrage"
(c (car keys))
()

It relies on a few features of my MUD language, namely that functions
are opaque datatypes, and that any two calls to l (short for lambda)
return objects distinct to !=.

> I'm not trying to discourage anyone. Go for it! But it's a _big_ project.

It is a big project, but the big part is writing the MUD, not adding the
crypto-anarchy stuff to it.  I'm writing a MUD anyway, and have been off
and on for over a year.  Mark Grant's message made me think about what it
would take to add the features I wasn't already planning on.

I'm still interested in ideas as to what primitives I should fake.

> And as Jim Bell noted, there are all sorts of costs which are not properly
> accounted for. I would not, for example, expect anything interesting to
> emerge out of the simulation of "assassination politics" in such a game, as
> the costs, dangers, moral issues, and whatnot are not properly
> accounted-for in such a MUD-type simulation. (No more so than in a fantasy
> role-playing game, where characters die routinely...)

After I think about it more, I realize that a MUD simulation can't show
that something like "assassination politics" wouldn't work.  At best it
can show that it does or doesn't work in that particular environment,
leaving open the question of what key difference between MUD and reality
might change the result.  Still, it would be interesting to see how it
worked, or why it didn't.

I apologize for my earlier comment that presupposed that it would fail.

[snip]

> --Tim May

Jon Leonard