Pseudonyms and Reputations

[hanson@hss.caltech.edu (Robin Hanson)]

Hal Finney writes:

>One possibility is a digital reputation system.  Presently people and
>nyms develop informal reputations in the minds of their readers.  This
>could be formalized by allowing readers to create endorsements of
>various types for those who have worthwhile things to say.  ...
>People who are able to bring a variety of endorsements from respected
>individuals or organizations will be able to have their words carry
>weight from the beginning.  ...
>
>The social problems of determining when writers should receive
>endorsements, how much credence to give to endorsements from unknown
>endorsers, how to appropriately display endorsements, and how to easily
>validate and verify endorsements proffered by others, are harder to
>solve.  Despite these issues, a modification to Magic Money to support
>this application would allow for some initial experiments with the
>concept, which might help show where the significant problems lie.

Years ago, I worked on "hypertext publishing", a vision of electronic
publishing that often included the image of readers choosing what to
read based on automated personal filters, filters which merged
evaluations from previous readers, and which weighted those readers
according to explicit "reputations", which were to be some sort of
merging of evaluations of that reader.  

I eventually came to believe that the social aspects of this vision
were the least well thought out, and needed the most attention.  But
the Xanadu software techies I worked preferred to focus on concrete
software problems, though they acknowledged the importance of social
issues.  As I thought more about social issues, I drifted from the
Xanadu group and toward thinking about other problems, which eventually
led to my new career as a designer of social institutions.

Anyway, the point of my story is to agree with Hal that there are big
issues yet to be dealt with regarding decentralized reader filtering
based on explicit author endorsements.  And I want to remind folks that
these issues are pretty much independent of cryptography; they have
been around for a while, waiting for someone with the relevant social
expertize to give them serious attention.

So, yes, experiments would be useful, though they needn't be tied to a
cryptographic system.  But some just plain careful thinking would be
perhaps more useful.  I fear, however, that these issues may remain
largely undealt with for some time to come, since the techies most
interested in them may again prefer to focus on familiar software and
math problems, rather than invest the time needed to develop expertize
on social issues.  I hope you prove me wrong though. :-)

Robin Hanson