The persistance of reputation

[Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>]

At 8:02 pm -0500 11/11/96, Rich Graves wrote:
>> Given this, and, of course, our own fun and games with anonymous, er,
>> slander, on this list, I'm frequently tempted to agree with him.
>
>You people are wimps. The only real effect of the good doctor's rants
>has been, as Mr. May indicated, to get the good doctor on the "don't
>hire" list.

Sorry. I wasn't clear. My tongue was planted firmly in cheek there. I'm
"frequently tempted" in the same way I'm "frequently tempted" to rip
someone's head off and shit down their neck.

>You get off your ass and find out directly.
>
>How about if you know exactly who it is, but you know him to be
>judgement-proof, since he's already saddled with over $12 million in
>libel and wrongful-death suits? It's called "reputation capital."

See above. You're preaching to the choir here...

>People are just going to have to be smarter than they've ever been. The
>Net enables sharing and verifying real information just as it enables
>disinformation. Sure disinformation will always be cheaper to produce
>and more appealing to the eye (fact is harder to accept than fiction
>because fictional plots are written to make sense), but disinformation
>tends to cancel itself out.

I agree, but, I think that, in the long run, disinformation may cost more.
Lying always involves more work, and thus cost, than telling the truth. In
order to support a lie you have to keep weaving a coherent tissue of other
lies around the original lie to support it, all of which makes the original
lie more and more non-plausible. In other words, the more "resolution" you
get on a lie, the more it looks like a lie. Maybe that's the "cancel itself
out" you're talking about. Of course, that implies critical thinking on the
part of the listener, or at least access to critical information, which is
what the net provides at a cheap price, like you said. So, maybe what we're
saying here is that disinformation costs more than information, but if
disinformer has more money, or at least communication resources, it'll be
believed. On a geodesic network, this is much harder, because centralized
nodes choke on their information load, and can't spread lies as cheaply as
they can on a hierarchically controlled communication network, like
broadcast, or even print, media.

>Work on archives, reputation control, and openness. Disinformation, to
>be truly effective, requires a monopoly on information. More speech, not
>less.

Right.

>(Keep in reserve the retort that anonymity is quite big in "the
>mainstream," too. How many key stories cite "well-placed
>administration sources"?)
>
>The opposite of the Black Unicorn approach to nym safety is the Liz
>Taylor approach: "As long as they spell my name right, I don't care."
>Nobody I care about is going to listen to some crank, or if they do,
>they'll email me to check the facts, or if they don't, I have
>alternative outlets for information. As long as I live in a free country
>with a free Internet, they can't touch me.

Say 'amen' somebody. Reputation is reputation, nym or not. However, nyms
allow something very important. Since the net enables reputation to persist
(functionally) forever, nyms allow you to "start over", much in the same
way that geographic frontiers have functioned historically.

The paradox of ubiquitous network computing is it takes away privacy by
creating persistant information accessable to anyone, while at the same
time creating perfect pseudonymity and thus new reputation.

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga


-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com)
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"The cost of anything is the foregone alternative" -- Walter Johnson
The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/