Re: The persistance of reputation

[Rich Graves <rcgraves@ix.netcom.com>]

Robert Hettinga wrote:
> 
> At 8:02 pm -0500 11/11/96, Rich Graves wrote:
> 
> >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.

Sorry for the misinterpretation. Clearly your reputation has not 
persisted in my mind with sufficent clarity since the last time I was 
involved in a cypherpunks discussion. (Or possibly this issue has 
brought together such strange bedfollows that I'm ready to believe that 
anything is possible.)

> >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.

I disagree. You're assuming that you're dealing with a rational person 
who wants to be believed. It is not difficult to come up with examples 
of pure disinformation that is just "thrown out there" and never 
supported. Keep repeating the same lie, and *nonspecialists* will assume 
that there is a "debate" going on. To take an example that won't make me 
sound "politically correct," let's say the national security 
establishment tries to spread the rumor that the remailers are run by 
spooks (we've all seen the rumor; I'm not arguing and do not really 
believe that the rumor was started by spooks, but let's assume for the 
sake of argument that it was). *We* all know that this is nonsense; but 
*nonspecialists* and journalists will seize on "the controversy," and 
the perception of danger will create a real chilling effect on remailer 
use. There are still people out there who refuse to use any version of 
PGP after 2.3 because of such repeated rumors. Absolutely no one is 
trying to back them up with more complex lies; but the rumor persists.

> Maybe that's the "cancel itself out" you're talking about.

No, actually I meant that competing propaganda tends to kill itself -- 
normal people tend just to throw up their hands and say "What the hell 
does it matter anyway" -- but your interpretation is worth talking 
about, too.

> 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.

No. It requires both. And sometimes, technical skill. How many people 
here know enough to evaluate the data concerning, to take a notorious 
example, the Kennedy assassination? I accept the historical consensus, 
but I know there are a lot of otherwise rational people on cypherpunks 
who are convinced that there was some sort of coverup (which sort, they 
often don't know or care; but they're conviced there was one). Oliver 
Stone got some ridiculous movie made based on this non-thesis (actually 
two, counting Nixon). People growing up today are learning pseudohistory 
and pseudoscience from Oliver Stone, "The X Files," "Dark Skies," and 
"Millenium." I find that scary. The net is better than TV, because it 
allows more responses, but I'm not sure how much better.

> 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.

No, I think pure disinformation is cheaper. Period. And often, it 
doesn't have to be "believed" -- you just need to raise "suspicions" 
among nonspecialists. That is sufficent to destroy consensus and trust 
in social institutions. At the risk of sounding politically correct, how 
many nonspecialists "suspect" that the accepted history of the Holocaust 
*could* be a massive propaganda plot? (Yeah, yeah, I know the "soap 
stories" and the Polich Communists' exaggeration of the non-Jewish death 
toll at Auschwitz and all that rot, but I mean the basic facts, which 
are often denied. If you want to jump on this point, take it to 
alt.revisionism, which I read closely.) Absolutely no historians believe 
that, but lots of nonspecialists do. This doesn't mean that they believe 
it to be true; it just means that there's doubt. This kind of "doubt" is 
not the same as skepticism. Skepticism is good. Skeptical inquiry means 
you decide to take the time to investigate a story. Stubborn, cynical 
doubt, especially when based on ignorance and prejudice, is something 
else entirely.

> 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.

I disagree with two of your premises. Knowing several real journalists 
(as opposed to opinion columnists), I don't consider print or broadcast 
to be particularly hierarchical. The difficulty of propagating 
disinformation depends on whether you want people to believe, or merely 
"suspect." The TWA 800 friendly-fire fiction doesn't have to be accepted 
as definitely true for it to cause trouble. The "supicion" of Richard 
Jewell doesn't have to be accepted as definitely true for it to cause 
trouble. Disinformation is more often about sowing fear, uncertainty, 
and doubt than it is about belief. Sold the right way, it can propagate 
itself; the (IMO) disinformation that the CIA is directly responsible 
for the crack-cocaine epidemic is spread by radical blacks who see it as 
a racist crime, and by radical-right conspiracy mongers who want to tie 
Clinton to the Mena story. Either way, the meme virus spreads. How many 
different kinds of groups are saying how many different groups "created" 
the AIDS virus? You don't have to "believe" that it's true for the meme 
to spread.

> >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.

To some extent, but not fully. There is a certain cachet in being 
recognized as someone who uses "your real name."

"We pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour."

"John Hancock."

> 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.

Pseudonymity is only perfect where artificial boundaries such as respect 
for netiquette are erected. If someone really wanted to track you down, 
they could either find you, or "out" you as a pseudonym "afraid to use 
your own name." Both can be damaging (to your reputation or otherwise). 
In order to put your life on the line for something, you need a life 
story.

-rich