Reputation distortions?

[Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>]

At 6:05 am -0500 11/19/96, snow wrote:
>     Reputation could also eleminate the need for judges. If Matt Blaze,
>or Randall S. were to try to claim a specific bounty, people would be
>more likely to accept their claim than if I were to do so.

But, what about reputation distortions?

There's the famous story about a guy presenting his discovery of the normal
distribution to a scientific society. Gauss was in the audience. He stood
up and said something like, "Oh. I figured that out years ago."

We now call it a "Gaussian" distribution, among other things.

If I remember the story correctly, Gauss never subsequently proved that he
discovered the normal distribution first, and he certainly never published
it at the time he said he discovered it.

Nobody remembers the name of the guy who was presenting the paper, though.
At least, I can't now. :-).

I'm not saying that Gauss *didn't* discover the normal distribution. I'm
saying that he didn't have to *prove* he did. Of course not. He was the
greatest mathematician of his time, and probably since.

I'd call the event a reputation distortion.

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/