From: Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com>
Date: Mon, 5 Sep 94 17:41:48 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: \"Reputations\" are more than just nominalist hot air
In-Reply-To: <199409041853.LAA17023@netcom7.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <199409060041.RAA15683@jobe.shell.portal.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


jamesd@netcom.com (James A. Donald) writes:

>Hal seems to be asking questions which implicitly define
>a reputation to be some kind of credential.

I tried to post something on this last night, but Toad apparently
hiccupped and lost it.  My suggestion was that we do not discuss
"reputations", where I think James is right that the term already
refers to an opinion someone holds in his mind, but rather "reputation
capital" or perhaps "reputation credentials", which are information
structures which may be used to establish or support a reputation.
The example I used last night was that "reputation capital" is not 
"reputation" any more than the "liberty bell" is "liberty".

Then perhaps we can avoid arguing about what a reputation is, and instead
focus on the interesting issue of what the role of cryptography will be
in establishing reputations in a possibly-pseudonymous business network.

Hal