From: gregburk@netcom.com (Greg Burk)
Date: Sun, 15 Sep 1996 09:31:41 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Reputation in action
Message-ID: <7654f2dw3r@netcom.com>
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Well, this looks like a chance to quickly correct some mistakes without
spending a lot of time framing the issue.
 
tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May) writes:
> But this latest episode illustrates the role of reputations. Namely, my own
> reputation is not being harmed by bizarre commentaries from the Vulis-bot.
 
..among people who directly know you. You seem to see this as an
example of reputations in action. But there isn't any "repute" in there
at all. Surely this grand theoretical "reputation" framework isn't
needed to describe simple direct experience.
 
And it seems to me that your usage of "reputation" has at different
times meant both direct and indirect exposure. This clearly discards
important information, often to the detriment of your analysis. Perhaps
you can explain why the two separate things are the same in some
important way, aside from merely that they both involve esteem.
 
 
> As its reputation is (apparently) pretty low, and associated with Serdar
> Ardic-style rants about "sovoks," "the cabal," and "spit," such an entity
> can hardly "assassinate" my character.
 
 
> A few years ago Larry Detweiler, aka "vznuri" ("visionary"), aka "S.Boxx,"
> aka "Pablo Escobar," aka several other alternate personalities, wrote
> dozens of screeds denouncing me, Eric Hughes, Nick Szabo, Hal Finney, etc.
> Did this have an effect on our reputations? Not to people I respected, of
> course. And if Detweiler's rants affected my reputation with his peers,
> including Dimitri Vulis, Ludwig Plutonium, Doctress Neutopia, Serdar Argic,
> well, this is to the good.
 
> In the mathematics of reputations, a negative reputation held by one whose
> own reputation is negative is a positive.
 
I don't think this is an example of any such thing. I would not respect
a person even a tiny bit more just because a kook disrespects them. In
fact, since the kooks frequently hold each other in very low esteem, the
suggested polarity-math is self-contradictory.
 
Rather, I think this is an example of how direct exposure supercedes
reputation.
 
 
 
 
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