From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Date: Sat, 23 Nov 1996 09:29:33 -0800 (PST)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: The persistance of reputation
In-Reply-To: <v03007800aea91c1473f2@[206.119.69.46]>
Message-ID: <v03007802aebc04ebf5f8@[206.119.69.46]>
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At 9:47 pm -0500 11/14/96, Rich Graves wrote:

>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.

Now you sound like Tim. :-). An end to this dicussion is just a killfile
away. Be my guest.

>  (Or possibly this issue has
>brought together such strange bedfollows that I'm ready to believe that
>anything is possible.)

"C'mon, Kids! Be-LEIVE! Or Tinkerbell's gonna die!"

>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.

I agree to disagree. The "Big Lie" only works with mass media. On a
ubiquitous geodesic network, all such bets are off.

>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.

See above. When you have an avalanche of dissent from lots of different
voices, all with technically the same size "megaphone", it doesn't take a
new kind of reputation calculus (or even rocket science) to get the idea
that FUD by any other name stinks just the same...

>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.

You're citing mass media again. When you have quasimonopolistic control of
a monster-megaphone the truth tends to get drowned out, or at least
homogenized, in the same way that creationism gets homogenized with real
science for "equal time", say.

>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.

Again, you're using big-think here, invoking the power of large
hierarchically organized industrial institutions.

The world don't work that way anymore. Or it won't, soon enough.

>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.

Whew. Actually. You're proving my point. In a hierarchically organized
media structure, you get lots of feedback loops repeating the same old shit
over and over, all done in order to keep the channel full during the slack
periods. Let's take TWA 800 frendly fire story. It's been lurking in the
same loony.news and mail groups, and most people on the net think it's a
shit-story. However, Pierre Salanger gets wind of it, puts it into the ABC
evening news as gospel, and all the sudden it's a headline. The power of
the megaphone, all over again. They don't call 'em "gatekeepers" for
nothin', bunky.

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

Reputation is reputation, biometric or otherwise. On the net, your key is
who you are, no matter what your "True Name" is... Kind of like Turing(?)
test, only with reputation, I guess.

>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.

Okay. Then it should be trivial for you to tell me who "Pr0duct
Cypher"(sp?) is...

Have fun.

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/