There have been a couple discussions about voting, some about reputation systems, some more about advertising and business models and pretty much we’re talking about the same thing here: Attraction. In a decentralized system we have a bunch of different viewpoints and in the past we try to collate them into a single viewpoint. I think that’s our mistake. We should simply let them be and collect, or divide, as they may. Let the Law of Attraction work as it naturally would and write code that supports that. In another post I wrote the following little note.
I believe in another thread somewhere (I can’t find where) @janitor asked how consensus could be achieved without voting and I replied it wouldn’t be. But to further expound on that idea is the above. One doesn’t try to acheive a single consensus, one simply allows individuals to opt in and out of various consensi, to attract or repel what they do and do not like. Instead of having a culture of conformity one has a culture of individuality and acceptance. When two viewpoints differ they split apart and find others that are like them. Of course there are still those that wish to interact and understand one another and again there are healers and mediators, counselors and diplomats for that as well… or simply the desire to be together. But the point is general consensus isn’t required for a society to function. Although it would be interesting to see that if we did come to agreement on any issues together as a specieis if we all were just left to our own devices.
Anyway my point here is we should start thinking about these various systems, voting, reputation, business models, social structures, in terms of attracting and repelling as opposed to voting or validating any single issue. Instead of determining if someone has “good or bad” reputation it should be a question of whether they have reputation that an individual is personally attracted to or not. A hardcore sports jock might not be so attracted to a professional makeup artist, but his GIRLFRIEND might be. See the difference?
I agree, and this is what I mean when I talk about a reputation system.
I don’t envisage something about good/bad but as something I want/Don’t want to engage with, and the ability for groups to gravitate around common “interests”.
Since I originally started watching this I’ve begun to think differently about how such systems could be built.
Originally I was thinking of something using the gamification approach of StackExchange, not necessarily upvotes and downvotes, but I terms of how to get people to engage.
Lately though, I’ve been thinking that it could be far more seamless, almost invisible. For example, what is twitter, but a very effective reputation system. Not in crude terms like number of followers, but how using it enables us to connect with those people that we are interested in, out of an enormous number of accounts.
If we were to look at the relationships, we would see how this implicit reputation system is encoded by who follows whom, who is referred by whom etc., and how we are guided by this invisible reputation network without being conscious of its presence. For example, I follow people very selectively. I see new people who I might follow when those I already follow retweet things they like. Following and retweeting, unfollowing, blocking etc, become the upvotes and downvotes which we don’t perceive directly, but which are effective, and less crude indicators of usefulness, and in some sense, of reputation.
I’m gonna post this separately as I’ve been meaning to write something down about it! Thanks for the prompt
I still oppose reputation for individuals but at the very least in line with the op it should be something we can opt out of and it should be opt out by default. Again and again I see it becoming a tool for business manipulators as a form of enclosure as it has historically in credit reporting. This is why I see EU privacy laws as important, its stops stuff like credit reporting which are just a scam to jack up interest rates, they amount to paid gossip. It also crimps privacy mining. If they want credit they can do a Dun & Bradstreet type analysis. Reputation for sites and services is another thing but it would vary across reporting entities, some of which depending on how chartered, how open their code was and if they allowed money and influence from any source other than a distributed culling of legitimate end users.
In his version of the future, identity and reputation will be the new currency. Laws and contracts will be laid down in code and, if broken, reparations will be sought mathematically rather than through law enforcement agencies, courts and prisons.
Those who cannot make good will be victim to “coordinated shunning” by the rest of the network – the whole of society. They will not be able to interact financially or in any other system running on the blockchain.
They will be in an “economic prison”. This will extend beyond being unable to make money transfers, because the blockchain will be in control of voting, commerce and communications. Being banished from this system would make life all but impossible
I’ve been thinking about it since I saw your post a while back. I keep thinking it won’t be clean, that there will be some cabal in the mix tweaking the seemingly transparent open code. It feels like programed absolute enclosure. It also seems apt to enshrine possibly something like the current system. Is this tyranny of the database? Programmed exile? In some ways it seems attractive but are we sure it won’t be based on debtor’s prison type terms. Who wants some sort of system where we wear a consensus grade on our foreheads and have to obsess about it? Is this a picture of us locking ourselves out of own house in the rain? This would make us into cogs.
Would we want: HIV positive, penis length, BMI, net worth, GPA, MMPI result, mental health diagnosis, notions of intelligence assessment or potential as tools and all sorts of other stuff pinned to our foreheads? Would we want a secret sauce variant of these in a publishes number or rating? Measurement of humans is a kind of violence and a true invasion of privacy. Privacy would be meaningless after such a system took over. It would be fitting people to machines and not the other way.
How hilarious when exceptions show up. People without ranking or machines or services that aren’t allowed to be ranked. What is worse than being defined by others, which per Thomas Szasz is being mased by them, is being defined by a machine or code.
