* Neil Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [020302]: > So how does one respond to comments, in light of these current (and past) > events, on the idea that no-one will be able to "trust" the reputations > of anonymous brokers, sellers, or issuers.
> > All were supposedly trusted and respected institutions that had established > track records that suddenly collapsed. > > I'm most fascinated by the E-bay case where a seller of collectible ceramics > was able to build quite a positive reputation and then leverage that > reputation to bilk buyers out of a few hundreds of thousands of dollars. > > At least we know this guy's name. In an anonymous world we wouldn't even have > that. > > I suppose that the risk of fraud could be reduced by the use of "insurers" > that would have to ante up money if a party reneged on a contract (and > perhaps knows the identity of that party). But what prevents that insurer > from becoming an "Anderson" ? > > How is our hypothetical "Joe Six-Pack" going to be able to buy into anonymous > entities when this kind of risk is probably a certainty. > > -Neil > This ground was covered (Hi Tim!) a loooong time ago. Look here: http://Www.inet-one.com/cypherpunks/dir.2001.04.16-2001.04.22/msg00089.html for a rather recent summation. What does this boil down to? It boils down to E-bay not knowing what the fuck they were doing, and buyers following them off the cliff. Reputation isn't the same value for everyone, or it shouldn't be. If you check out the slashdot threads on it (lost the link, search works fine), you'll notice even there buyers doing a crude method of evaluation of people who gave this seller positive rep. One guy apparently even made a PHP script to detect short chains of pretty blatantly obvious reputation wank circles. Is this problem incurable? No. Is it incurable in its current form? Absolutely. The system is built up around the concept that one _can have_ a rep value that is just a number that means the same for everyone. That concept is bullshit. Oh, and as far as the terminology of reputation vs. belief, if it bothers, global search and replace is your friend.
