Is lowering Rep a form of social coercion?

Sun, 2012-08-05 15:05

#2

Jaberwo

Someone cited this as the main reason for EP being dystopic

I really didn't like that part of the additional rep explanation in Rimward. Especially the problem with socially awkward people, although they stated there were mechanisms that try to avoid that, but without elaborating. In my EP your reputation might suffer from people who don't like you, but your rep-score cannot. There are only favours given and favours received, but I am not confident, that my system would be better, would work like the sourcebooks suggest or work at all for that matter. A side question: Who exactely programms the rep-network software? How does it work? Who decides how it is designed?

Sun, 2012-08-05 15:47

#3

Chevre

Rep as coercion/How does it work?

@Libertad As I read it, Rep works a bit like social file sharing. As long as you're seeding (doing favors) at a roughly 1:1 ratio to what you're leeching (getting favors in return), your Rep stays fairly constant. More seeding/seeding better stuff=higher rep. If all you do is ask for things and never give anything back, your rep suffers. On an anarchist habitat or other entirely Rep-based economy, being "productive" isn't about conforming to social norms, it's about giving as much as you give and helping out where you can. At least that's my reading of it. @jaberwo Rep is an aggregate of all of the social interactions you've had with people in that network, so I would guess it works similarly to some of the restaurant review sites or the Netflix rating system, except more complicated and future-y. Presumably there are filters in place to keep your Rep from going down from the social equivalent of a bad Yelp review. Possibly something similar to the way banks flag unusual transactions for later investigation. As for who runs it, the only way I see it functioning is as a massively decentralized system with multiple redundancies. Otherwise it would be far to easy to game the system for personal gain.

—

[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/bar_userbar.jpg[/img]

Sun, 2012-08-05 16:06

#4

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

I do think the rep economy

I do think the rep economy has a lot of potential dark sides. However, I do not think giving a ding normally is coercion. Coercion in my book is when you reduce the range of possible actions of a person in such a way that only the actions you approve of are practical. Dinging somebody's rep reduces their range of action to some extent, but it doesn't force them to do anything in particular. So unless your deliberate desire is to prevent them from doing actions requiring high-rep or to get them to do simple survival actions, I do not think dings are coercive.

—

Sun, 2012-08-05 17:51

#5

Gerzel

One thing I'd point out is

One thing I'd point out is that bartering is still part of the economic system. Someone with low rep might have to barter and agree to do immediate work or exchange something for payment. Not saying that this absolves the rep system, but it is something to consider. As to if there is Coersion: Yes. Absolutely. Does this make them hypocrites: Somewhat. But so are nearly all idealists throughout history. Look deep enough and you'll find problems with any philosophy. So the real question is: Is this as bad as the system they are fleeing? Is it an improvement? To that I think more discussion is needed.

Sun, 2012-08-05 18:08

#6

Jaberwo

How the rep system works in my EP universe

Chevre wrote:
@Libertad As I read it, Rep works a bit like social file sharing. As long as you're seeding (doing favors) at a roughly 1:1 ratio to what you're leeching (getting favors in return), your Rep stays fairly constant. More seeding/seeding better stuff=higher rep. If all you do is ask for things and never give anything back, your rep suffers. On an anarchist habitat or other entirely Rep-based economy, being "productive" isn't about conforming to social norms, it's about giving as much as you give and helping out where you can. At least that's my reading of it.

This is similar to my opinion, but the canon rep systems are indeed about social norms. Rimward page 179. : FOAF does illustrate an ongoing problem with rep systems, in that people who are socially awkward tend to be penalized. Some systems (@-list and RNA) try to account for this, but networks like Fame consider it a feature, not a bug.

Chevre wrote:
@jaberwo Rep is an aggregate of all of the social interactions you've had with people in that network, so I would guess it works similarly to some of the restaurant review sites or the Netflix rating system, except more complicated and future-y. Presumably there are filters in place to keep your Rep from going down from the social equivalent of a bad Yelp review. Possibly something similar to the way banks flag unusual transactions for later investigation. As for who runs it, the only way I see it functioning is as a massively decentralized system with multiple redundancies. Otherwise it would be far to easy to game the system for personal gain.

What exactly do these filters? Who decides what they do? How can you make a decentralized system wth thousands of different habitats and millions of people all differing in countless aspects? How does this help to avoid gaming the system? (I hope this doesn't sound agressive, I just write down the questions that come to my mind when I read that, or the canon descriptions) My crude take at the software and mechanics behind the rep system looks like this: -When you do something for someone your muses writes that down in a special part of the profile you broadcast to everyone who wants to see it. Example 1: Sava makes beauty stuff, like hair, make up, wellness etc. She gives a member of her habitat a new haircut. Her muse writes in her Favour log: Sava gave Carol a new haircut. Example 2: Amanda, an anarchist habitat technician works with her small collective to maintain the systems of her 1000 people beehive habitat. After each workday her muse writes in her favour log: Amanda worked 8h to maintain the hab. -The person or entity for whom the favour was done also writes that down in their log, to confirm what has been done. Example 1: Carol writes in her log: Sava gave me a new haircut. Maybe she says that she really likes it, and that it was good work. Example 2: Amanda's coworkers let their muses write in their logs: Amanda did 8h of work with me. They also write that in their decentralized infopage of the collective, which is also easier to find via mesh. -When you then want to get something for yourself you ask someone. That someone lets his muse check your profile and it sees what you did and what people did for you. According to the opinion of its master it weighs the favours against each other and displays the result in a form choosen by their owner, for example the typical rep score from 0 to 100. Example 1: Sava goes to a doctor to get a multi tasking augmentation. The doctor checks her favour log and his muse gives him a score that tells him she didn't do enough favors to outweigh all the favours she has been given lately by other people. If he had instruced his muse differently, like making less difference between the work of scientist and the work of a beauty specialist, or not count the work done for outsiders, he could have come to a different conclusion. Example 2: Amanda goes to the public CM to get 5 automechs for her hobby: making sculptures. The AI of the CM, checks her favlog and evaluates it according to parameters that have been voted on. It sees all the work Sava has done the past few months and how sparingly she needed the resources or services of others or the habitat. It decides that Sava can have the 5 bots. Bigger entities also have rep. They are for example collectives, microcorps or entire habitats communities. Often they are less important and only serve as an indicator for efficency Example: Sava's maintenance collective needs spare parts and tools so they get lot of favours from the CM collective. Every few days every inhabitant writes in their log from what habitat systems they profit and the maintenance collective writes how many people had a benefit from their work (usually everyone). At the habitat meetings they proudly present the high rep score of the collective. There are some debates about how good this represents reality and a few changes are made to how some services between groups are weighed but overall the conclusion is that they did good work. The overall rep increase of all collectives is taken as a sign that the habitat could get a new large scale project on the way like a mining operation on the other side of the asteroid. The rep scores of the collectives are set to zero.

Sun, 2012-08-05 18:04

#7

Gerzel

Jaberwo wrote:A side question

Jaberwo wrote:
A side question: Who exactely programms the rep-network software? How does it work? Who decides how it is designed?

Depends on the network. For example the hypercorps have CivicNet. Dollars to doughnuts that means that there is a corperation who has a product called CivicNet that they program. It might be a single dedicated Corp, like ICANN or just a product of another corp. A GM playing in the inner system might even introduce two or three other competitors with CivicNet being the largest. r-Rep is Research Network Associates. Which I'm willing to lay odds are like ICANN, a corperate entity built solely to maintain the r-Rep network. I'd also bet that they are like RedHat overseeing and the largest contributors to, but not owning outright, an opensource software package. In fact there might be plugins that apply to r-Rep. Such as say filters that focus only on one area of study, or discount social dings favoring "hard research" over politics. The Circle-A List is almost certainly open source and probably has several versions out in the wild that might adjust a character's rep depending on where they are. Titanian would be a good example where heavilly adjusted @-rep might be used with good and bad deeds in Titanian space having more of an impact. Just some ideas. Could make an entire book on it. Or at least a supplement.

Sun, 2012-08-05 19:33

#8

Chevre

[quote=Jaberwo

Jaberwo wrote:
Rimward page 179. : FOAF does illustrate an ongoing problem with rep systems, in that people who are socially awkward tend to be penalized. Some systems (@-list and RNA) try to account for this, but networks like Fame consider it a feature, not a bug.

I don't have Rimward yet (is it any good?) but that does put a different spin on it. I'd tended to think of your Networking skill as representative of your social skills in the reputation network, whereas your Rep score was independent of opinion. So if you've got somebody with c-Rep 60 but Networking (Civic Network) 20, then they've got great performance evals and could probably ask for a raise/company car/whatever, but have no idea who to talk to to get it done.

Jaberwo wrote:
(I hope this doesn't sound agressive, I just write down the questions that come to my mind when I read that, or the canon descriptions)

Not at all. Gouge away.

Gerzel wrote:
A GM playing in the inner system might even introduce two or three other competitors with CivicNet being the largest.

Like the three credit rating bureaus in the US? Slightly different numbers on each of them, but based on the same basic data. I like it.

—

[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/bar_userbar.jpg[/img]

Sun, 2012-08-05 19:55

#9

Jaberwo

Chevre wrote:I don't have

Chevre wrote:
I don't have Rimward yet (is it any good?)

It is awesome. The part I cited was the only thing I didn't love so far.

Mon, 2012-08-06 03:08

#10

Xagroth

Personally, I think saying

Personally, I think saying "the rep system is a way of coercing people to contribute to society" is the same as saying "money is a way of coercing people to be productive". The difference? Money does not depend on anybody but you playing the system, while rep makes whatever you do to be judged by your peers. So with money you can produce useless stuff and get away with it, while rep encourages to provide what is needed because that is what will grant more rep.

Mon, 2012-08-06 05:34

#11

babayaga

Reputation is just a network of currencies!

Xagroth wrote:
Personally, I think saying "the rep system is a way of coercing people to contribute to society" is the same as saying "money is a way of coercing people to be productive".

Absolutely. Any sort of system where others create incentives favouring some courses of actions is, ultimately, a form of coercion. Even just saying "thank you" when someone does you a favour is coercion -- you are (ever so mildly) pushing that someone to do you more favours in the future. In fact, for a person that has very high moral standards, just knowing that some action will benefit someone else is a form of coercion: that someone else, by virtue of just *existing*, is coercing the moral person towards taking that action. Obviously, these are all extremely mild forms of coercion, and most people won't resent them or even consider them "coercion". The catch is that coercion spans a continous spectrum from the really nasty (torture and such) to the extremely mild (knowing that if you do something, someone else may be just a little happier). Thus, it's really not appropriate to classify it in a binary fashion (coercion or not coercion), very much like it's not really appropriate to classify beauty, or size, in a binary fashion (beautiful or ugly, large or small): wherever you'd draw the line, you will have situations that are almost indistinguishable on two different sides of the line.

Xagroth wrote:
The difference? Money does not depend on anybody but you playing the system, while rep makes whatever you do to be judged by your peers. So with money you can produce useless stuff and get away with it, while rep encourages to provide what is needed because that is what will grant more rep.

I totally disagree. If "with money you can produce useless stuff and get away with it", so can you with reputations systems (I am saying "if", because it really depends on the meaning of "useless"). A reputation system is no different from money; more precisely, it's a network of interconnected micro-currencies, where the "goodwill" of *each* person in the network is a separate currency, and goods can be purchased only by paying for them in precise combinations of different currencies. Mostly, it's a nightmare of *complexity* compared to a standard economy. With all the things that complexity entails: in particular, it's more fragile (more volatile, with more possible "bugs" etc.) and requires more computational resources to run at the same level of efficiency (meaning that it's better suited to societies that are either simple -- like three siblings choosing who gets to play with a favourite toy -- and/or with massive computation/communication infrastructures and/or that tolerate a fairly high inefficiency in terms of optimal resource allocation -- like academics). Its one advantage is that individuals do not have to abdicate to some central authority their monetary policy, and for people who prize freedom or think they can do a better job than any central government this is a large advantage.

Mon, 2012-08-06 06:47

#12

Xagroth

What I meant is that with

What I meant is that with money you can make products that are not needed, for example yet, and then storage them until you can profit. You can also get and storage raw materials until you can profit from the makets, etc... With rep, you would be getting a hit to your score for doing that, even if after the fact you would get a positive feedback. Also, money is more hard to track while Rep, by its very nature, reveals a lot of stuff. It is easier to keep people honest with Rep, because there are always traces, while credits can be loaded onto chips and there will be no way to know their exact use (yeah, you can place a code ID on each chip... but I doubt most people will use that, and unless the system allow you to be put on trial just because you put some of your money into cash...)

Mon, 2012-08-06 06:48

#13

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

"The concept of coercion has

"The concept of coercion has two different faces, corresponding to the two parties involved in its most ordinary cases. On one face, it picks out a technique agents (coercers) can use to get other agents to do or not do something. On the other face, it picks out a kind of reason for why agents (coercees) sometimes do or refrain from doing something. Coercion is typically thought to carry with it several important implications, including that it diminishes the targeted agent's freedom and responsibility, and that it is a (pro tanto) wrong and/or violation of right. Nonetheless, few believe that it is always unjustified, since it seems that no society could function without some authorized uses of coercion. It helps keep the bloody minded and recalcitrant from harming others, and seems also to be an indispensable technique in the rearing of children. " http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/coercion/ So the important question is not if lowering rep scores is coercion, but whether it is a bad thing. From a rights perspective, it seems problematic to claim that I do not have a right to dislike somebody's behaviour or tell others about it - I have freedom of thought and speech. One might argue that the consequences (less able to get services) diminishes their rights. But as long as the reduction is not extreme it seems bizarre to claim that their right to have a nice flat or people helping them is more important than my right to speak up when they are rude. In fact, there is a contradiction here if the reason for their lowered rep is something they said or did: if they have the right of freedom of action, so do I (in lowering their rep). There might be some limit where lowering their rep leads to them getting spaced, in which case their right to life might be more important than my rights, but that is pretty rare. Not speaking up against bad behaviour would also lead to bad behaviour proliferating. A consequentialist or contractualist would say that having a well functioning feedback system in society is important, so we need to have dings and not just pings. A deontologist would agree: not being able to speak out against bad behaviour undermines the whole concept of public morality. Of course, they would say that not all dings are moral: if I lower your rep score because you are an uplift or are somebody kind to uplifts, then my behaviour is immoral (assuming the contractualist or deontologist aren't bioconservatives, of course - they might take the opposite view!) Note that lowering rep does not change the dinged person's responsibility for past or future actions. If I force their hand, then they have no responsibility for that forced action, but in this case the bad past action was not prevented (I just responded to it) and future actions are still open (they could do it again if they wanted, unless it requires a high rep). Saying that you are being forced by the fact that people will respond to your actions after they are done doesn't make much sense: in that sense I am being coerced right now by the fact that if I murder people I will be punished, even if I am not even contemplating any violence! Virtue ethics would suggest that you should show good judgement in how you rate people. Some people are better critics than others, and one should strive to become like them. Which of course includes upping their rep and reducing the rep of bad critics.

—

Mon, 2012-08-06 08:37

#14

babayaga

Xagroth wrote:What I meant is

Xagroth wrote:
What I meant is that with money you can make products that are not needed, for example yet, and then storage them until you can profit. You can also get and storage raw materials until you can profit from the makets, etc...With rep, you would be getting a hit to your score for doing that, even if after the fact you would get a positive feedback.

Why would your reputation take a hit if you did that? Remember, we are talking of a reputation economy here. Suppose I store some ... food, and give it away when there's a famine. Would people be grateful or not? I'd say they would be *very* grateful. What you seem to be envisaging is something that is not a reputation economy, but a hybrid one; and a scenario where I store the food, and sell it for an *outrageously high* price. Sure, my reputation gets a hit, because I'm basically trading < food+rep> vs. <(lots of) money> . But if I were to sell the stuff at a fair price, would my rep go down? I'd say not, it may in fact go a little up (just in real life like I'm grateful to some shops that stay open late at night or during holydays, even though their prices are not particularly low). In this case I'm trading < food> vs. <(some) money + (a little) rep>. Ultimately, rep and money are just like other tradeable commodities.

Xagroth wrote:
Also, money is more hard to track while Rep, by its very nature, reveals a lot of stuff. It is easier to keep people honest with Rep, because there are always traces, while credits can be loaded onto chips and there will be no way to know their exact use (yeah, you can place a code ID on each chip... but I doubt most people will use that, and unless the system allow you to be put on trial just because you put some of your money into cash...)

I don't think there's any difference in traceability between money and reputation. Money can be very hard or very easy to track. It depends a lot on the situation, the jurisdiction etc. Similarly, reputation can be very easy or very hard to track. Again, it depends a lot on the situation; there are many "people" I know online of whom I know virtually nothing save their handle, but I'm still in good enough terms with them that I'd be willing to spend effort and even (some) money to help them if they asked.

Mon, 2012-08-06 12:32

#15

Xagroth

I will elaborate:

I will elaborate: 1) You accumulate goods, and take a hit to your Rep score. In autonomist habitats, people who just accumulate goods are seen badly. 2) When the demand is high enough, you "give away" the goods, to get Rep pluses. It is very likely people will see you as a traditional economy mongrel who don't understand the rep-based economy. Thus you get more hits to your rep, at the same time you get some postive feedback. With luck, you won't come out of the operation losing rep... As for the traceability, you can say that the rep "likes" and "dislikes" are anonymous, but by giving feedback about you, that people is tying their rep to yours to a degree. A good enough program could elaborate a web of relationships, thus tracking your contacts and the favours you ask (kinda like the Tweeter web we can see sometimes). Not to mention that people is bound to leave some feedback about the favours you ask them (remember there is an option to take a penalty to the Networking skill to make it harder to trace, for example); worst case scenario, a trail will be there but very hard to find: the base of the Rep system is that all "transactions" happen using the Mesh's support. Again, pure barter or anonymous credit chips exchanges are much harder to track.

Mon, 2012-08-06 17:45

#16

Chevre

Arenamontanus wrote:

Arenamontanus wrote:
Virtue ethics would suggest that you should show good judgement in how you rate people. Some people are better critics than others, and one should strive to become like them. Which of course includes upping their rep and reducing the rep of bad critics.

So you think the system has the capacity to self-regulate? Does the Rep economy have an invisible hand? If there's no system of checks and balances and doing whatever the Rep equivalent of adjusting the Prime rate is, no Rep version of The Fed doing weird little reponomic (is that an acceptable portmanteau?) tweaks...how the heck does it work? Is transhumanity headed towards hypercorps based off reputation instead of money? Cult of personality taken to the nth degree?

—

[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/bar_userbar.jpg[/img]

Mon, 2012-08-06 18:12

#17

Gerzel

Oh it will self-regulate at

Oh it will self-regulate at least as well as "pure" capitalist systems. That is to say it won't self regulate at all.

Tue, 2012-08-07 04:06

#18

Xagroth

It will self-regulate, no one

It will self-regulate, no one said it would be the ideal, good or efficient self regulation. I see the rep system as explained in Rimward as some sort of communicating tanks systems, with water flowing all across it and some way to raise the tanks (but their own weight sends them down unless they take an effort to keep it there or rising!).

Tue, 2012-08-07 22:11

#19

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

I do agree that the rep

I do agree that the rep system is a form of (normally mild) coercion. Yes, a single ding isn't likely to do anything, but imagine the guy driving around with pro-Jovian bumper stickers. He's going to start getting dinged just because of his political views, and the economic ramifications of his views are a form of coercing him into (at least pretending to) vote differently. I'm okay with this. People need to be pushed to conform with what their culture needs and expects. There's nothing inherently wrong with this. The fact that the Anarchists by and large fail to recognize this in themselves is just (trans)human nature. Everyone thinks the way they do things is best, and the Anarchists are no exception. They're just hypocrites like the rest of us :)

Wed, 2012-08-08 12:59

#20

The Doctor The Doctor's picture

Libertad wrote:What do you

Libertad wrote:
What do you think? Are the anarchists being inconsistent? Does the Rep economy discourage dissident viewpoints? What other negative implications can this have for social interactions?

I do not think they are being inconsistent. In an enviroment where everybody needs to pull their own weight to keep things running (perhaps it does not take much time out of every day, but the need remains) there does need to be a way of keeping track of who does what while still adhering to the principles of mutual aide, solidarity and respect. As for dissident viewpoints, it is entirely possible to disagree with one another while not resorting to monkey wars of flinging bad rep around (the principle of mutual respect aside). Then again, in my little slice of EP I tend to see characters as being more mature in those respects.

—

[img]http://drwho.virtadpt.net/graphics/info_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://drwho.virtadpt.net/graphics/argo_userbar.jpg[/img] [url=https://drwho.virtadpt.net/graphics/blankbadge.png][img]http://drwho.vir...

Wed, 2012-08-08 13:06

#21

The Doctor The Doctor's picture

Chevre wrote:So you think the

Chevre wrote:
So you think the system has the capacity to self-regulate? Does the Rep economy have an invisible hand? If there's no system of checks and balances and doing whatever the Rep equivalent of adjusting the Prime rate is, no Rep version of The Fed doing weird little reponomic (is that an acceptable portmanteau?) tweaks...how the heck does it work? Is transhumanity headed towards hypercorps based off reputation instead of money? Cult of personality taken to the nth degree?

One might be inclined to argue that societies on the @-list regulate themselves because they want to. Remember that the philosophies they adhere to all require a certain amount of self-control because neither other people nor political entities have any way or right to regulate you. I think it says more about a lot of us on this message forum that the questions asked are all about "Well, what about control? What about stuff?" when a lot of Autonomists would say "I control my self, silly. And I have everything I need."

—

[img]http://drwho.virtadpt.net/graphics/info_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://drwho.virtadpt.net/graphics/argo_userbar.jpg[/img] [url=https://drwho.virtadpt.net/graphics/blankbadge.png][img]http://drwho.vir...

Wed, 2012-08-08 13:27

#22

Gerzel

Don't forget. There may be

Don't forget. There may be regulation built into the rep system itself. Any formal Rep system, and even @-Rep is formal. Is run on computer servers with rules regarding how Rep is transferred, raised and lowered. That leaves a lot of room for regulation. There is some regulation involved in that presumably individuals cannot set how much their own bumps or hits to others Rep scores weigh. Even further regulation is required to avoid system gaming.

Wed, 2012-08-08 15:21

#23

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Chevre wrote:

Chevre wrote:
So you think the system has the capacity to self-regulate? Does the Rep economy have an invisible hand?

It better have one, or it will crash. Economic and social systems that don't self-regulate are too brittle to survive: there is too much information, too much going on for any planner to get it right.

Quote:
If there's no system of checks and balances and doing whatever the Rep equivalent of adjusting the Prime rate is, no Rep version of The Fed doing weird little reponomic (is that an acceptable portmanteau?) tweaks...how the heck does it work? Is transhumanity headed towards hypercorps based off reputation instead of money? Cult of personality taken to the nth degree?

Maybe. Reponomics is to a large degree a subset of economics (economics deals with how people allocate stuff, money is just one special case) but has some unusual (to us) properties like that everybody is free to create or remove rep, and that rep usually carries more information than just a scalar quantity. Take inflation for example: I am a cheerful, optimistic guy who rarely criticises others. So I would be giving lots of pings but few dings. The total rep of my society will go up... which likely means that the rep is inflated. The rep cost of services will go up as one unit of rep is worth less. This is self-balancing, except that it means that old reps will decline at a certain rate. Might even be a good thing - but you could imagine a more negative society where people are dinging each other more. There you would get deflation, and oldtimers who have not been criticized would suddenly find themselves influential. In general, for rep economies to have become as big as they have, the basic problems must have been solved. But it is not always easy to guess at how, since right now in 2012 we are just groping towards reponomics.

—

Tue, 2012-08-14 19:17

#24

BOMherren

Your definition of "coercion"

Your definition of "coercion" is somewhat ambiguous, and I think that is the crux of your dilemma. Define it more clearly, and you will find it much easier to determine whether or not dinging fits the definition. Aside from the semantics of the thing: I think the seedy underbelly of rep has to do with those who get stuck with bad rep. Page 179 hints that people with bad rep may be relegated to certain sections of the Mesh, where upstanding members of the community don't go, and where Friend-of-a-Friend networking effects will keep depressing your rep. If you can't convince some other faction to let you in, and you can't get a Morph, then you're stuck. Even if you are eventually assigned a Morph, people will be discouraged from pinging you, for fear their own score might take a FOAF ding. I also don't see how speculation or investment would work in a rep economy. It's mentioned somewhere in the same chapter that hoarding is one of those antisocial behaviours which tends to get you dinged. This could be a contributing factor towards the sometimes long waiting times described in the book. The consideration of whether the rep society is better or worse than the society it's breaking away from is ultimately a matter of subjective preference. In my opinion, on the whole, it is.

—

[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/aa_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/open_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/immort_userbar.jpg[/img]

Thu, 2012-08-16 00:35

#25

Hoarseman

Relative value of dings

In your example of a cheerful and optimistic pinger who leaves lots of positives the overall weighting would almost have to take that into account. His pings overall would have less value but his dings would be quite powerful indeed based on their rarity and association with severe problems. If you want a visual metaphor, his pings are broad but thin like a tablecloth. His dings on the other hand are narrow and deep like a knife. Any semi-stable system would have to recognize and account for that.

Thu, 2012-08-16 01:43

#26

Decivre

Hoarseman wrote:In your

Hoarseman wrote:
In your example of a cheerful and optimistic pinger who leaves lots of positives the overall weighting would almost have to take that into account. His pings overall would have less value but his dings would be quite powerful indeed based on their rarity and association with severe problems. If you want a visual metaphor, his pings are broad but thin like a tablecloth. His dings on the other hand are narrow and deep like a knife. Any semi-stable system would have to recognize and account for that.

Maybe, maybe not. Facebook does not weigh my likes higher than others, despite the fact that I've only done so 8 times since I started my account.

—

Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Thu, 2012-08-16 02:36

#27

Decivre

BOMherren wrote:Page 179

BOMherren wrote:
Page 179 hints that people with bad rep may be relegated to certain sections of the Mesh, where upstanding members of the community don't go, and where Friend-of-a-Friend networking effects will keep depressing your rep. If you can't convince some other faction to let you in, and you can't get a Morph, then you're stuck. Even if you are eventually assigned a Morph, people will be discouraged from pinging you, for fear their own score might take a FOAF ding.

I don't think so. FOAF seems to only relate to people you associate with, and not necessarily the things you ping and ding. In fact, pings and dings may have a degree of anonymity to them, so that they can be a soapbox by which you can speak for the actions and trends you like or hate. When you think about it, they are likely the easiest way to start building rep. Good deeds might not net you any friends when you're new to the area, but the pings and dings you get, over time, will accrue to make for a reasonable rep score.

—

Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Thu, 2012-08-16 09:31

#28

Hoarseman

Decivre wrote:

Decivre wrote:
Maybe, maybe not. Facebook does not weigh my likes higher than others, despite the fact that I've only done so 8 times since I started my account.

In the hyper-tech future I would be genuinely shocked if the reputation economy doesn't do a better job taking factors like that into account than Facebook.

Thu, 2012-08-16 10:15

#29

Decivre

Hoarseman wrote:In the hyper

Hoarseman wrote:
In the hyper-tech future I would be genuinely shocked if the reputation economy doesn't do a better job taking factors like that into account than Facebook.

Every reputation network will be different. I could see this sort of varied value system working in Guanxi or Circle-A, but I imagine that there would be a flat value for pings and dings in RNA or CivicNet. I don't even know if there will be pings and dings in Fame.

—

Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Thu, 2012-08-16 10:55

#30

Hoarseman

Sure they'll all be different

Sure they'll all be different but they'll all face the same problems. At that point they can either decide something is not enough of a problem to be worth fixing or come up with some kind of solution that works for them.

Thu, 2012-08-16 19:44

#31

Decivre

Hoarseman wrote:Sure they'll

Hoarseman wrote:
Sure they'll all be different but they'll all face the same problems. At that point they can either decide something is not enough of a problem to be worth fixing or come up with some kind of solution that works for them.

But is this a problem? If you weigh the value of pings and dings for a person based on how many of each they hand out, it decentivize active participating in social economics (after all, if I use it rarely, they are more potent) and gives the potential to game the system (hand out thousands of dings, and target your ping to just the right person to hurt them hard). A fixed value incentivizes people to participate (no use reserving them, they aren't going to become more powerful if you do that).

—

Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Thu, 2012-08-16 20:03

#32

Hoarseman

Number is simply one of a

Number is simply one of a multitude of factors. We don't know all of the factors used beyond the game telling us that it all works, somehow. I guess I'm not sure what point your trying to make beyond the fact that if you pull one section out in isolation it can be gamed? Well, yes, that is the case with just about anything. That is probably why people are involved. If someone gives a massive down-ding for "being a jerk and having a jerk face" they will probably take a rep hit as well for massively overreacting.

Thu, 2012-08-16 22:35

#33

Gerzel

A. We know gaming does occur

A. We know gaming does occur. It is mentioned in the canon text and makes basic sense. B. We know the system works, again because it is said. Long term it might but for the setting it does. C. We know that there are efforts to mitigate or combat gaming the system, but these efforts are weighed against cost/effectiveness. D. In reality money can be gamed. It can be laundered from illegal sources or printed up as counterfeit entirely. No doubt the same happens with rep. Indeed just look at all the businesses that want to game Google, online reviews and social networks today all of which I imagine are the predecessors of the rep system.

Fri, 2012-08-17 04:06

#34

Decivre

Hoarseman wrote:Number is

Hoarseman wrote:
Number is simply one of a multitude of factors. We don't know all of the factors used beyond the game telling us that it all works, somehow. I guess I'm not sure what point your trying to make beyond the fact that if you pull one section out in isolation it can be gamed? Well, yes, that is the case with just about anything. That is probably why people are involved. If someone gives a massive down-ding for "being a jerk and having a jerk face" they will probably take a rep hit as well for massively overreacting.

Actually, gaming was only one point I brought up, the other being the de-incentivizing of participation in the social aspects of a reputation system. That latter is the most important part. A reputation system requires input in order to function. Weighting pings and dings dependent on how often you do them would encourage people to do it less, or make communities focus on those who do it less (their opinions are effectively worth more). If you think about pings and dings as a form of voting, then it makes sense that they would have a fixed value. Why should my upvote matter more then yours simply because I rarely upvote anything (or vice versa)?

—

Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Fri, 2012-08-17 04:12

#35

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Consider pagerank. It is a

Consider pagerank. It is a reputation system for webpages, and it is pretty subtle in its basic form. It is not a measure of the number of links to a page, or the number of links away from it (such ranking systems were tried back in the dark ages of the 90s). Instead it measures the average pagerank of the pages that link to and from a page. Getting a highly ranked page to link to you is good, while getting a lot of crappy references may weaken you. How this is calculated is an interesting separate issue (calculating the principal eigenvector of the web adjacency graph in a distributed manner), but the core idea is very powerful. It built Goodle (that, and the MapReduce architecture). A reputation system can do the same. If a high rep person pings or dings you it counts for more than loads of nobodies. A testimonial from the CEO of Cognite about you will boost or hurt your c-rep a lot. The cheerful guy giving lots of pings will not have much of an effect. If he gives a ding it is likely that it will be weighed by his basic rep and the general positive tone, so it might indeed matter. Some systems might have two ratings: one general rep rating, and one for the accuracy of reactions. If you ping somebody with a low reputation and that person soon acquires a high reputation, that is a sign that you are reliable. If the opposite happens, then your judgement is a bit in doubt. So next time you ping or ding your impact will depend on how well you have done in the past. A bit like the society described in Alastair Reynold's "The Prefect" that lives on being good at voting. Essentially it is a habitat that makes a living on being very accurate in its rep judgement, gaining rep from that.

—

Fri, 2012-08-17 04:19

#36

Decivre

Arenamontanus wrote:A

Arenamontanus wrote:
A reputation system can do the same. If a high rep person pings or dings you it counts for more than loads of nobodies. A testimonial from the CEO of Cognite about you will boost or hurt your c-rep a lot. The cheerful guy giving lots of pings will not have much of an effect. If he gives a ding it is likely that it will be weighed by his basic rep and the general positive tone, so it might indeed matter.

Now this I can see happening, especially in a reputation network where rep is everything (like Fame). While pings and dings might not be weighted based on the number, I could see them being weighted based on the person's reputation. Someone with a high reputation would probably have an opinion with a more potent regard than someone with a low reputation. So pissing someone off who is a community leader is significantly worse than annoying the local outcast.

—

Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Fri, 2012-08-17 09:19

#37

Hoarseman

Decivre wrote:Arenamontanus

Decivre wrote:
Arenamontanus wrote:
A reputation system can do the same. If a high rep person pings or dings you it counts for more than loads of nobodies. A testimonial from the CEO of Cognite about you will boost or hurt your c-rep a lot. The cheerful guy giving lots of pings will not have much of an effect. If he gives a ding it is likely that it will be weighed by his basic rep and the general positive tone, so it might indeed matter.
Now this I can see happening, especially in a reputation network where rep is everything (like Fame). While pings and dings might not be weighted based on the number, I could see them being weighted based on the person's reputation. Someone with a high reputation would probably have an opinion with a more potent regard than someone with a low reputation. So pissing someone off who is a community leader is significantly worse than annoying the local outcast.

Weighting can easily move beyond a formal system. If, for example, my neighbor, friend or other person whom I know better than other has commented on X, where X is something else, I am either more or less inclined to weight that based on my knowledge of the ranker. Additionally if the favor or offense happened closer, socially speaking, to me then the relative value of any particular rep effect is more variable not because I posses any special knowledge but because any given person personal weightings differ. So while the Rep score might, in the end be a number, a general ranking, or any kind of other social cue to indicate that individual X has Y perceived value it still doesn't deal with individual weightings beyond how they themselves interact with a given Rep system.