-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 >>98 happy to hear it was an enjoyable read. there are other programs out there besides pgp that can be used for this (e.g., openssl/libressl), and i hope to bring some attention to these at some point. > 1) you cannot exploit what isn't existing: if you don't want identities to be exploited, don't have identities. In many cases, discussions are anyway better if they are anonymous (like on this platform), because then it is the best argument that prevails, not the person with the best reputation. There are limits to this approach, but I believe it is good to use it whenever possible. reputation and identity are very tricky subjects. i could wring quite a few posts out of them. it may ease your mind a bit to know that my interest lies less in a reddit-like "global points system" and more in a web-of-trust-like system. i am also not as much interested in creating one single definitive tool as i am in fostering the creation of many tools, each of which may express a different perspective regarding how reputation ought to be figured. (some of which may very well be reddit-like, but this is not my personal interest.) i don't expect to personally come up with the best approach of all time or anything. this sort of open-endedness is part of why i expressed "cypherspace" in such general terms in my last post. while there _will_ be concrete tools produced, they will ideally be discrete and independent of each other, producing a lot of fragments and approaches. eventually standards may arise, but the more people are encouraged into a deep understanding of the tools they are using, the better. each component should be very simple, each system should also be simple, but the totality of all systems probably won't be. the limitations that a lack of a reputation system imposes are what have driven me in this direction. any coherent view of reality beyond our own immediate experience of it will necessarily involve reputation of some kind. none of us have a direct experience of everything going on all the time, none of us have perfect knowledge, and none of us are the best at everything. reputation is a heuristic that allows us to do better together than we could do individually. it's certainly not perfect, but it's quite useful. while i like the idea of "the best argument" prevailing, i don't believe that this happens in anonymous spaces very often. people tend to overestimate their ability to suss out shaky evidence and poor arguments. i do believe it could happen more if a system for modeling logical relationships between arguments and facts were put in place and repetitive arguments were deduplicated. verbal arguments are imprecise, often poorly organised, and tiresome. it would also have to enable surfacing the implications of changes in facts. it might even be useful for it to support different systems of formal logic, since different systems of formal logic are better suited for modeling different things, but that's almost certainly getting ahead of ourselves. however it is implemented, some form of reputation will likely _have_ to play a part in what reported facts one chooses to believe. "evidence" is often easy to fake, and it will only get easier. > 2) if you take away the centralization and use distributed/federated services, many of the problems still exist, but are not as severe. usenet, syndie or bitchan could go a long way to fight abuse of public and private data. especially the syndie approach is very useful, where you have a platform that is just using many different channels to distribute the same content. yes, these are interesting. as you note, they don't totally solve the problems inherent to centralised platforms. taking an approach that is not dependent on any particular platform or set of tools means that these services can likewise be tools available to us, even if they are not solutions in themselves. in combination with other tools, they may be part of a solution. >>99 yes, it's a shame. for what it's worth, my own greatest hope is to create people who create projects. if it becomes entirely normal for every group of ten friends or so to have, for example, a bespoke (if limited) private communications platform cobbled together from independently developed parts, i will have succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. i don't expect to create an integrated, one-size-fits-all solution. i only expect to show my work and my reasoning, breaking it all up into small parts, and in so doing contribute to the cognitive tooling available to others attacking the same problems. if i disappear in the middle of it, the fragments i leave behind will hopefully be small enough and general enough to be useful on their own. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIzBAEBCAAdFiEE0ZVR9dPnC9rIvgC+tQHDCzf0gGwFAl+1k/kACgkQtQHDCzf0 gGwOHg/+IQKX9XM+BBoTjz1kzwbRaapQhipuZ5c1Pgdo2hqRgxXt0UG/VbY+Jt64 VAJGRImzWL/cJdwCCU3Z13kFTY9xHPr/va898LT8QYxW5mz6F08bJmVNMQj+yfd1 kG3o7RaqF0F6pLWrQo57rBhieuccU+I2jo23l41yw33sWyhsDCsuSh3eJWTZoEJR OMrJuwBsBXUiYYHfLAqAsMfSjMaMaq+wC1VfFXVEW30qxvOFP7oDhloAFt4TUV2v MZsVuIxl/dbxPSbEsTZhj5bNjSIsUQqU0rMBU+3qSnNbXnKepXsE7SQesRuNGzb1 aoR0ADtF2Qfs11L75CjV6xI/baY9tcvzb1PUbGum1tCq48oY3BXJMTopD5u3xmpE Ixw4iFFuOoG+WVQG1HEftmeYiBIUM4a+mrmN5K+cgehwZ0C1R5Usmqfio1V7VHL+ 2ZrTI/YS8ufSCGC3/eUdf0YvdIHX7T3rwxAgZLvWDPe0FozRiO0oyyDiAkxZ+veM ji3j63pzCmr3+T2hit4vA13oyR2UJo3i6Vql2a4VxKrf93qg+2kNGZZYILoqX7os hpaYe8wOwoLRtc/Gr6dcOjE5hEjwaTXcJ/J+o66qao6kRy3AtGdiBA5PbClc3MoG E/xfrzAyIWjAoeqV0cZmfUtKBMhhAmNy7D7gMHtPp4w7CdCyXQc= =nhkY -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----