Jef's web files - Reputation

Reputation

Tue, 30 Dec 2003 09:57:51 -0500

With increasing visibility of all types of information to most of humanity, reputation may become a person's most valuable attribute. Systems to query, monitor, and provide feedback on an person's reputation may serve as the currency of the future.

Reputation

Sat, 01 May 2004 19:39:27 -0400

Reputation

In Google We Trust?

Wed, 15 Dec 2004 13:27:55 -0500

From Jon Udell's blog:

Dave Winer today points to an Scott Rosenberg's excellent take on Google's new library venture. Scott concludes:

The public has a big interest in making sure that no one business has a chokehold on the flow of human knowledge. As long as Google's amazing project puts more knowledge in more hands and heads, who could object? But in this area, taking the long view is not just smart -- it's ethically essential. So as details of Google's project emerge, it will be important not just to rely on Google's assurances but to keep an eye out for public guarantees of access, freedom of expression and limits to censorship. Scott Rosenberg

Indirect Reciprocity, Assessment Hardwiring, and Reputation - A Talk with Karl Sigmund

Sat, 11 Dec 2004 09:30:19 -0500

These ideas fed into our work on indirect reciprocity, a concept that was first introduced by Robert Trivers in a famous paper in the 1970s. I recall that he mentioned this idea obliquely when he wrote about something he called "general altruism". Here you give something back not to the person to whom you owe something, but to somebody else in society. He pointed out that this also works with regard to cooperation at a high level. Trivers didn't go into details, because at the time it was not really at the center of his thinking. He was mostly interested in animal behavior, and so far indirect reciprocity has not been proven to exist in animal behavior. It might exist in some cases, but ethologists are still debating the pros and cons.

In human societies, however, indirect reciprocity has a very striking effect. There is a famous anecdote about the American baseball player Yogi Berra, who said something to the effect of, "I make a point of going to other people's funerals because otherwise they won't come to mine." This is not as nonsensical as it seems. If a colleague of the university, for instance, goes faithfully to every faculty member's funeral, then the faculty will turn out strongly at his. Others reciprocate. It works. We think instinctively in terms of direct reciprocation — when I do something for you, you do something for me — but the same principle can apply in situations of indirect reciprocity. I do something for you and somebody else helps me in return.

Privacy lost with the touch of a keystroke?

Sun, 14 Nov 2004 11:42:35 -0500

Personal info is easily accessed online - and privacy laws have yet to catch up.

The highway is packed as you drive home and then a car swerves in front and cuts you off. You jot down the license plate number as the traffic stalls. When you get home, you log onto the Internet, type the plate into publicdata.com, and up pops the owner's name, home address, and driving record.

New neighbors move in across the street. You wonder how much they earn, how old he is, if they're married or just cohabiting. A few clicks on the county court's website and you're privy to the husband's Social Security number, details about his wife, and the fact that he had a financial spat with a local business.

And it is all perfectly legal.

Public records held at the county clerk's office or city hall have always been available for public scrutiny, but to access them you needed to turn up in person between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. Now, in the name of efficiency, many counties are putting their public records online and ending the practical obscurity paper records once offered.

And that's what alarms privacy advocates. It's not just checking out the new neighbors that's at issue. Those public files often contain sensitive personal information - particularly court documents, writes Beth Givens, director of Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a nonprofit consumer education and advocacy group (privacyrights.org) based in San Diego.

John C. Wright on intellectual property and morality

Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:46:45 -0500

Exerpt:

"It is supposed to be a Golden Age after all, the society mankind will enjoy if ever man becomes sane and mature: no doubt they have laws and institutions similar to ours, which they keep as a last resort, should all else fail, the way a wise man packs a first-aid kit before he goes camping. But our society is like a man who is in constant ill health, constantly in the hospital emergency room. To us, the medicine we need to prevent the body politic from dissolving into anarchy is something we must endure every hour of every day. A healthy society, such as only might exist in a future whose moral standard is higher than our own, such distempers would be rare. Men might be wise enough to be glad to avoid even the appearance of pirating another man's ideas, rather than trying to edge as close to the minimum limit as the law allows. Since they life forever, and will never escape each other's censure, never forget a wrong, it would behoove them to settle all difference privately, and before they become inflamed."

The following is an exchange between John C Wright and Rafal Smigrodzki regarding intellectual property laws in the Golden Oecumene and some comments on future standards of morality:

A Fountain of Knowledge

Mon, 05 Jan 2004 20:04:48 -0500

The great strength of computers is that they can reliably manipulate vast amounts of data very quickly. Their great weakness is that they don’t have a clue as to what any of that data actually means.

Computer scientists have been laboring for decades to eliminate that weakness, with some limited successes in some limited domains. Now, IBM Corp. appears to have made a major breakthrough in the field of machine understanding. The results could spell big business not just for IBM but for data miners, content providers, retailers, political consultants, market analysts, and any other group that relies on information as part of its stock in trade.

IBM’s breakthrough is called WebFountain—half a football field’s worth of rack-mounted processors, routers, and disk drives running a huge menagerie of programs. All this hardware and software is dedicated to one purpose: making sense of the churning ocean of information, opinion, and falsehood that roils the Internet every second of every day.

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses...

Sun, 09 Jan 2005 19:21:30 -0500

"It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor. ...It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never met a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it s with immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry , snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors."

- C S Lewis