BitShares Forum
Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: starspirit on December 06, 2014, 11:32:41 pm
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A philosophical question...
I think reputation systems are a critical facet on future online relationships and business dealings, and of the growing BitShares ecosystem. But a concern I have is that in any community people's actions can sometimes be portrayed in extreme or distorted ways by media, propagandists or opponents, without the means to properly defend against sometimes outrageous claims unless one is willing to bear a considerable cost in the battle. In modern society we have a legal system that seeks to make just decisions on the weight of evidence, giving equal hearing to all parties. Is it possible to ensure just treatment without some level of bureaucracy like this? Could the free market develop its own arbitration on the basis of shared community principles?
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A philosophical question...
I think reputation systems are a critical facet on future online relationships and business dealings, and of the growing BitShares ecosystem. But a concern I have is that in any community people's actions can sometimes be portrayed in extreme or distorted ways by media, propagandists or opponents, without the means to properly defend against sometimes outrageous claims unless one is willing to bear a considerable cost in the battle. In modern society we have a legal system that seeks to make just decisions on the weight of evidence, giving equal hearing to all parties. Is it possible to ensure just treatment without some level of bureaucracy like this? Could the free market develop its own arbitration on the basis of shared community principles?
I asked Bytemaster these same sort of questions when I first learned about Bitshares. I can say that he has thought deeply about these philosophical issues so we have the right person as lead developer.
I will send you some materials in PM. Maybe Bytemaster will see this thread and comment. I think people underestimate his philosophical depth because of his focus on writing code.
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I agree BM is deep thinker as we can see from his early essays. Tons of people in this community came here for the ideas, stuck around for the vision, and are only now beginning to appreciate the applications.
My own insight from sticking around here, and I am at the outset completely apolitical, is that we end up reinventing and improving a lot of the things that modern society has discovered more or less by accident, i.e. without a particularly principled approach or a problem solving mindset.
Just like we only now discover that photosynthesis exploits quantum effects to optimize efficiency, or that the brain organizes in free energy with predictive coding to maximize intelligence, we re-discover old things in a new light and improve on them: Inflation, voting, contracts and reputation will more and more be understood principally as tools and as solutions to deep problems.