[LINK] Crypto parties to protect against govt intrusions

[Jim Birch]

On 26 September 2012 11:09, Roger Clarke wrote:

> So I know the identity / persona, and that's actually all I need to know.
>

Mathematical investigation into the development and maintenance cooperation
indicates that the punishment of free riders is essential to maintaining
cooperation.  The best strategy for individuals is to be forgive lapses but
to ultimately sanction free riders.  Social systems can produce substantial
group benefits from cooperation but the systems must deal with free riders
to survive. This is a mathematical result and it has been demonstrated to
hold across a wide variety of cost/payoff models(1).  We are biologically
adapted to this in numerous ways, eg, a moral faculty, grooming behaviours,
our colour perception(2), etc.  In fact, humans are the great cooperators
of the animal kingdom, possibly only beaten by insect supercooperators like
ants and bees.  (Some biologists consider that the hive/colony is the
actually the individual in these species since the component insects are
genetically identical.  Except when the queen dies and internecine warfare
breaks out among the wannabees.)

Appropriate application of trust and sanctions requires identity and the
better identity works the better we feel about cooperating and the better
the system usually works.  OTOH we still have our reptilian
every-man-for-himself brain mechanisms which resent the imposition
responsibilities to the group.  (Voila, libertarianism!?)

The effects of anonymity on internet social spaces bears out these
relationships.  No one flames more self indulgently than sock puppets and
at the other end people with real names and real identities tend to have
polite and measured responses.  We trust people with real identities more
because we intuitively expect that some kind of sanction can ultimately be
applied to the individual.  This is (I guess) why Google+ requires real
names even when they aren't displayed: someone, somewhere knows who you
are, and, why eBay promotes its reputation mechanism so actively.

Jim


(1) eg, Supercooperators: The Mathematics of Evolution, Altruism and Human
Behaviour (Or, Why We Need Each Other to Succeed). Martin Nowak.
(2) The Vision Revolution: How the Latest Research Overturns Everything We
Thought We Knew About Human Vision. Mark Changizi.