I think that mutual reputation affirming services with a specific context could be a good thing for society. Like, we have weak forms of this with LinkedIn, and very narrow forms with the institutions that Faul Sname mentions. But I think we could have better, slightly more general forms, that were deliberately designed to be at least reasonably resistant to adversarial pressure (as Ben Pace highlights).
For example, I could see how it would be very useful to increasing the legibility of potential work candidates if their former supervisors and colleagues had some way to leave verified but anonymous reviews for them through the facilitation of some organization. This organization would accept payment and, with the permission of the target individual, would supply a report about the opinions of that individual collected from their former colleagues to a potential new job’s recruiters. The individual could select which of their former employments should be included.
There would certainly be adversarial pressure to rig this system in favor of candidates, but also the work-reputation-management company would have reason to want to maintain the accuracy and fairness of their reports. Their reputation for being accurate is what would make them valuable, after all!
I think a similar sort of thing could be done for dating, at least insofar as being a convenient way to be able to give a prospective romantic interest some third party verification that previous people you’ve dated assert that you weren’t threatening or abusive. I imagine this would work as a sort of improved dating service, where you met people through the service (old school OkCupid matching kinda stuff) and then went on dates, and then filled out a small questionnaire afterwards. It would give people incentive to be polite and friendly even if they decided they didn’t like the person they matched with. Everyone using the service would have a reputation to maintain.
In government, I think there’s a lot of value to being able to assign limited conditional representation approval to other citizens. Like, “Bob can vote for me on all issues categorized as environmental. Alice can vote for me on all judicial appointments. All other votes I will fill out myself until futher notice.”
I think that mutual reputation affirming services with a specific context could be a good thing for society. Like, we have weak forms of this with LinkedIn, and very narrow forms with the institutions that Faul Sname mentions. But I think we could have better, slightly more general forms, that were deliberately designed to be at least reasonably resistant to adversarial pressure (as Ben Pace highlights).
For example, I could see how it would be very useful to increasing the legibility of potential work candidates if their former supervisors and colleagues had some way to leave verified but anonymous reviews for them through the facilitation of some organization. This organization would accept payment and, with the permission of the target individual, would supply a report about the opinions of that individual collected from their former colleagues to a potential new job’s recruiters. The individual could select which of their former employments should be included.
There would certainly be adversarial pressure to rig this system in favor of candidates, but also the work-reputation-management company would have reason to want to maintain the accuracy and fairness of their reports. Their reputation for being accurate is what would make them valuable, after all!
I think a similar sort of thing could be done for dating, at least insofar as being a convenient way to be able to give a prospective romantic interest some third party verification that previous people you’ve dated assert that you weren’t threatening or abusive. I imagine this would work as a sort of improved dating service, where you met people through the service (old school OkCupid matching kinda stuff) and then went on dates, and then filled out a small questionnaire afterwards. It would give people incentive to be polite and friendly even if they decided they didn’t like the person they matched with. Everyone using the service would have a reputation to maintain.
In government, I think there’s a lot of value to being able to assign limited conditional representation approval to other citizens. Like, “Bob can vote for me on all issues categorized as environmental. Alice can vote for me on all judicial appointments. All other votes I will fill out myself until futher notice.”
I’ve heard multiple different proposals for how such a governance system might work. For a relatively recent and well-developed take on this idea, see here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4KjiZeAWc7Yv9oyCb/tackling-moloch-how-youcongress-offers-a-novel-coordination