[Altruistic-Economics] AE/SocEco

[Robin 2009]

This is quick summary since I'm tired, and probably starting (command 
economy) work tomorrow, to Andrea whom I have invited to join the AE list, 
and whom I am CC'ing for now. 

One key point is that AE is deliberately non-prescriptive since it is 
designed to support multiple top layers (people can use this data how they 
like, and may wish to improve on the default cheap and cheerful upper 
layer). So it defines a meaning for the data, rather than who it should be 
used. Compare for example, now HTML assigns a meaning to the link 
sturucture of <a href="..."> which was defined a long time before Google 
(or others) chose to interpret such links through the pagerank algorithm. 
Specifically AE aims to define two sorts of data on top of the F2F 
network:
1) How people feel about particular things that happened (c.f. AE10)
2) People's (multi-dimensional) exchange rates, which includes their 
sympathy, since this is a particular case (e.g. preparedness to swap my 
time for your time, c.f. slide 6, AE9)

One likely use of sympathy is to direct energy to those whom people care 
for the most, other things being equal. I'm not quite sure what you mean by 
"AE assumes that there are gains and losses". AE is a system of 
self-expression, and as such it assumes that people will wish to report +/- 
things about the experiences they have. Is this what you're saying? 

You wonder how "people more altruistic are rewarded". The system tracks 
evaluations of what others say about you, so if you have positive 
evaluations due to past altruism, strangers can detect this and may be more 
favourably inclined to help you. I am presuming that most people will 
choose to be generous to those who have been generous to others 
(particularly to them and those that they have sympathy for), though this 
is not forced, and other dynamics will likely present in other 
circumstances.

There is no checking per se of the self-reported data (by design, since 
it's decentralised system). It is expected that people will make mistakes 
or deliberately attempt fraud. Hence the need for circumspection in how to 
interpret this data (a tension explored in 
http://www.altruists.org/ideas/economics/altruistic/measuring_value/self-eva
luation/credibility/ ) - which should probably be calibrated. See also 
AE12, slide 14 for a loose end which I never tied up. 

I'm pleased that you see such commonality in our approaches. The key 
elements of AE are:
1) Decentralised, self-evaluation of interactions
2) Self-assigned, unlimited # currencies available
3) The exchange rate structure, including
  a) sympathy
  b) resource processing

I'm sorry not to have looked further at your work, and will do so as soon 
as I have moved computers, now that I am safely back in Bangladesh.

Robin

P.S. My CCC talk on Plutocracy went well, and is at 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51qTb2O6eYM

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