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Long time no traffic on this list, so I'm forwarding a recent
enquiry:<br>
<blockquote type="cite">Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2011<br>
From: John Preston<br>
<span style="white-space: pre;">>> On the subject of AE, am
I correct in thinking the basic idea is that</span><br>
<span style="white-space: pre;">>> for each person, there
are a set of `sympathy functions' (one for each</span><br>
<span style="white-space: pre;">>> commodity), each of which
defines how the resource gain by the receiving</span><br>
<span style="white-space: pre;">>> party varies with the
resource loss of the giving party? </span><br>
<span style="white-space: pre;">> Sympathy is one the most
important examples of the general item which is</span><br>
<span style="white-space: pre;">> exchange rates,</span><br>
<span style="white-space: pre;">> all presumed to be piecewise
linear functions. The other major use is to</span><br>
<span style="white-space: pre;">> express capability</span><br>
<span style="white-space: pre;">> (e.g. can convert wood and
time into chairs etc.) The sympathy functions</span><br>
<span style="white-space: pre;">> define interpersonal</span><br>
<span style="white-space: pre;">> resource exchange. e.g. I am
prepared to forego X so that you can have Y.</span><br>
It seems to me that in some respects AE is a higher-level
abstraction of<br>
traditional economics, with an emphasis on mutual satisfaction.
However,<br>
instead of promoting a particular economic model, may I propose an<br>
(higher-level and slightly more distant) alternative? A network of<br>
persons (i.e. individuals, collectives, companies, etc.), linked
by<br>
their satisfaction with historical transactions. For example, a
computer<br>
hardware manufacturer (H) and a computer retailer (R) might be two<br>
persons. If R wishes to obtain hardware from the H, R must
approach H<br>
and perform some kind of transaction. They will either come to
some form<br>
of agreement, or the transaction will fail. If the transaction
succeeds,<br>
then each will have a level of satisfaction with the transaction
(e.g. a<br>
score out of 10), and this can be made available publicly (without<br>
exposing any information about what the transaction was for, etc.)
in<br>
the form of a network (a graph where vertices are people and<br>
satisfaction is edge weighting) connecting the two people. As more<br>
transactions occur over time, the overall satisfaction between the<br>
parties (e.g. it could be computed as the mean average of all<br>
transaction scores) will change a little, but will probably stay<br>
more-or-less the same. From this information, we know the
compatibility<br>
between two parties when they perform transactions, and this
information<br>
is completely separate from how the transactions take place. The
parties<br>
may reach their agreement by bartering, exchange for currency,
gifting,<br>
etc. each one causing a different level of satisfaction for each
party<br>
(altruism would be the desire for someone to maximise the
satisfaction<br>
at both their end and the other person's end). Suppose now some
other<br>
person comes involved, let's say an individual consumer Alice (A).
A can<br>
either obtain hardware from H or from R, and let's say she wants
to<br>
maximise her own transaction satisfaction. A has a friend Bob (B)
who<br>
has previously obtained hardware from both H and R. A and B have
also<br>
had transactions in the past, and have a high transaction
compatibility<br>
(i.e. both have high satisfaction scores with respect to each
other),<br>
and so it is likely that A will have good transactions with the
people<br>
that B has had good transactions with (because as their
transaction<br>
compatibility is high, they probably have similar economic
thinking).<br>
Therefore, A can use the transaction satisfaction of her
compatible<br>
neighbours, and their compatible neighbours, and so on, to find
people<br>
with which to have optimal transactions. In a network before any<br>
transactions happen, the graph will be completely disconnected,
and it<br>
would build up from there by people trying transactions with
strangers.<br>
Naturally the network would be in machine-readable format, so that<br>
people can search for desired goods/services and order the results
by<br>
estimated compatibility (for strangers) and by overall
satisfaction (for<br>
`friends', defined as people you have had at least one transaction
with).<br>
</blockquote>
This would be one example of something that could be built on top of
AE, couldn't it?<br>
I refer to this as 'metaevaluation' in <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://altruists.org/ae12">http://altruists.org/ae12</a> for
more on this topic.<br>
I'm assuming that a simple but flexible standard would exist as the
bottom layer,<br>
that allowed people to do different things with it to suit their
styles.<br>
<br>
AE10 has more on that standard, which is basically just a set of
(units, amount) pairs,<br>
so that people can express their feelings as a basket of currencies
- no need to<br>
lump apples with oranges if people define them separately.<br>
<br>
Robin<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
</blockquote>
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