From: Spike Jones (spike66@attglobal.net)
Date: Wed May 02 2001 - 00:01:13 MDT
> > Extropians is a forum for exchange of ideas about the future,
> > and it is also an ongoing party of sorts. Many pleasant
> > acquaintances in RL start here.
> > spike
>
> scerir wrote: Is Extropians, also, a collective intelligence?
Sure. In fact the original post in this thread by Brian Atkins
has caused me to have an epiphany. Loosely paraphrasing,
He suggested a reputation quotient to help improve the
quality of the list.
For the purposes of this discussion, I will ignore the fact
that Pirsig (or rather Phaedrus) went mad trying to define
Quality. The epiphany was in response to pondering the
fact that it was Sasha who suggested just such a reputation
rating system several years ago, then my own recollection
that Sasha was a chess enthusiast. He and I had connected
offlist and were going to play a match by email, then decided
to meet at E4 for some fivers. To my eternal regret, I
failed to make that happen, since I rode a motorcycle
up to Berkeley and didn't bring my board.
In tournament chess, there is a thing called an Elo rating
that describes one's strength. Sasha may have had this
in mind when he proposed his system which is in some
ways analogous to a reputation rating. Since I am tired I
will describe it only in general terms this evening, the Elo
system and how it could be adapted for our purposes.
In tournament chess, one's Elo rating describes one's
strength. A typical club player is about 1500, and a
standard deviation is about 200 points. A 200 point
span defines a rank. The ranks are these:
rank Elo rating
1000-1200 E
1200-1400 D
1400-1600 C
1600-1800 B
1800-2000 A
2000-2200 expert
2200-2400 master
2400+ grandmaster
If I play a person two full ranks above me, she is
two standard deviations above or about 97.5% likelihood
she will go home with my scalp, rather than the reverse.
Nowthen, if I do manage to topple her, I gain a lotta
Elo points. The exact formulas later, if this thread
stirs interest.
The Elo system is set up to where there is no rate
inflation over the years. And it works, so that if
one stays the same in strength, one's rating does
not change much. It does have good predictive
value in tournaments, or rather used to, before
computers came along.
Nowthen, if we had an somewhat analogous
with extropian poster reputation. Each person
would be rated from -2 to 5, where 5 is a person
who you read every post and -2 is you have
killfiled that person. You would assign numbers
to each person in the matrix.
Oh dear, it is late and Im tired. More later.
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