Reputation Lotteries can leverage greed to encourage effective altruism

The idea for a reputation lottery originally was intended to be as a way to develop a larger concept I called a Reputation-Based Reward Network. I will quote from my blog below:

In a gift economy nothing is bought or sold. In a gift economy everything given or received is a gift similar to how at Christmas it is a gift economy because everything given or received is gifted. A gift economy can take advantage of reputation so that those who give a lot to others earn a certain reputation which can allow the givers in the network to obtain priority status for rewards. It is also possible to have smart contracts with conditions such that only those who have proven themselves through specified acts of kindness can become eligible for the reward lottery. In essence in order to enter the lottery you would have to earn lottery tickets which can only be earned by giving donations to certain charities.

The purpose of Steem Power is to act as a non-transferable reputation accounting mechanism for Steem. Steem Dollars are just a mechanism to reward people but Steem Power reveals the long term reputation a person has acquired. Steem provides a mechanism which will allow for the implementation of the reputation lottery concept and in this article I will elaborate on some ways for how Steem can implement it. I would appreciate if other minds join in and offer criticism, suggestions, improvements, or feasibility.

The reasons and purpose behind why I developed the Reputation Lottery concept

The purpose behind reputation lotteries was to initiate a reputation based reward mechanism. This concept came about because I was trying to figure out how basic income could be implemented using blockchain and smart contract technology with Johan for the Resilience project. It also came about because I was trying to figure out ways to practically implement a mechanism to encourage effective altruism so that a high quality of life can be engineered into existence because I did not/do not believe political methods would be feasible in a global context over a reasonable period of time.

The Reputation Lottery is a very simple algorithm

The algorithm for a reputation lottery is remarkably simple. It's simple enough to be implemented over Steemit and now that Steemit exists it is possible to fund implementation of this concept through Steemit itself. There are five main ingredients or steps to the Reputation Lottery algorithm which are listed below:

1. In order to enter the lottery you must be able to prove you did the specified act of altruism. This can easily be shown by a blockchain transaction for example.
2. For every altruistic interaction you shall receive points which can be traded in for lottery tickets.
3. The more lottery tickets you have the greater your probability to win the rewards.
4. All who enter the lottery are guaranteed to receive a permanent badge of honor for having participated whether they win or not. This would encourage the participants to continue playing into the future.
5. Participants can be human or machine.

That last point "participants can be humans or machine" is a critical component. This algorithm should not distinguish between human intelligent agents or machine intelligent agents. It should simply reward according to the rules and encourage the growth of AI which can solve social problems or which donates to effectively altruistic causes. If someone is genius enough to write a bot which takes in a lot of money from people and which then redistributes it to the most effective altruistic causes it can find then that is exactly the kind of stuff the Reputation Lottery algorithm is meant to encourage.

How can we implement the Reputation Lottery algorithm on Steem?

This is where the Steem developers such as Dan can come in. I've looked at Graphene and while I do think it can be implemented I will say I do not know the best way to implement it on any particular platform. So let's look at what Steem allows us to do?

Steem allows us to vote up to reward

This vote up to reward mechanism can be used for collaborative filtering or for Subjective Proof of Work. In order to implement a Reputation Lottery we need more than just that. First we need a more robust reputation management system with gamification elements such as badges and custom tokens. Will Steem eventually allow for badges and custom tokens? Probably but right now it only allows us to vote up or down on content. We can for example reward effective altruism via Subjective Proof of Work by voting up acts of effective altruism as a group but then without the badge system, custom tokens, or gamification elements, it becomes difficult to track who the heroes are.

Steem allows for bots

This is a powerful feature of Steem & Steemit. Bots can be the key to implementing the Reputation Lottery algorithm over Steem. A network of Steemit bots could monitor transactions of the blockchain to determine who is transferring resources in an effectively altruistic way, or who is voting in a way which is in an effectively altruistic way, and simply let the bots have it's own internal logging mechanism using innocuous transactions so that these bots can eventually reward with custom tokens such as Golden Tickets, Silver Tickets, or other examples. Eventually these bots if they collect enough Steem Power can begin voting up the individuals who have a proven track record of effective altruistic behaviors as evidenced by the blockchain and in the process rewarding reputations.

Steem is transparent

Transparency is a double edged sword. It magnifies intent and can amplify for good or bad. For example if a person has a clear track record of being charitable AND for being effective at it, then it will become known to the blockchain and to whatever AI in the future is analyzing it. This transparancy is what would allow a Reputation Lottery and a more general Reputation-Based Reward Network to function. Since transparency can be used for good, and ethical altruism is about doing the good effectively, then why not utilize this transparency to build up a Reputation Lottery algorithm and then a Reputation-Based-Reward-Network (RBRN)?

Let's start the discussion on how to build this on top of Steem

Steem is still young and this could be an app that gives Steem a definite niche. This app should be able to work on Steem, not just on Steemit. Now it's time to discuss whether an RBRN should be built at all, or if a Reputation Lottery is a good idea at all, and if it is then what changes ought to be made or how to best implement it.

This post is certified as from the original author by way of public keys posted at these locations: http://darkai.org/?p=527
and https://steemit.com/steemit/@dana-edwards/private-communication-with-me-via-pgp-for-those-who-know-and-understand

References

1. http://darkai.org/?p=190
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism