4 ms·

Probably why we need more and more trustless systems. Hopefully crypto works.

• not2b 5y ago
  In this case, crypto would mainly serve to hide collusion more effectively.
  • briefcomment 5y ago
    Sure, but in general, decentralization will make it harder to effectively steer institutions and behavior with collusion.
    • not2b 5y ago
      Academic communities are often quite small; back when I was publishing and serving on committees it often wasn't hard to figure out who the reviewers were, because a paper proposing a revolutionary new way to do X would be sent to top world experts on X. In those cases, the fact that you could sometimes figure out who was who limited possible bad behavior, because clearly unfair reviews would damage the reviewer's reputation.
      • briefcomment 5y ago
        Not sure I follow. It sounds like the experts in your example are able to effectively identify fair reviews based on their merit. This would need to be the case for people to pick out unfair reviews (and therefore deter reviewers from writing bad reviews). But it that's the case, anonymity shouldn't incentivize anyone to write bad reviews (since bad reviews would be identifiable and dismissible on their own). If anything, I would think that de-anonymization (implicit in this case, since reviewers are presumably nominally anonymous) would be more likely to empower cult-of-personality effects (or in general, would incentivize looking beyond the merits of a review, to get into an influential person's good books), making bad reviews more influential than they otherwise would be.