[MUD-Dev] TECH: Trusting Network Clients

[Sasha Hart]

[Philip Lenhardt]

> Besides being fearsome and unpredictable, enforcement in this
> model needed to be high-profile as well, because agent honesty was
> proportional to the agent's perceived chances of being caught.

I can only think that consistency of punishment bears directly on
perceived chances of being caught. The more you catch them, the more
they have been caught (and the higher their estimate of being caught
in future). Word gets around, too. Of course, severity does seem to
make a difference as well (but note the caveat against escalation,
as this can reduce the effectiveness of punishment; also note that
punishments have to compete with incentives. No free lunch.)

The only sense in which unpredictability would help is in the sense
that you need to avoid providing signals that enforcement will not
occur ("green light" to misbehavior). On the other hand, if you can
supply a "red light" without fail, that's predictability but it's
actually facilitating "honesty" (e.g. the lack of whatever is being
punished). Perfectly unpredictable enforcement means that the
policed don't have any green light to latch onto, but to the extent
that being unpredictable requires inconsistency, people *will* learn
something close to the real probability of being caught, then
incorporate it into their decision making.

I wouldn't recommend inconsistency, capriciousness, or unfairness in
punishment unless you know what you're doing on more authority than
sugarscape.  It's pretty common-sensical..

Sasha

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