Hacker News Reader

Comment by hugh | Hacker News Reader

Y'know, I started reading that post with a view towards making a cynical, snarky comment, but by the end it didn't seem such a bad idea.

You'd need to make sure the karma system couldn't be gamed, though -- either by automated actions (kind comments on everybody's walls) or collusion (two people [or a person and a sockpuppet] conspiring to give each other karma). I'm not sure that's solvable.

View on HN

Gaming can be solved by introducing attack resistant trust metric. The best one the humankind has come up so far is money.

A brilliant comment, but sadly, electronic and paper money is not attack resistant.

Money is attack resistant. Those who think otherwise might end up in jail.

Money is attack resistant? Not entirely. Not to governments, who can raid your savings by printing more. Not to central banks, who have the same powers, despite not being part of the government. Not to corporations that are seen by corrupt governments as "too large to fail." Not to all manner of con artists who pass themselves off as legitimate people involved in finance.

And unfortunately, only a small minority of the above get jailed.

Yes, markets have remarkable resilience. But there are lots of vulnerabilities in markets in the world as it stands now.

Personally, this idea could be quite viral too. Imagine - you get 10 karma points when you invite someone to use the website because you just introduce someone into this Kind World.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com