Re: Working without being ambushed by Ambiguity

On 25/06/2013 17:05, Larry Masinter wrote:
>
> I noted:
>>> Consider defining trust in terms of transfer of belief. Party A trusts party B to
>> the extent that if B utters statement S and A receives S, that A's belief state
>> changes to include S. If A trust B perfectly, then A believes everything B says. If
>> A doesn't trust B at all, then A ignores what B says, or doesn't believe it, in any
>> case.
>
> and Graham replied:
>
>> It's true, we are using the word "trust" in different ways.  In my 3-year
>> involvement with the EU iTrust working group [1][2], I saw many different
>> notions of trust described, but never that one.  There was no total consensus
>> about what trust actually meant, but many participants used the term in the
>> sense of using trust as an indicator of how they expect some other party to
>> behave, or how reliable they regard their pronouncements, in the absence of
>> complete knowledge. ...
>
> But
> "how they expect some other to behave"
> is better expressed as
>   "how well they expect some other party to keep its promises to behave
>     in particular way"
> isn't it?

Not necessarily, I think - it may have nothing to do with how they promise to 
behave - just how they are expected to behave.

> and
> "how reliable they regard their pronouncements" is best explained
> by "how much do you believe their pronouncements"

Maybe.  I already acknowledged an element of belief in the process.  But the 
trusting process as analyzed by many researchers also takes account of the 
exposure to risk if the trust turns out to be misplaced.  (I may not believe X, 
but still be prepared to act on the basis of X being true if the downside is 
small enough.)

> And I don't think it is necessary to give up on automating representation and
> use of trust without requiring a person to do the "trust" analysis.

(Wow, three negatives!) I think you're saying it's possible to do automated 
representation and use trust without involving personal trust judgements. 
Maybe, but I don't know how to do that, in general.  So I try to approach it in 
more manageable, incremental steps.

#g
--

Received on Tuesday, 25 June 2013 21:29:36 UTC