Talk:Whuffie/Archive 1

Archive 1

fallacy

In a cash-based economic system, nobody can gain money without someone else parting with an equal amount of money. Hmmm... that seems to be a fallacy. If that were the case, then the GDP would have to remain constant.

• I've always wondered about that too... if economics is zero-sum - as it seems to be on small scales - then how is the GDP meaningful?

It isn't a falacy since the total amount of money, M, is usually constant (unless the government practices seignorage which usually causes inflation of the degree of seignorage). Thus for me to gain $10 someone necessarily lost $10.

As for GDP growing despite the money supply remaining constant - wealth is created independent of money, otherwise the only way to create wealth would be to print money. Someone can create something of worth - that is create something people will pay money for. Since the worth is created without someone having to pay for it (the very act of creation creates the wealth, not paying for it) then worth is independent of money supply. I hope this makes sense, perhaps someone can explain it better. --ShaunMacPherson 20:45, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

It's essential to have positive and negative scores identified. A zero rating could be due to being a nonentity or through having 10,000 people divided down the middle.

Auto judgment

Hi, I added back the bit about automatic judgments based on Whuffie. I learned about it from an interview of Cory Doctorow. (Krotty seems to agree with me.) However, I can't find the interview again. If one of you can find it again, please add a link. Thanks. :) --Kjoonlee 04:39, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I also don't have to explain the working of the neural interface, which in addition to allowing them to do this suck-your-brains-out-and-drop-it-onto-a-hard-drive thing, also is capable of figuring out how you feel about any given thing anywhere in the world that you have any opinion about--without asking you. And as a consequence of this, you can first of all make some guesses about how you're going to feel about something. You don't have to remember whether you've been to this restaurant because the system remembers and tells you what other good restaurants are nearby. But the second-order effect is it will figure out who you hold in high esteem, who has an opinion about some restaurant you've never been to. And this opinion, and this esteem is called Whuffie.

From [the interview] --Krotty 18:59, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Etymology

I agree that Whuffie is a made-up word and not a pronunciation of an acronym, but didn't Doctorow say that it came from the "Whuf! Whuf!" audience cheer from the Arsenio Hall show? I hesitate to edit the article to add this (and I haven't checked the history to see if had been added and discarded), but I was just wondering...--Cmpalmer 19:32, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

I think I remember him saying it's a made-up word that he and his friends in high-school used to use. Other than that, I don't remember if he and his friends picked it up from the Arsenio Hall show or not. Regardless, we shouldn't add that to the article if we don't have reliable sources.. --Kjoonlee 19:35, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

But if you find a source for the info, please add it! :) --Kjoonlee 19:47, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Whuffie inflation

Has the problem of inflation ever been applied to a Whuffie currency based economy? Whuffie is a measurement of one's reputation relative to others. A good reputation leads to increased social status. Social status and reputation are positional goods, [1]. Positional goods are naturally scarce, there's only so much lakeside and ocean view real estate to go around. Thus, when the supply of whuffies in the economy grows each individual whuffie represents smaller amounts of reputation/social status/whatever. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Weaklygodlike (talk • contribs) 04:23, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Whuffie transparency

Where is the stats page, from which we can learn, how much whuffies are emitted? What people have been awarded with the initial load of whuffies and for what reason? To avoid the pitfalls of the current money system what about a strict policy of transparency? Fridemar (talk) 21:36, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was not done.  Skomorokh  07:07, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

---

Whuffie → Whuffie Bank — Whuffie Bank may or may not be notable. Whuffie almost certainly is not. Ben Aveling 04:45, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

• I think a move would be inappropriate as it would completely repurpose the article by changing its topic drastically. Perhaps instead create a Whuffie Bank article and then AfD or propose a merge of this article. --Cybercobra (talk) 04:53, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Promoting a neologism

"This article may document a neologism in such a manner as to promote it."

But documenting a neologism inevitably promotes it. The criterion for inclusion of a new word rests not on the motive of the lexicographer, but rather on whether a recently coined word has gained enough currency to become useful rather than merely novel. If the word has become useful, it should be documented, lest our written record of a language fail in its goal of comprehensive coverage. But if the new word is still a fad or an element of cant, it's better to wait until the word either fades away or eventually meets reasonable criteria of currency and usefulness.

Less abstractly, while I personally like the concept of Whuffie, I think it's still a pretty obscure concept, and may fade away. The similarly-employed "mojo" is familiar, orthographically plain, and has more punch. Dratman (talk) 02:42, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Cleaned up "Explanation" section

I've rewritten and condensed this section and removed the "written like a personal reflection or essay and may require cleanup" tag that has been on it since August of 2008. In rewriting the section, I've removed some of the text, like the explanation of different kinds of Whuffie, as it provides more detail than the article seems to merit, and more than the reader needs to understand the word. If others feel this material is relevant, it should be included in a much more condensed style to avoid the section being re-tagged by a future editor.

It is unclear whether the last paragraph in this paragraph represents the prevalent view of society in the novel, or the view of the novel's author, or the personal view of the original author of this Wikipedia article. Someone more familiar with the novel should sort this last paragraph out. Ross Fraser (talk) 06:56, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks!

Great article everyone. Thanks for keeping it maintained! I frequently like to this page when discussing social capital issues.-- Dmccreary (talk) 17:51, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

WhuffieTracker

You can now check your Whuffie on the web. Whuffie Tracker under development. --Migs 05:15, 19 January 2006 (UTC) (is now a dead link to a placeholder page at a webhost Aerowolf (talk) 23:29, 23 March 2012 (UTC))

The Nature of the Future

Apparently (Your Reputation Will Be The Currency Of The Future) the book The Nature of the Future by Marina Gorbis discusses whuffie. --Error (talk) 00:47, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Left-hand vs. right-hand Whuffie

The article does not take the two separate identifications of Whuffie into account. Doctorow discusses the two different methods as being right-hand (the amount you directly attribute to an action) and left-hand (an aggregate of the right-hand Whuffie of the people who have have given you left-hand).

Example: A person gave me 50 Whuffie for a song I wrote, that they like. I also received 100 left-hand Whuffie from the people that person has also given right-hand Whuffie to.

Note: I can't create an account from the network I am on, otherwise I would sign and update this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.229.163.10 (talk) 21:31, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

That doesn't match the description of left-handed whuffie in the Doctorow's book. Quoting from the book at http://craphound.com/down/Cory_Doctorow_-_Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_Kingdom.txt "left-handed Whuffie; respect garnered from people who shared very few of my opinions" CaspianM (talk) 10:57, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

External links modified

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