[cap-talk] Capability accounting

[Nick Szabo]

Norm:
> You seem to assume that it is the user who makes this decision,
> or is even aware of the decision.
> Within an enterprise most buy decisions are delegated to
> low level purchasing agents.
> In my computer I would have low level software
> purchasing agents that would seldom bothered me.

This doesn't get around the problem I have posed, namely that
the agent must somehow learn about the user's preferences and
then translate them into economic or security decisions.  
A human purchasing agent must learn quite a bit about the
boss's desires and the organization's needs before he can act
effectively.  The human will base quite a bit of this on 
experience and empathy rather than detailed instructions.
There is nothing more worthless than an employee who requires
detailed instructions before he can get anything useful done.

But detailed instruction is just what a software agent requires.  
The software can't be expected to have such experience or
empathy, and will often not even be able to acquire detailed
instructions as they are often tacit preferences that the user can't
readily articulate more easily making the decision(s) herself.   

And even with the human agent large decisions must be reviewed
by higher-ups and aggregates of those decisions audited.

It's not that software agents are always impossible, it's just
that they cannot be waved off as a mere implementation detail --
they are the heart of any resource allocation or security system
based on actual user preferences, such as proposed schemes
to mimic real-world prices: useful prices are based on actual
preferences.

Nick Szabo
http://szabo.best.vwh.net/
http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/