Ratings system

A ratings system, broadly, is a method by which people can share ratings on things. This includes things like online review platforms, website reputation databases, and the concept of "upvotes," "downvotes," and "likes" on social media platforms.

This page is mostly about the ratings system PeerVerity is building. It is a software solution to the problem of widespread misinformation.

What it is

Put simply, the ratings system is a system of software which is intended to help people make better (or at least more informed) decisions. It enables us to ask questions which are answered by the people we trust, the people that they trust, and so on. It also enables us to provide those answers to other people who are asking for them.

For example, you may want to know if Acme Corporation is a reliable supplier of anvils. You don't know, and none of the people you trust directly know either. However, you trust your uncle Larry, who trusts his best friend Bob, whose brother-in-law's nephew is a hobbyist blacksmith and knows all manner of things about anvils, and will give it to you straight: Acme Corporation's anvils are literally made of rubber, and you should shop elsewhere.

However, due to the limitations of humans to connect with one another, it's highly unlikely that this sort of information would naturally propagate to you. Fortunately, just as we have used tools like computers and the Internet to augment our natural capabilities for mathematics, information retention and processing, communication, and so on, we believe that it is possible to use technology to augment our ability to leverage trust, build communities and fight disinformation.

The ratings system has many applications and is seen as a way to transform society for the better. It is natural to think of the ratings system as a type of voting system which would be needed by communities for governance. In this sense the ratings system encompasses a larger sphere of influence, one which takes aim at current societal problems. Once we begin thinking about governance, we can begin to think about political and economic systems. These ideas lead us to systems thinking in general and how we might try to optimize socio-economic systems starting with the ratings system.

As an information system dedicated to promoting objectivity and honesty, the ratings system will have built into it a number of truth-finding methods, including debate, logic, collaboration, and mechanisms to promote civility. In this light, some background on our current society and its problems might be useful for perspective. One of those problems, privacy, is something the ratings system will be designed from the ground up to ensure.

Security and hacking issues related to information rating systems

How it works

Main article: Technical overview of the ratings system

The ratings system depends heavily on the core concept of a predicate: a statement which can be evaluated for truth. A good way to think about this is that any question which could be answered with "yes" or "no" can be restated as a predicate:

Question	Predicate
Is water wet?	Water is wet.
Is the cake a lie?	The cake is a lie.
Is jazz music enjoyable?	Jazz music is enjoyable.

Each person who wants to be a member of the ratings system can install the software and become a peer on the network. They must then seek out other users to connect with directly. Once they have added these peers to their network, they may start to make use of those peers' opinions, and make their own opinions available for others to use.

This sounds simple enough at first. The innovation is what happens when none of your peers have an opinion on a predicate. They will all ask their peers, who will ask their peers, and so on. What you will receive is the computed opinion of your personal network on that predicate.