Wednesday, November 26, 2014

[lrikovht] Making it look nice

Suppose that the quality of the presentation of a document (as opposed to the quality of the content) is an imperfect information game.  High quality of presentation attempts to signal that the content is trustworthy through the assumption that only legitimate content producers can afford to create high quality of presentation.

Tools which decrease the cost of high quality presentation are then feeding into a never ending cycle: documents created by those tools will become perceived as "cheap", inducing the adoption of even more elaborate and expensive presentation to signal the resources of the producer that can afford it. Those people working in presentation and the tool producers keep making money hand over fist.  Game theoretically, possibly analogous to the War of Attrition.

Copyright I think exacerbates things: the appearance of high quality could fall under copyright (perhaps indirectly, e.g., training materials to use a tool) making it more expensive to create high quality presentations.

Rather than waste money on excessive presentation, one could equivalently signal one's resources by attaching money directly to the document.  Perhaps credible donations. Or maybe a cryptocurrency.  These I feel waste less money because it is a "mere transfer".

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