combust

I largely agree with the points you make above about automated curation (and thought your analysis was excellent). However, there are a couple of points that I think bear mentioning. The first is that the whole model you present depends upon there being some significant level of fundamental analysis. In the absence of this, the technical actors, to use your signal analogy, will just amplify the echoes of their own old signals. Kind of like the bots in wall-e. Now you make the argument that, at least for the stock market, "But in reality, fundamental traders are still completely driving the market. ", But this need not necessarily always be true. Imagine if, tomorrow, everyone in the world were eaten by lions. The bots trading on the stock market would still continue to trade. At least the ones that were turned on when the lions showed up. As days and weeks and years passed, the bots would continue to trade, and that trading would be based, to a larger and larger extent, not on the fundamental analysis that started the top spinning in the first place, but on their amplification and response to their own technical signals. I don't think that steem is there right now, but with bots and other automated systems for curation becoming more and more widely available (and significantly crosslinked), and there being less and less profit available for fundamental analysis curators, i think we're moving towards there. (for example, im pretty sure smooth doesn't employ curators anymore, and has not for some time. I seem to recall him mentioning that it wasn't worth the financial benefit.) And i think we're closer than many are entirely comfortable with. The second is that, using the current heavily front-weighted, stake based system of steemit curation rewards, bots have a tendency, IMO, to amplify undesirable signals more than they amplify desirable signals. Right now, the most profitable method of bot curation (as i know you are aware) is not following good curators, its front-running them. Because of this, at least using the reward stucture of the current system, it is unlikely that any curator would followed by a bot seeking curation rewards. Because of this, its also unlikely that any curator could rent out his curation service to whales based on the weight of SP that follows him. Because the bots would make sure to follow close enough to get in ahead of the whale, or not come in at all if the whale votes first. This would make it a bad deal for the whale either way. Of course, good curators are difficult to front run. But bad curators are not. Because of this, the bots will tend to amplify the signal of someone who, say, always votes for the same person more than the signal of someone who actually finds original content. Because the bad signals are easier to predict (thats what makes them bad). For the same reason, there is also a tendency for bots to amplify signals from other bots over legitimate fundamental analysis signals. As an exmaple, take the whale curator goes out of his way to find great, unrecognized content. Call him whale A. And take the whale curator who just votes for the same 5 guys 4 times a day every day. Call him whale B. Your bots (just as an example) are going to front run whale B. Because you can't front run whale A (you don't know what hes going to vote for) Third is that bots have a huge speed advantage over human curators and that speed advantage is heavily, heavily rewarded by the curation rewards algorithm. There are many who would make the argument that it was this type of speed advantage allowed bots and traders relying heavily on automation to entirely drive causal day traders out of the stock market in the early 2000s and out of the forex markets in like 2008-2010. This is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself in these particular markets, since there is no inherent desirability to getting a regular persons opinion on, say, how much the yen should be worth against the dollar. But in a market where we're trying to pick good content with subjective appeal to a wide audience, versus merely determining the ratio of value between one asset and another, many would consider freezing out "casual day traders" like this to be inherently harmful. Without economic incentive, the game theory that underlies distributed consensus can't exist. This is a great point, and something ive noticed on steemit generally. Most people don't seem to understand that you can't apply game theory analysis to non economic incentives. There's a tendency to speculate about what someone will or won't do based on psychological reasons, personal preference, or nebulous desire for their stake to increase in value, shout "game theory! i win!" and take the point as proven. That said, my biggest problem with most of clayops proposed reforms is that they throw out the baby with the bathwater