I’ll accept that doing everything probabilistically is expensive, but I really don’t see how it wouldn’t solve the problem to at least assign probabilities to imported statements. The more elements in the chain of trust, the weaker it is. Eventually, someone needs it reliably enough that it becomes necessary to check it.
And of course any chain of trust like that ought to have a system for providing proof upon demand, which will be invoked roughly every N steps of trust. The recipients of the proof would then become nodes of authority on the issue.
This seems rather how actual people operate (though we often skip the ‘where to get proof of this’ step), and so any proof that it will become unworkable has a bit of a steep hill to climb.
I’ll accept that doing everything probabilistically is expensive, but I really don’t see how it wouldn’t solve the problem to at least assign probabilities to imported statements. The more elements in the chain of trust, the weaker it is. Eventually, someone needs it reliably enough that it becomes necessary to check it.
And of course any chain of trust like that ought to have a system for providing proof upon demand, which will be invoked roughly every N steps of trust. The recipients of the proof would then become nodes of authority on the issue.
This seems rather how actual people operate (though we often skip the ‘where to get proof of this’ step), and so any proof that it will become unworkable has a bit of a steep hill to climb.