“Transferable attribution” is exactly the right sort of idea!
Or what about “responsibility certificates” or “Recs” for short? Arguably that is even better because 1) it keeps “certs”, 2) “responsibility” has the connotation of being divisible, even moreso that “attribution”, 3) “responsibility” gets closer to the relevant concept of “causal blame”/ “the cause of an effect” by Joe Halpern 4) doesn’t have as many connotations of intellectual property as “attribution’.
Other ideas: acclaim, approval, credit, blame, or attribution certificate.
Regarding intellectual property connotations, it seems to me, at this point, that all of the systems we’re making for trading impact certs would also be useful for trading intellectual property, so we might have to tolerate that.
I like “credit”… It might introduce too many ambiguities. I initially overlooked it because it also means “money”… it’s also used in “carbon credits”, which would exist in the impact cert system.. but another ambiguity is introduced there in that the impact cert for a carbon capture job and a “carbon credit” would be subtly different, the capture cert wont be unitized or fungible, while a “carbon credit” would be expected to be, to represent one tonne of capture, or something.
I’m resistant to “responsibility”, because that represents this idea that is pretty important and fragile to the anglosphere, the intersection of authority and legitimacy, and I wouldn’t want to overload that. I like the idea of using “blame” because unlike “responsibility”, our culture’s conception of blame is extremely unhealthy, and needs to be fucked with. Useful to promote the idea that blame can oscillate between being good or bad (asset or liability), or can be shared between many parties, and that anyone who does things in the world will tend to accumulate blame.
Interesting points. I agree that impact certs differ from carbon credits by being by corresponding to a fraction of the impact of a whole project, or at least an amount of work (inputs), rather than a quanta of impact (outputs). But it does strike me that carbon credits still might be the most closely related among well-known existing concepts. This could suggest “project credits”. If you say—on your resume for example—that you sold “project credits” for a company, or a research project, it seems this would give a naive reader more of an idea of what has gone on than many other terms—they are a way of assigning credit to patrons of the project. The main downside, as you allude to is that they sort-sound like someone might be owed something. But if talking to a naive outsider, you can just say that the credit is a certificate that commemorates their patronage of the project, similar to a carbon credit, which would seem to be clear enough...
I think the problem with blame is that it sounds too negative—you won’t want to write that on your resume. And if the term isn’t used by recipients, then it’s unlikely to catch on.
Re “transferable attribution”, to be a bit more concrete, if I say that I have sold the attribution for a paper I wrote, it sounds a bit like I am giving away the authorship to a funder, which would be some kind of academic malpractice. Since that’s not always the case, it seems like we don’t want the general term to sound like it is...
“Transferable attribution” is exactly the right sort of idea! Or what about “responsibility certificates” or “Recs” for short? Arguably that is even better because 1) it keeps “certs”, 2) “responsibility” has the connotation of being divisible, even moreso that “attribution”, 3) “responsibility” gets closer to the relevant concept of “causal blame”/ “the cause of an effect” by Joe Halpern 4) doesn’t have as many connotations of intellectual property as “attribution’.
Other ideas: acclaim, approval, credit, blame, or attribution certificate.
Regarding intellectual property connotations, it seems to me, at this point, that all of the systems we’re making for trading impact certs would also be useful for trading intellectual property, so we might have to tolerate that.
I like “credit”… It might introduce too many ambiguities. I initially overlooked it because it also means “money”… it’s also used in “carbon credits”, which would exist in the impact cert system.. but another ambiguity is introduced there in that the impact cert for a carbon capture job and a “carbon credit” would be subtly different, the capture cert wont be unitized or fungible, while a “carbon credit” would be expected to be, to represent one tonne of capture, or something.
I’m resistant to “responsibility”, because that represents this idea that is pretty important and fragile to the anglosphere, the intersection of authority and legitimacy, and I wouldn’t want to overload that. I like the idea of using “blame” because unlike “responsibility”, our culture’s conception of blame is extremely unhealthy, and needs to be fucked with. Useful to promote the idea that blame can oscillate between being good or bad (asset or liability), or can be shared between many parties, and that anyone who does things in the world will tend to accumulate blame.
Interesting points. I agree that impact certs differ from carbon credits by being by corresponding to a fraction of the impact of a whole project, or at least an amount of work (inputs), rather than a quanta of impact (outputs). But it does strike me that carbon credits still might be the most closely related among well-known existing concepts. This could suggest “project credits”. If you say—on your resume for example—that you sold “project credits” for a company, or a research project, it seems this would give a naive reader more of an idea of what has gone on than many other terms—they are a way of assigning credit to patrons of the project. The main downside, as you allude to is that they sort-sound like someone might be owed something. But if talking to a naive outsider, you can just say that the credit is a certificate that commemorates their patronage of the project, similar to a carbon credit, which would seem to be clear enough...
I think the problem with blame is that it sounds too negative—you won’t want to write that on your resume. And if the term isn’t used by recipients, then it’s unlikely to catch on.
Re “transferable attribution”, to be a bit more concrete, if I say that I have sold the attribution for a paper I wrote, it sounds a bit like I am giving away the authorship to a funder, which would be some kind of academic malpractice. Since that’s not always the case, it seems like we don’t want the general term to sound like it is...