Group five of six
People
The hardest thing to read on a market is another person, because you get almost no signal from them and the signal you do get is easy to produce falsely.
Absence is the theme
Four of the six pairs here are about something that did not happen. No reply, no listing, no message, no account. An absence looks the same regardless of what produced it, and the mind fills it in with whatever it is already worried about.
The useful move is to notice that an absence is not evidence of anything at all. It is compatible with a person who is busy, a person who has read the message and had nothing to say, and a person who has stopped existing on the market. Treating it as information is the error, and it is a comfortable one to fall into because doing nothing feels irresponsible.
Silence and being ignored look identical
People / Pair 29Silence against Being ignored
A blank screen is produced by an unread message and by a read one. Only one of those is a decision.
The test: Whether the account has done anything at all inside the market since you wrote
Quiet is not the same as gone
People / Pair 30A vendor gone quiet against A vendor account gone
One of these still has a counterparty at the other end. The other has an order and nobody attached to it.
The test: Whether the account still appears in the market listings when you look it up fresh
Feedback tells you a mood, evidence tells you a fact
People / Pair 31Feedback against Evidence
A score is a pile of opinions. A record is an object somebody else can open and read for themselves.
The test: Whether a stranger could look at the same thing and reach the same conclusion
What a signature actually proves
People / Pair 32A signed message against A claim to be somebody
A signature binds a message to a key. Nothing binds that key to a person unless you did it earlier.
The test: Where your copy of the key came from, and whether you had it before this message
The market only speaks in one place
People / Pair 33Market support against Somebody using the name
Only the interface you reached under your own steam can be treated as the market speaking to you.
The test: Whether you navigated to it yourself or it arrived in front of you
An empty history and a claimed history
People / Pair 34A new vendor against An old vendor on a new account
Both show an empty history. Only one of them asks you to fill that history in from a story.
The test: Whether the continuity is anchored anywhere outside the new account itself
Reputation is not proof
The other half of this group is about the difference between something that carries a name and something that carries proof. Feedback carries a name. So does a badge, so does a profile, so does anybody typing a claim about who they are. None of them are verifiable by you.
A signature is different in kind, not in degree. It ties a message to a key. It still says nothing about who holds that key, which is where the words group picks up, but at least it is a fact rather than an assertion.
The rule that survives everything in this group
The market interface is the only place the market talks to you. Anything reaching you from outside it, however convincing, is somebody else, and there is no test that makes it safe to treat otherwise.