I'M OK IF YOU'RE OK: ON THE NOTION OF TRUSTING COMMUNICATION.

Abstract

The authors consider the issue of what an agent or a processor needs to know in order to know that its messages are true. They view this as a first step to a general theory of cooperative communication in distributed systems. An honest message is one that is known to be true when it is sent (or said). If every message that is sent is honest, then of course every message that is sent is true. Various weaker conditions than honesty are investigated with the property that, provided every message sent satisfies the condition, then every message sent is true.