The high price of mistrust • Hacker News Board

Re: The high price of mistrust

#51

Post by jrexilius » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

AndrewBissell wrote: post #44

jrexilius wrote: post #31

I've spent a lot of years overseas, in third-world or developing countries, often torn by tribal or civil war, or other natural and man-made disasters. I have come to realize how foundational trust is in a functioning economy and self-governing society. We in G8 nations often don't see it, like fish not thinking about water. I've been extremely concerned with the efforts of sub-groups in our societies attacking the f…

> I've been extremely concerned with the efforts of sub-groups in our societies attacking the foundations of trust. I assume you're referring to the neocons who lied us into the war in Iraq (and keep us there to this day), the Wall Street bankers & executives who created the 2008 financial crisis and the politicians who bailed them out at the people's expense, the military/intelligence and tech industry figures who s…

No, actually I'm referring to groups on the left _and_ right. While popularizing the attacking of shared society and our systems foundations did start with the counter-culture left in the 60s, it has certainly become a bipartisan effort in recent decades.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#52

Post by RhodoGSA » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

alexis2b wrote: post #37

This article made me think immediately about a lot of discussions regarding blockchain suitability for a given use case. I realized solving for a « no trust » environment is extremely expensive (even purely computationally if you look at proof of work as a solution). Most of the times, deciding to start putting a little trust in the design saves a lot of complexity...

Check out Polkadot! All the 'Powerhouse' Players came together to start a semi-trustless system of governance that's pretty interesting.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#53

Post by sanderjd » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

irpapakons wrote: post #27

Ozzie_osman wrote: post #12

This applies to the workplace too, not just society at large. That's why if I'm ever at a company where I feel like I am mistrusted, or I mistrust the people I work with, I do what I can to leave. Not only is it an unpleasant environment to work in, but it feels predictive of failure.

I'm reading this article while waiting for one of the two people with write access to run my db migration, as developers don't get write access to the database in this company. Is this common?

The better way is for nobody to have direct write access to the database, but instead for automated tools to do things like that, using reviewed code and config and writing an audit log of actions taken. The trust thing is part of the reason this is a good idea, but it's mostly a good idea to avoid good-faith accidents. I think it is common for companies that haven't yet had time to build those automated tools to delegate their work to senior, very trusted, engineers. But that's not a good solution, it's just more expedient, and a bit better than the database being world-writable, which is a bad solution.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#54

Post by throwaway2245 » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

kyrieeschaton wrote: post #2

Unfortunately most research on social capital and mistrust has been desk-drawered or heavily self censored due to the political implications. https://www.chronicle.com/article/robert-putnam-and-the-ethi... https://www.city-journal.org/html/bowling-our-own-10265.html

These links cover one person's research, the same person as the parent article, via press releases seeking controversy and attention for his commercial work.

His work doesn't appear to have been desk-drawered or self-censored.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#55

Post by indemnity » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

irpapakons wrote: post #27

Ozzie_osman wrote: post #12

This applies to the workplace too, not just society at large. That's why if I'm ever at a company where I feel like I am mistrusted, or I mistrust the people I work with, I do what I can to leave. Not only is it an unpleasant environment to work in, but it feels predictive of failure.

I'm reading this article while waiting for one of the two people with write access to run my db migration, as developers don't get write access to the database in this company. Is this common?

Why is this not automated?

Re: The high price of mistrust

#56

Post by ripe » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 4:58 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #38

roywiggins wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other people not wearing a mask makes me less safe. I don't know why I would want to trust such people. If they can't even take a basic precaution during a deadly pandemic then their judgement seems dangerously impaired. I don't trust them because I don't think they're trustworthy. Even if masks didn't work, stubborn refusal to wear them is nearly as bad- people should wear the even if they are skeptical on the effec…

> Other people not wearing a mask makes me less safe Yes, but that's been true for a long time, even before covid. I'm betting you didn't mistrust non-mask-wearers pre-covid even though I'm sure several millions have died in the US alone since early 1920s because people with the flu or other contagious diseases didn't wear a mask and went to work sick, etc. You just didn't notice because it happened at a rate that di…

> Well imagine all of your news sources downplay covid and even when you get it yourself it's not as bad as the hysteria led you to believe - just some mild flulike symptoms and loss of smell and taste. You start to mistrust all of the zealots...

If you'd rather believe Fox News than scientists who are telling you this is much worse than the flu, then while you might not be a bad person, you've earned my mistrust.

You can drop your mask if you want, but you can't really blame the OP for not trusting you.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#57

Post by roywiggins » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:00 PM UTC

slibhb wrote: post #33

roywiggins wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other people not wearing a mask makes me less safe. I don't know why I would want to trust such people. If they can't even take a basic precaution during a deadly pandemic then their judgement seems dangerously impaired. I don't trust them because I don't think they're trustworthy. Even if masks didn't work, stubborn refusal to wear them is nearly as bad- people should wear the even if they are skeptical on the effec…

But where does it end? People not wearing gas masks makes you less safe. People leaving their homes at all makes you less safe. A certain amount of risk is necessary if you're going to get out of your bed in the morning. What most people (including me) do is this: we follow the law (in almost all cases) and we use our own subjective judgements to determine how to act besides that. This gets tricky because even if non…

I'm not wearing a mask when I am not within breath distance of anyone either. That's not what I'm talking about.

Sometimes I am as charitable as you toward people who make dumb choices. Sometimes I am much less so, because those choices are helping fuck this all up for the rest of us. People having terrible judgement is, unfortunately, a good reason not to trust them as much as you otherwise would.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#58

Post by leetcrew » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #41

leetcrew wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

shared values is an important part of trust though. suppose I'm an executive and I'm trying to hire a more diverse group of employees. one of my hiring managers says they're happy to apply whatever criteria I ask for, but they fundamentally don't believe diversity is important. I'm going to have a hard time trusting this person to do what I want.

shared values is an important part of trust though That's actually a pretty big mistake society has made. You emphatically don't need to share values with someone to get along with them or work with them or trust them. Focusing on values instead of goals and behaviors creates the environment of mistrust, because you don't know when someone is going to decide you don't share their values strongly enough and try to pur…

> You emphatically don't need to share values with someone to get along with them or work with them or trust them.

I guess it depends what "trust" means to you. to me it often means something like "I can expect this person to make the same (or similar) decision I would in situation X, therefore I do not need to watch them as closely". some values can be irrelevant in certain contexts. if I'm a communist and my coworker is an ancap, it probably doesn't affect our ability to work together on a software project. but if I'm very risk averse (in an engineering sense) and my coworker has a "move fast and break things" mindset, I am going to have to pay a lot more attention to their code reviews.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#59

Post by overton » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:05 PM UTC

cholmon wrote: post #24

overton wrote: post #17

The framing of this piece itself is a symptom of the problem. Everything, including our social relationships apparently have to be "capital" that make us "productive." This amoral, economistic view of human life is what got us into this mess in the first place. Why would people trust each other in a system that essentially rewards sociopathy, avarice, greed, and deception? It's telling that they can't provide a bette…

> This amoral, economistic view of human life is what got us into this mess in the first place. Which mess are you referring to?

The lack of trust and community participation described in the article.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#60

Post by harlanji » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:06 PM UTC

mlinhares wrote: post #35

elgfare wrote: post #28

This rings extremely true for me. I live in Norway, which in my experience is significantly more trusting than most other places, and it's wonderful. We do have other transaction costs though, like a fear of "bothering" each other. Different problem, similar effect.

At a much smaller scale, though. After living most of my life in Brazil, I still bristle at how stuff happens here in the US, with much less papertrail than I'm used to because people often trust the systems and people in place. When I bought a home I just wired the down payment, didn't get anything other than the bank statement saying I had wired the money. In Brazil I'd get a paper proving they got it and stuff. So…

I’m feeling it in the other direction. I’ve been lucky to live a relatively carefree and unproblematic life in the US middle-class, until the last few years where I’ve attracted a well funded legal team to stalk everything I do and find faults. Now, I think living in a low trust society sounds great because the Boomers and other optimists in my life are starting to leave me alone. They don’t doubt my story, but it’s also beyond what they can process as real—former inmates and first generation Latin and Afro folk who I work with can fully comprehend the situation of being terrorized by lawyers and their “investigators.” Suddenly I am forced to be a low-trust person, and it’s not natural or pleasant... I’m mostly Scandinavian by blood, with a little of everything mixed in.