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...
The high price of mistrust
71–80 of 285 posts
Re: The high price of mistrust
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Spying is something nearly every single person I know can get behind, on the left or right. I’ve never seen it bleed into real life lack of trust. Everything else on the other hand: https://news.yahoo.com/ex-gop-pollster-frank-luntz-172755768... > “Bret, I couldn't control them. They just started yelling at each other, and it would take me two minutes to say to them, 'stop' - to put my hand up to the camera like I di…
Re: The high price of mistrust
#73Cost to whom? Imagine all the lost revenue if people would have a rational basis to trust each other more. Less transactions due to more informal exchanges must mean lost revenue to someone.
To make it short : Money and time lost due this lack of trust could be allocated to more valuable endeavor, such as pretty much anything.
Therefore it is better for society to solve this issue, even if it means some specific people that were making money out of it beforehand will not be able to anymore.
Re: The high price of mistrust
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 del…
Saved my bacon more than once!
Re: The high price of mistrust
#75Part of the problem is that in, say, 5 years, you won't know who you meet was a weirdo anti-masker who you don't trust not to endanger the people around them. Nowadays it's quite easy to avoid these people, but once the current crisis abates they will go back to being visually indistinguishable. (unrelated, but the cost of zero-trust can be measured quite directly by looking at the cost of making a Bitcoin transactio…
Did we read the same article? Just because someone doesn't agree with your view of the world doesn't automatically make them untrustworthy. From your perspective, maybe lives are more important than freedoms and you are willing to limit some freedoms temporarily or permanently if it means saving more lives. From someone else's perspective, maybe freedom is more important than lives, and they are willing to let some p…
> (including themselves)
Including others, which is against any serious code of ethics.
> From your perspective, maybe lives are more important than freedoms and you are willing to limit some freedoms temporarily or permanently if it means saving more lives.
It's extremely difficult for me to imagine a more fallacious argument than this.
The closest I can come is imagining a mass movement against DUI checkpoints by people who refuse to show their license, but who purposely get drunk before speeding through the checkpoint.
It is not only philosophically consistent to protest mask laws while at the same time wearing a mask during this pandemic-- it's ethically required. The fact that you don't seem to realize you've hard-coupled a defense of freedom with wanton irresponsibility is legitimately worrisome. It reeks of the success of online filter bubbles dividing consumers into the most destructive two poles of potential behavior/opinion.
Luckily, in my own community, talking in person to other humans, I don't witness anything like these two poles. Rather, I see a lot of pandemic fatigue, results of shit messaging from the government, some disinformation, and the occasional asshole who must be addicted to a political feed like a degenerate gambler in Vegas.
Honestly, for most people it's not going to matter what side of the political spectrum they were on. Nearly everyone has made at least one critical safety mistake, failing to protect themselves or their loved ones. At least in the U.S., noses peeking out from masks is a bi-partisan issue. High ground is a luxury of social media self-delusion.
Re: The high price of mistrust
#76I think one (of many) factors propelling this trend is income inequality. Imagine you're in the grocery store checkout line with luxury foods and how uncomfortable it might be to make conversation with the clerk who may be working three jobs and trying to parent two children. So we invented apps. Now we don't have to look up to hail a cab, we can look down at our phone. We don't even THINK about riding the bus ( http…
Income inequality isn't quite the spring-of-all-evils that it's being touted as. Although I think you are touching on some pressures and problems. Yes, it can be one of the factors in "othering" and can discourage commitment to a shared, common system, but I've been in lots of countries with low "inequality" that were far less trusting. True, it's apples/oranges comparison, but I'm not convinced that inequality is th…
It’s not income inequality, it’s opportunity inequality. Which manifests itself as income (/wealth) inequality, so that’s the proxy most people use.
Once you lose the feeling of others being in your tribe and that they might also be interested in looking out for you, it’s very, very difficult to regain that. Even worse is once members of the tribe start assuming others are part of an enemy tribe.
Re: The high price of mistrust
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> I assume you're referring to the neocons who ... Could you expand upon why? You mentioned your own perceptions on "attacking trust", but I didn't find much of that (or any assignment of blame to anyone) expressed in the parent comment.
Re: The high price of mistrust
#78Seeing 1950's America is heartbreaking for me. I grew up in the 90s, and I never saw a trusted society. https://www.radiogunk.com/forums/index.php?threads/1950s-ame... Where's the broken glass? The needles, the poop? The stumbling drunks harassing the young women? The masses of tents where children used to play? What the fuck has happened to us?
Re: The high price of mistrust
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have been wrong about other issues in the past and it's with this frame of mind that think of these people. While I vehemently disagree with these anti-maskers, I also don't want to label them as "unter-menschen" forever. Maybe it's a good thing that living with people you disagree with, is a part of the social contract.
"wearing a mask during a deadly pandemic" is a really simple thing to do to demonstrate willingness to sign on to a social compact. Fortunately, almost everyone I see in my neighborhood does. I generally feel positively towards my actual neighbors. But based on conversations with friends elsewhere, this is not universally true. I don't know if I could ever move to an area that didn't have high mask compliance during…
If one would not live in a place without high mask compliance, why would one live in a place without 100% mask compliance? If not 100%, what is the number? Why stop at mask compliance?
Re: The high price of mistrust
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did we read the same article? Just because someone doesn't agree with your view of the world doesn't automatically make them untrustworthy. From your perspective, maybe lives are more important than freedoms and you are willing to limit some freedoms temporarily or permanently if it means saving more lives. From someone else's perspective, maybe freedom is more important than lives, and they are willing to let some p…
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…
I agree with your conclusions on when one should wear a mask. I disagree with your conclusions about the intelligence, reasoning ability, or basic humanity of anti-maskers.
If you're someone who is flooded with reports of scientists waffling, of problematic reasons why people want you to wear masks, of health officials adjusting the rules du jour independent of defensible rationalizations, of higher-ups enforcing rules that they do not themselves follow, etc., and are NOT exposed to the (imho correct) arguments as to why mask-wearing is necessary and important... why wouldn't you conclude that it's a scam?
None of the conclusions about mask wearing can be made with 100% certainty. There really is a lot of bullshit going around on all sides. Even a fairly weak selection filter is enough to make perfectly rational actors come to opposite conclusions.
Our society is based on the implicit assumption that we all see more or less the same thing, so we can depend on (trust) that our sense of "normal" is shared, at least to some degree.
That assumption no longer holds. (Or rather, it holds for far fewer topics than it used to.)