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The high price of mistrust

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Re: The high price of mistrust

#111

Post by winrid »

Hopefully this isn't too much of derailing the conversation:

This was something that surprised me about China when I visited, although maybe it shouldn't have.

The level of community and how close people are seemed unreal, coming from the US.

Maybe part of it is the "forced" community - city/urban blocks gated off with single entrance/exit ways, in some cases. I'm not sure.

But the dancing every night in the street in big cities, the elderly gathering to play Mahjongg in dedicated buildings, and other things, really opened my eyes about how far apart we are.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#112

Post by aww_dang »

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…

This is what I've found incredibly healthy and liberating about less developed countries. Nobody believes politicians or assumes that government has their best interests in mind. That level of trust appears as a toxic mythology from my perspective.

Instead they look for their own solutions.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#113

Post by khawkins »

The gig economy exploits the efficiencies of a trusting society masterfully. It would have been unthinkable 20 years ago that we'd let total strangers drive us home from bars and use our houses like hotels. But it turns out that with only a little oversight, we can trust our fellow citizens just as well as an employee of a professional company.

Systems of maintaining trust are very important, but having a trustworthy culture and populace is just as important. In the words of William Easterly, these systems can either be virtuous cycles or vicious cycles. Either trust flourishes or mistrust flourishes and going from one to the other is challenging because of its game-theoretical properties.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#114

Post by ripe »

umvi wrote: post #68
ripe wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Yo…

> If you'd rather believe Fox News than scientists who are telling you this is much worse than the flu... Scientists say it is much worse than the flu. For the vast majority who actually experience the disease, it is not much worse than the flu. Thus, people start to mistrust the science because there's a disparity between the statistics on paper and what people actually experience in reality. I think most people und…

> Scientists say it is much worse than the flu. For the vast majority who actually experience the disease, it is not much worse than the flu. Thus, people start to mistrust the science ...

You're probably right: it's hard to understand the difference between statistical evidence and anecdotes. On the other hand, a lot of other people who don't experience COVID still seem to be able to separate their own lack of statistical knowledge from the ability to trust scientists. I think these mask deniers are mistrusting scientists for some other reason.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#115

Post by scythe »

The importance of social trust has had a major impact on my belief in the importance of government-guaranteed tax-funded universal healthcare. Before about 2015, I thought it was nice, but not a pressing crisis, but around then, I started to notice things like signs saying "why does my insulin cost more than methadone?" and "why is medical marijuana cheaper than my heart disease medication?". These situations might have simple economic explanations in terms of supply-side dynamics, but they are morally infuriating to the same chunk of the electorate who self-identify as conservative capitalists. Not long after, Martin Shkreli appeared.

There seems to be a powerful, possibly instinctive, connection between A: being able to turn to someone for help when you're in need and B: considering that someone to be trustworthy. In 2020, we saw this writ large, when the United States became the global epicenter of conspiracy theories about SARS-CoV-2. The general population's trust in the medical system and the government is a huge unaccounted-for externality that can have serious effects on our economic and political stability.

Furthermore, one of the most lamented, supposedly idiosyncratic, problems with the US medical system is the sheer amount of paperwork required to do almost anything. It seems like an excellent example of this:

>We need to trust the people around us in order to live happy, productive lives. If we don’t trust them, we end up having to find costly ways to formalize our relationships.

(Opponents of guaranteed universal healthcare in the United States will generally agree that we do not have a "free" market in healthcare, but it is usually harder to convince them it will never be politically possible in light of the above.)

Re: The high price of mistrust

#116

Post by medium_burrito »

When the poors see their standard of living decline (exporting jobs, expensive real estate, shitty schools, ineffective government) all while the rich get richer, yeah, the basic social contract between the classes evaporates.

You may trust your neighbor, but that has zero bearing on society at large. Society only works if the different classes trust each other not to screw each other out of existence.

We're seeing this in all the rich countries now- a generation of youngsters are realizing that a middle class existence may not exist for them. Even in Europe, which is more egalitarian, things aren't looking as rosy as they used to be. And of course in poorer countries with high birth rates, we already see turmoil as young angry men realize they are destined for a life of poverty while their government enriches itself.

EDIT: I think the guy who started Huawei said something to the effect of when you are a millionaire, you only care about yourself, but when you are a billionaire, you are all the sudden responsible for a lot of people. I wish that attitude permeated our business schools and boardrooms. The amount of people from top business schools who parrot "Always do the right thing" and then proceed to sell their own grandmother down the street blows my mind.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#117

Post by misterbwong »

yamrzou wrote: post #88

The breakdown of trust in a society is a vicious cycle that seems hard to break. When a mistrust dynamic sets in, how can it be reversed?

Sounds overly-simplistic but the solution is to build trust again.

Unfortunately, the incentives that rule our society are pushing us away from this. We need to align incentives properly if we're going to have any hope of building trust again. ex:

1. The internet, as a technology, is amazing but functions as a possible bullhorn for everyone, without filter. It does not reward the best possible or most positive idea, only the one that grabs the most attention.

2. Shock and outrage drive the clicks/views/attention and everyone gets paid on these metrics.

3. Social media companies thrive on and optimize for attention metrics. The longer you use them, at the expense of things like participating in your community and building relationships, the more "successful" they are and the more $$$ they get

4. Society has moved towards more specialized play and communities. We participate in fewer and fewer activities where we just randomly encounter strangers.

5. Our current election system rewards divisiveness because it drives turnout. The candidate that can do the best job doesn't win-the candidate that can get the most votes does.

Possibly unpopular view: Encouraging religious participation would go a long way to help. Whether you believe or do not, religion helps align society away from purely individualistic pursuits and more towards a "corporate good".

Re: The high price of mistrust

#118

Post by nitrogen »

leetcrew wrote: post #58
nitrogen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cowork…

I think that's a fair point. In the case of a risk tolerance mismatch, you can work out shared criteria, scoped to the initial disagreement, for how to collaborate.

I'd also suggest that one of the reasons we are encouraged to seek diversity is because we benefit from having people around us who wouldn't make the same decisions we would make in every situation.

If I am reading between the lines correctly, it sounds like predictability is what you expect shared values to provide. I think a shared vision is more important than shared values in this case. You can still predict that with which you disagree, if you communicate mutual expectations for how to scope disagreement within collaboration.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#120

Post by throwaway0a5e »

lainga wrote: post #104
yamrzou wrote: post #88

The breakdown of trust in a society is a vicious cycle that seems hard to break. When a mistrust dynamic sets in, how can it be reversed?

IMO trust is associated with a certain social interaction. Once it's broken, one common way (the most? not sure) of re-establishing trust is to establish new social interactions, probably more personal and less complex. The example I'm thinking of is the emergence of organised crime in Sicily out of informal relationships between citizens who can't count on the state for protection or justice. Or the emergence of feu…

We're kind of barreling toward this reality in pockets of the western world. Where I live in the US (wealthy blue state, not rural Alabama, don't get your hopes up) you pretty much can't do fair business at a fair price without a personal reference or prior business relationship. And in some of the smaller wealthier towns you can see this kind of behavior start to creep into local government. Of course this is a far cry from not being able to rely on the police but it's definitely movement in that direction.
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