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The high price of mistrust

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Re: The high price of mistrust

#121

Post by twoquestions »

umvi wrote: post #95
aidenn0 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, you can't directly measure productivity in many jobs, so proxies for productivity are used, and in low trust environments, those proxies are the sole source of truth, which makes gaming them more important than actually being productive.

> those proxies are the sole source of truth, which makes gaming them more important than actually being productive. Reminds me of a short story I read, which I can't find now. The gist of it was about this person reading a memo or something at work on their computer, and the person wasn't actually reading it, they were just scrolling down the page and occasionally scrolling back up to pretend to re-read paragraphs b…

You may also be thinking of Snow Crash. Creepy stuff!

Re: The high price of mistrust

#122

Post by dgb23 »

jrexilius wrote: post #51
AndrewBissell wrote: post #44

Earlier 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…

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.

Sustainable trust is earned, not blindly given.

It is the responsibility of each participant to criticize the status quo and those who have taken up responsibility and power, or else they keep building on brittle, hierarchical foundations until everything crashes down.

Yes, there are populists who spread political lies, insecure managers who default to micro-management, bureaucratic systems that slow everything down and disillusioned workers. Their common trait is mistrust: They often have been hurt by those that they should be trusting, they are not being heard and sometimes they see through the bullshit. The best case is that there is simply a lack of real communication, education and direct involvement, because that problem is solvable.

It is very simple: for trust to grow and stabilize, both parties need to care and invest in each other. There is no shortcut, no trick and no amount of marketing, propaganda or talk will get either side out of this. That means both sides need to admit their mistakes, be vulnerable, caring, hopeful and most importantly honest and transparent.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#123

Post by wott »

roywiggins wrote: post #90
opwieurposiu wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I finally met an anti-masker in person and it was not at all like I expected. I was at the playground and my kids started playing with this hippie mom's kids. We started talking about what a weird time it is to be a kid. We ended up making a playdate for the kids and she mentioned she does not wear masks because of some spiritual reasons. I was surprised because I thought that anti maskers were all right leaning. I t…

I'd worry that their kids wouldn't be up to date on their vaccines. You really don't want measles. It's a low risk, obviously, especially if you are up to date. But as much as I like hippy vegans (not being sarcastic!) I would still worry they are walking around as potential measles incubators. If they have religious objections to wearing a piece of cloth over their face they probably aren't too excited about vaccine…

What's this obsession of anti-anti-vax with measles? When I was on my national Reddit sub, it would come up 40 times a year.

When I was a kid, everyone was catching it. That was just one of those diseases you catch once and then you are done with it.

It is so low-risk that doctors didn't even declare the cases as they were supposed to be. They just observed them in case it would turn bad. Watching well and treating the few difficult case well made it so that there was just around 5 deaths a year, amongst cohorts of 800.000 who almost all caught it. At the scale of my department, that would be one letal case every 80 years... Outdoor leisure kill more in half a week here, as it was noticeable after lockdown (as we were very lucky with Covid, there were more outdoor leisure related death in 4 days of reopening than Covid related death from 9 months of first wave. NB: it was unfortunately different with second wave)

Re: The high price of mistrust

#124

Post by ndiscussion »

watt wrote: post #99
ndiscussion wrote: post #70

Seeing 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?

"In the six decades from 1950 to 2010, the U.S. population had increased from 157.8 million to 312.2 million" And it was 132.1 million in 1940.

Yeah, that was a hypothetical question, but thanks... there's no going back it seems :D

I'm sure they still have this environment in some countries where no one wants to visit.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#125

Post by bsenftner »

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?

A method to address mistrust is to initiate "virtue circles": do people unrequested favors, without expectation of any return. Just do it; it actually feels good. And it is infectious. Others start doing it too, and double so when you subtly exhibit the joy of helping others without any expectations. Once more than 3 people in any social circle start this type of positive interaction, a positive culture shift occurs in the social group. It is quite amazing how fast this transition happens, as if people are waiting for an excuse to be better with others.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#126

Post by dudeman13 »

throwaway2245 wrote: post #54
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.

Holding on to publishing the results because you don't like the political consequences sounds like self-censorship to me

Re: The high price of mistrust

#127

Post by spamizbad »

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…

You're being downvoted, but you hit the nail on the head.

I feel like for people of my vintage (born in the early 80s) the whole war on terror was extremely caustic to my generational cohort. It was a weird environment where every trusted institution in society lined-up in support of both wars, and then actively worked to sideline any debate and discussion. The Dixie Chicks got infamously cancelled for saying something completely milquetoast against the Bush and the war.

And just as we thought we were turning a corner on the War on Terror the financial crash of 2008 hit. Here, it was another highly regarded institution: finance. Young people might not remember this, but finance used to be the industry you would track into if you were a high achieving member of the intelligentsia. The industry was viewed as being staffed to the gills with the best-and-brightest and was afforded anodyne coverage from the establishment media. So naturally, when they imploded the country and then went on TV and blamed it on losers with mortgages[1], and proceeded to face zero real consequences because the justice system never bothered putting laws in place to protect regular people and felt such actions would "punish people for taking risks" (which as an aside: if you are just externalizing risk to 3rd parties you aren't actually "encouraging people to take risks")

It's a trope, but social trust has been eroded because people feel like there's basically "meritocratic" caste system in this country: if you go to the right school, get into the right industry, and make enough money you are granted a measure of impunity when you externalize harm that you quite frankly shouldn't have.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp-Jw-5Kx8k

Re: The high price of mistrust

#128

Post by SaberTail »

umvi wrote: post #95
aidenn0 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, you can't directly measure productivity in many jobs, so proxies for productivity are used, and in low trust environments, those proxies are the sole source of truth, which makes gaming them more important than actually being productive.

> those proxies are the sole source of truth, which makes gaming them more important than actually being productive. Reminds me of a short story I read, which I can't find now. The gist of it was about this person reading a memo or something at work on their computer, and the person wasn't actually reading it, they were just scrolling down the page and occasionally scrolling back up to pretend to re-read paragraphs b…

It's not a short story, but maybe you're remembering a bit from "Snow Crash"?

> Y.T's mom pulls up the new memo, checks the time, and starts reading it. The estimated reading time is 15.62 minutes... Y.T.'s mom decides to spend between fourteen and fifteen minutes reading the memo. It's better for younger workers to spend too long, to show they're careful, not cocky. It's better for older workers to go a little fast, to show good management potential. She's pushing forty. She scans through the memo, hitting the Page Down button at reasonably regular intervals, occasionally paging back up to pretend to reread some earlier section. The computer is going to notice all this. It approves of rereading. It's a small thing, but over a decade or so this stuff really shows up on your work-habits summary.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#129

Post by yrimaxi »

medium_burrito wrote: post #116

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 t…

> 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.

That’s what the poors need; noblesse oblige oligarchy.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#130

Post by 1996 »

roywiggins wrote: post #20
ameminator wrote: post #16

Earlier 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…

> "wearing a mask during a deadly pandemic" is a really simple thing to do to demonstrate willingness to sign on to a social compact.

Interestingly, I wear none, and use that for signaling: I find that I associate more easily with people who also refuse the masquerade!

So you may have a point: mask offer the possibility to signal, which we can both use to refuse to associate given our difference in values.

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