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The high price of mistrust

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Re: The high price of mistrust

#191

Post by Nasrudith »

roywiggins wrote: post #46
umvi wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> You start to mistrust all of the zealots forcing you destroy the economy^, handicap an entire generation of students, destroy the mental wellbeing of many millions, in order to extend the lives of the elderly and immunocompromised by a few years Wearing a mask doesn't destroy the economy or hurt students. It's the cheapest possible intervention. If wearing a mask helps, it actually sucks the wind out of the sails o…

I feel like I am taking crazy pills whenever people bring up the economy with COVID responses. The virus doesn't and cannot care about the economy or holidays, or any other irrelvancy brought up for arguments. Not to mention the obvious - sick people and people trying to avoid being sick aren't good for the economy.

It is just such blatant illogic you would expect from primary schoolers and not adults with college degrees and sought after positions to use. Like declaring "but there is a picnic scheduled today!" and proceeding to go and hold a picnic in the middle of a record breaking forest fire.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#192

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #150
mcguire wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" You may trust your neighbor, but that has zero bearing on society at large. " On the contrary, if you don't trust your neighbor, you have no basis for trusting anyone. It's the foundation for any other trust relationships. As for the relationships between classes, that also relies on trust in things larger than classes: trust in the legal and social framework.

Measuring trust requires a threat model of sorts. I trust my neighbors not to steal my stuff. I don't trust them not to narc on me. If they do narc on my I trust the city to realize that's a dumb use of resources. But I don't trust the state to be so smart. How often have you heard something along the lines of "I'm not worried my kids will be kidnapped, I'm worried some jerk will call the cops if I let them walk to t…

[deleted]

Re: The high price of mistrust

#193

Post by AnthonyMouse »

pnutjam wrote: post #165
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be a lot harder to attack them if they didn't provide such a basis for it. There was a time when journalists at least attempted to be independent: https://conversationswithslava.substack.com/p/coming-soon Glenn Greenwald: https://reason.com/2021/01/23/journalists-are-authoritarians... > Did you vote for Donald Trump in the last election? > I didn't vote. It's ironic: That's the one old journalism trope that…

When things are going well, you can stand by and observe. We're in a death spiral and need as many hands on the tiller as possible.

The death spiral is caused by journalists putting their hands on the tiller.

If people are running around lying with partisan motivations, the most important thing you can have is a source of information trusted to be at least mostly objective. Someone to take the time to do the investigation and tell you what really happened in any given case, and carry good faith arguments from each side, not institutions that pick a side and defend them no matter what.

Because people lose trust in institutions with an obvious bias. And then what do you have? Twitter?

Re: The high price of mistrust

#194

Post by throwaway2245 »

dudeman13 wrote: post #126
throwaway2245 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's "self-censorship" no more than I am self-censoring myself right now, in this comment.

Reinvigorating your old work for publication, once you have a commercially viable avenue to promote it, is pretty average capitalism.

Plenty of work that is politically awkward is published under a strict pseudonym. This wasn't - and the author's position is that it was their choice not to publish.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#195

Post by AnthonyMouse »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #163
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be a lot harder to attack them if they didn't provide such a basis for it. There was a time when journalists at least attempted to be independent: https://conversationswithslava.substack.com/p/coming-soon Glenn Greenwald: https://reason.com/2021/01/23/journalists-are-authoritarians... > Did you vote for Donald Trump in the last election? > I didn't vote. It's ironic: That's the one old journalism trope that…

Glenn Greenwald's personal issues with (1) what he considers the appropriate relationship between journalism and "objectivity" and (2) his ability to maintain that relationship if he votes are not my problem. There are dozens/hundreds/thousands of journalists around the world who are perfectly capable of reporting in a way that is useful, insightful, factual, while still voting in elections. I don't want journalists…

It's helpful to distinguish between journalists and historians.

Historians have the time and context to make judgments and draw conclusions.

Journalists are reporting on things that happened today, and the deadline is in an hour. The story may still be happening by the time the piece is published. You don't have all the information, so any opinion will inherently be misinformed.

Report the facts and leave the opinion to someone else.

It's possible that what we really need is a separate class of people in between the two. Reporters who provide facts on things that are actively happening, and commentators who provide opinion on things that have finished happening, e.g. a month later once the facts are better established and there has been time to do a thorough investigation, but not years or decades after the fact.

The problem is how to prevent the two from merging together and creating what we have now.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#196

Post by medium_burrito »

koonsolo wrote: post #182
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…

Do you have any evidence to back up your claims? I don't believe we have more inequality now than 100 years ago, or anything before that.

Look back 50 years, not 100 years. We're facing a situation where the standard of living is dropping for the young generation.

- huge increase in labor supply: outsourcing, women entering workforce in large numbers

- productivity wage-gap: http://www.oecd.org/economy/decoupling-of-wages-from-product...

- savings gap between millenials and previous generations: https://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-saving-habits-le...

- white american men's life expectancy dropping, for first time ever: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/life-expectancy-for-american-me...

- cost of housing in major cities increasing dramatically

- opioid epidemic

- obesity epidemic

- unemployment among the young in Europe is stubbornly high.

Qualitatively, you can see nihilism on the rise among the young: https://jeromysonne.com/the-nihilism-of-r-wallstreetbets/

Re: The high price of mistrust

#197

Post by randompwd »

b0rsuk wrote: post #172

Generally the farther east you go in the countries of the former Soviet block, the less trust there is. Poland has low trust, but it's a lot lower in Russia and if you smile to strangers you may get sullen glances or insults. When I had a sprained ankle and was walking to the doctor with walking sticks, a car stopped by and I was asked if I want a ride. The question was in English. It's a moment like that when you re…

> One youtube talk I watched listed that as a sure sign democracy is under attack in a country.

How does that have any legitimacy? There's no bar as to who can post on youtube.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#198

Post by rayiner »

pnutjam wrote: post #165
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be a lot harder to attack them if they didn't provide such a basis for it. There was a time when journalists at least attempted to be independent: https://conversationswithslava.substack.com/p/coming-soon Glenn Greenwald: https://reason.com/2021/01/23/journalists-are-authoritarians... > Did you vote for Donald Trump in the last election? > I didn't vote. It's ironic: That's the one old journalism trope that…

When things are going well, you can stand by and observe. We're in a death spiral and need as many hands on the tiller as possible.

Journalists lying to viewers faces about peaceful protests while streets burned in the background has helped the death spiral more than you can imagine.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#200

Post by TeMPOraL »

xyzzyz wrote: post #179
TeMPOraL wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber and AirBnB actually burned extreme amounts of trust. Blatantly illegal business practices and general sociopathy of the former, facilitating destruction of local neighbourhoods in case of the latter - adding an app on top of existing practices doesn't pay back for what it cost to get there.

> Blatantly illegal business practices and general sociopathy of the former, Trust, morality and legality are not the same thing. Sure, Uber was operating illegally in many places, but millions of people used these illegal services and saw nothing wrong with it. They didn’t see using an unlicensed cab company as anything bad. Just because something is illegal doesn’t make it morally wrong, or socially destructive. Th…

> Trust, morality and legality are not the same thing. Sure, Uber was operating illegally in many places, but millions of people used these illegal services and saw nothing wrong with it. They didn’t see using an unlicensed cab company as anything bad.

People baited into purchasing new cars and screwed over car insurance sure did. But more importantly, everyone saw that the legal system in cities around the world isn't powerful enough to deal with direct offense. We saw you can build a multi-billion dollar megacorp not on just regulatory arbitrage, but plainly illegal business - and nobody got hold accountable (except for an off driver caught without proper insurance). All of this fundamentally erodes the trust in the rule of law - the trust on which modern society stands.

> Just because something is illegal doesn’t make it morally wrong

It doesn't, but it was illegal and greedy and exploitative, and dragged people into gig economy which arguably is itself morally questionable.

> If you want to argue that Uber destroyed trust, you can’t simply say it broke the law and call it a day, you need also to argue that the law they broke was good and desirable.

Taxi laws differ by the city. "Taxi mafia" was mostly a phenomenon of some places in the US; in many cities, taxis worked just well. Uber violated law almost everywhere they got, without any care for whether the law was useful or justifiable. It wasn't some act of civil disobedience - they did it for pure profit, to undercut competition and dominate the local markets they entered.

> So, what was the evil and socially destructive thing that Uber actually did?

Now, that's actually a topic much bigger than what I outlined above. The mischief of Uber's sociopathic management has been well publicized and well documented over the past 5+ years. It was a recurring topic on HN for a long time, too. I suggest starting with these two links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uber#Criticism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uber#Controversies

(Though they do seem to downplay the insurance issues and threats against journalists.)

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