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The high price of mistrust

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Re: The high price of mistrust

#261

Post by robocat »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #258
robocat wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. dragonwriter is referencing the original history of the word. The author Michael Young who coined the word in 1958 was using it in his book to show everything wrong with a “merit” based system, as he explains here: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment This gives a good background: https://kottke.org/17/03/the-satirical-origins-of-the-merito...

"Michael Young popularised but did not coin the term “meritocracy”. That came in 1956, two years before his book, when in the magazine Socialist Commentary (to which Young contributed) the industrial sociologist Alan Fox put the word in quotation marks and defined it as “the society in which the gifted, the smart, the energetic, the ambitious and the ruthless are carefully sifted out and helped towards their destined…

“Michael Young adapted his 1955 Ph.D. thesis into a dystopian novel” - https://discoversociety.org/2018/10/02/the-birth-of-meritocr...

“When the word meritocracy made its first recorded appearance, in 1956 in the obscure British journal Socialist Commentary, it was a term of abuse, describing a ludicrously unequal state that surely no one would want to live in. Why, mused the industrial sociologist Alan Fox, would you want to give more prizes to the already prodigiously gifted? Instead, he argued, we should think about “cross-grading”: how to give those doing difficult or unattractive jobs more leisure time, and share out wealth more equitably so we all have a better quality of life and a happier society.” - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/20/merito...

“Jean Floud, Alan Fox, and Michael Young had a number of commonalities. Jean Floud taught at the London School of Economics while Michael Young was pursuing his PhD. Alan Fox was a member of that 1950s circle of left-leaning thinkers that included Jean Froud and Michael Young. Since all three are now dead, it's tough to say which amongst those three coined the word "meritocracy". Michael Young had already been evincing thoughts along the lines that led to his publication of The Rise of the Meritocracy since 1951. Most references go with Michael Young as the originator of the word. One last thing is certain: The term as coined by one of those three was anything but complimentary. It was instead quite derogatory.” - https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/34390/did-the-t...

“the magazine Socialist Commentary (to which Young contributed) the industrial sociologist Alan Fox put the word in quotation marks and defined it as ‘the society in which the gifted, the smart, the energetic, the ambitious and the ruthless are carefully sifted out and helped towards their destined positions of dominance, where they proceed not only to enjoy the fulfilment of exercising their natural endowments but also to receive a fat bonus thrown in for good measure’.”.

1. Young says he created the word, and we have no reason to doubt that (as per Guardian link).

2. It was used in a negative sense in 1956

I think you are cherry-picking. If you wish to disagree with the generally held beliefs, then I think you should pick a better reference than one comment on an Internet page.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#262

Post by [deleted] »

yrimaxi wrote: post #260
wahern wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chomsky has explained that the counter-culture of the 60’s was viewed as the “crisis of democracy” by the Trilateral Commission. An excess of democracy: special interests like women, the elderly, environmentalists, ethnic minorities, and so on were trying to enter the public arena. In short: the general population. The problem is with the rhetoric. You don't need to daemonize the system to reform it. For example, A…

So you’re just going to whine about tone? Not even try to argue for or against what I have put forth?

[deleted]

Re: The high price of mistrust

#264

Post by dcx »

gumby wrote: post #14
i_am_proteus wrote: post #3

I appreciate the author's framing of "transaction costs." These costs are often hidden. It seems that as systems scale (in size) they tend to become inherently lower-trust. Consider a physician who makes house calls (not uncommon as recently as a few generations ago, and certainly not incompatible with modern medicine) and a large medical system such as Kaiser Permanente or NHS. The economic benefits of the larger-sc…

> It seems that as systems scale (in size) they tend to become inherently lower-trust. I think the commodity markets (grains, coal, oil, steel, etc) are a significant counterexample: they do use spot checks but by and large run pretty lean on mechanism and rely on trust. Another one is customs enforcement.

I've spent a few years in a couple of bulk commodities, and I'm sorry, but your thought about commodity markets is simply not true in my experience. There are entire webs of institutions and mechanisms that make sure people do not defraud each other.

Some keywords - look into Letters of Credit, Bills of Lading, Certificates of Origin, INCOTERMS, and the requirements to make these work (such as inspection certificates from independent third-party organisations like SGS or CIQ). Bulk commodities can be sampled, tested and certified as many as 4-8 times in between buyer and seller, on a dozen different criteria.

Bulk commodity trading happens in an intrinsically low trust environment - it is frequently arms-length, cross-border, multiparty, for millions of dollars per transaction, and with a crazy number of different risks that have to be mitigated. The incentives to defect and come away millions richer are huge. And much of the system was developed for a time before the Internet.

While this is a noble sentiment, the structure and transaction costs are absolutely essential for the whole thing to work.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#265

Post by dcx »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #215
meheleventyone wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large systems aren’t inherently low-trust though. For example dealing with the same point of contact. Like your local GP in the NHS. I definitely remember home visits from our GP as a kid. So within a generation. Or with our kids family nurse that did all the pre and post checkups for both children.

AKA the "Algerian Resistance" model. Everyone works with the same or slowly changing set of subordinates below them (patients in the case of an NHS physician) and same handler above them so despite the organization being big and faceless everyone has a long term high trust relationship with the people directly above and below them.

This sounds interesting and Google is not coming up with useful leads - would you be able to point me to more information on the "Algerian Resistance" model you describe?

Re: The high price of mistrust

#266

Post by neura »

zamfi wrote: post #247
m463 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I took away from the beginning of Matt Ridley's book Rational Optimism is that with trust, commerce is unlimited. And here we are stuck in this world where the computer in your pocket is untrustworthy, and you can't tell a useful benign app from an app trying to upload your life. and it's a shame.

> you can't tell a useful benign app from an app trying to upload your life. This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but it appears only 32% [0] of people care enough about privacy to switch to a service that preserves it. I suspect an even lower percentage know that apps on their phones might even be trying to upload their lives. This is not the source of "mistrust". [0]: https://hbr.org/2020/01/do-you-care-about-…

32% of a sample size of 2601.

Your is probably an unpopular one, but I'd guess because of questions like "Who are these people that cared about privacy, were willing to switch and did actually switch, but don't realize that their phones might even be trying to upload their lives?" Unless you meant that the results of that survey showing 32% of people cared enough that they actually did something about it, in which case, that's not really an opinion. Just a fact that a very small survey (out of the people who use services/companies that can be switched from, if they cared enough to do so) includes a segment that seems to represent "people [that] care enough about privacy to switch to a service that preserves it."

What this survey does not try to establish is what percent of people "cared" and are "willing", but found it not worthwhile to switch, for reasons such as "this is how I communicate with my friends and I cannot convince them to switch" or decided it just wasn't worth it due to other costs.

For me, WhatsApp comes to mind, but I'm guessing it's a somewhat common problem. I personally do NOT want to use WhatsApp, but I have a group of friends that will not switch and especially with Covid, I do not want to lose those connections. Replace "group of friends" with and WhatsApp with .

Not sure what you even meant by "This is not the source of mistrust". m463 pointed out a couple of things, neither of which was a _source_ of mistrust.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#267

Post by watwut »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #85
jrexilius wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 is used to claim that point-of-view journalism is perfectly fine, as long as the point of view is factually grounded. He said it on multiple occasions. If you look at his work and tweet feed, it is strongly point of view driven and at times emotional (the prevailing emotion and perpetual outrage). He does not seem to like concrete politician, but it very very clear who his enemies are. Glenn Greenwald is not an example of someone who is not psychologically connected or avoids the appearance of impropriety.

Glenn Greenwald on Trump during Biden inauguration: "Trump left the White House about as weak, cucked, and submissive as it’s possible for a grown adult to scamper away." I really dont know what he wanted Trump to do, he was way more critical of Biden and democrats then of Trump last months. Leaving during innaguration without causing issues sounds like exactly what is expected.

But the very same day, he called the "chills" tween inappropriate, claimed that such tweet is overly emotional and equated that tweet with being on public tv. Glenn Greenwald is last person that has any grounds to pontificate about objectivity and bias.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#268

Post by watwut »

medium_burrito wrote: post #196
koonsolo wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Women entering workforce did raised standard for a lot of them. The domestic violence and abuse rates against women are down by a lot. And yes, they go up and down with female employment too, employment affects how she can manage her status in family, how much is husband resentful over her being at home and crucially, how much she is locked. (I don't know male abuse stats and the whole topic is less talked about)

> opioid epidemic, obesity epidemic

Alcohol consumption is down against 1971. The heroin, cocain etc problems are smaller then they used to be. People are less violent overall.

People still live longer. And while they are obese, their life expectancy went up against that time. And some of it is that historical diseases from various malnutritions are down.

Economic standards are dropping for new graduates. But, it is not all bleak everything is worst situation.

Re: The high price of mistrust

#269

Post by _Understated_ »

zamfi wrote: post #247
m463 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I took away from the beginning of Matt Ridley's book Rational Optimism is that with trust, commerce is unlimited. And here we are stuck in this world where the computer in your pocket is untrustworthy, and you can't tell a useful benign app from an app trying to upload your life. and it's a shame.

> you can't tell a useful benign app from an app trying to upload your life. This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but it appears only 32% [0] of people care enough about privacy to switch to a service that preserves it. I suspect an even lower percentage know that apps on their phones might even be trying to upload their lives. This is not the source of "mistrust". [0]: https://hbr.org/2020/01/do-you-care-about-…

> only 32% [0] of people care enough about privacy to switch to a service that preserves it

This statistic reflects my unscientific view also.

I am very privacy conscious (I still have a gmail account but that's for job hunting only!) but I know few others that are, however, if these others experienced something detrimental as a result of giving away their privacy then I suspect that 32% figure would increase... but until that happens, people won't care.

Protecting your privacy online these days is time-consuming and, if I'm honest, exhausting: it's a constant arms race between stopping evermore intrusive code from data mining the hell out of me and just being able to use things without constantly analysing them to ensure they're legit.

In fact, yesterday I went to the eff site [0] to see how much data my browser was giving away and even though I have it locked down (I still have js) I was unique anyway...

I've asked myself in the days when I feel like just giving in "what is the danger from knowing all this stuff about me?"... And, in all honesty, I haven't come up with an answer that would satisfy that 68%.

[0] - https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

Re: The high price of mistrust

#270

Post by throwaway0a5e »

dcx wrote: post #265
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AKA the "Algerian Resistance" model. Everyone works with the same or slowly changing set of subordinates below them (patients in the case of an NHS physician) and same handler above them so despite the organization being big and faceless everyone has a long term high trust relationship with the people directly above and below them.

This sounds interesting and Google is not coming up with useful leads - would you be able to point me to more information on the "Algerian Resistance" model you describe?

Read up on the ANLF. The ANLF structured their organization such that nobody had good knowledge of the organization except the portion of the org chart immediately above and below them. This annoyed the French because they would capture the grunts and it was a hell of a lot of work to work their way up to knowing who the leaders were since you'd need an unbroken chain of N people willing to narc on their boss. This is made harder because people are more likely to narc on their boss's boss who they don't really know vs their boss who they have a hack of a working relationship with but that depends on knowing who your boss's boss is. Be advised that I glossed over some details in my original comment.
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