Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Americans don't trust each other anymore

apnews.myway.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 73 posts

Re: Americans don't trust each other anymore

#51

Post by michaelochurch »

Sorry to do this, but it has to be done. Mistrust != distrust.

Distrust is when you don't trust someone. Mistrust is when you trust someone you should not.

For a more serious note, I've noticed this trend as well. One of the reasons I expect Silicon Valley's decline into irrelevance to be even faster than it looks is that it really was the pay-it-forward culture that made something of the place. That's what built it, in the 1970s. Now that it has been replaced by Sean Parker and Snapchat and "fuck you, I've got mine", it has no locational advantage other than history.

Re: Americans don't trust each other anymore

#53

Post by landryraccoon »

bmelton wrote: post #39
tokenadult wrote: post #12

I'll note for other readers of Hacker News who don't know (and thus don't trust) the domain of this submitted article that it is actually a syndicated news story from the Associated Press, and I would have to say that I think the article is well reported. (In other words, I trust the statistics behind the article, which come from the federal government's National Social Survey.) The article includes some dire warning…

I trust the reports, and I trust the data, but the trend has been pretty obvious, I'd wager, and predictable for some time now. People in the suburbs increasingly migrate to cul-de-sac communities, which isolate them from the rest of the world, to make them feel safer, depriving their children of the much-needed contact with a diverse population that builds trust. Beyond that, the news is more and more pervasive, and…

I have to disagree with your characterization of people in suburbs. The only anecdote of trusting behavior given in the article was of a rural farmer in an isolated area - and it was given in contrast to people from urban New York or New Jersey coming up and being amazed about it.

Here's another hypothesis - tribal or rural cultures will be more trusting by nature. Human beings are naturally paranoid but NOT of each other. If you are competing with other species and the environment for survival, it doesn't make sense to view your own species as a threat. Indeed, it benefits your family or tribe if you all cooperate. However, in densely populated urban environments, your competition is all human beings. If you are metaphorically eaten or taken advantage of, it will be by another human. It's much less likely in a city that you will die because of exposure, or weather or a wild animal. Thus, because the threat is from people, you must be more wary of people.

I'm not super confident about this of course - it's probably both simplistic and wrong on a few levels, but I think whatever the answer is, it's not just that urban people are trusting and rural people are paranoid.

Re: Americans don't trust each other anymore

#54

Post by kahirsch »

bmelton wrote: post #39
tokenadult wrote: post #12

I'll note for other readers of Hacker News who don't know (and thus don't trust) the domain of this submitted article that it is actually a syndicated news story from the Associated Press, and I would have to say that I think the article is well reported. (In other words, I trust the statistics behind the article, which come from the federal government's National Social Survey.) The article includes some dire warning…

I trust the reports, and I trust the data, but the trend has been pretty obvious, I'd wager, and predictable for some time now. People in the suburbs increasingly migrate to cul-de-sac communities, which isolate them from the rest of the world, to make them feel safer, depriving their children of the much-needed contact with a diverse population that builds trust. Beyond that, the news is more and more pervasive, and…

> depriving their children of the much-needed contact with a diverse population that builds trust.

I think the evidence is that more diversity brings less trust.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Putnam#Diversity_and...

Re: Americans don't trust each other anymore

#55

Post by bmelton »

landryraccoon wrote: post #53
bmelton wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I trust the reports, and I trust the data, but the trend has been pretty obvious, I'd wager, and predictable for some time now. People in the suburbs increasingly migrate to cul-de-sac communities, which isolate them from the rest of the world, to make them feel safer, depriving their children of the much-needed contact with a diverse population that builds trust. Beyond that, the news is more and more pervasive, and…

I have to disagree with your characterization of people in suburbs. The only anecdote of trusting behavior given in the article was of a rural farmer in an isolated area - and it was given in contrast to people from urban New York or New Jersey coming up and being amazed about it. Here's another hypothesis - tribal or rural cultures will be more trusting by nature. Human beings are naturally paranoid but NOT of each…

I may have overcharacterized, but I was specifically referring to those in cul-de-sac neighborhoods, not all suburbanites in general.

More traditional gridded suburbs, especially those with large communal parks, probably bely the behavior I described, but I'm mostly speaking intuitively on the matter, as I'm not aware of any studies.

In short, I think we're probably both right. ;-)

Re: Americans don't trust each other anymore

#56

Post by downer94 »

tokenadult wrote: post #12

I'll note for other readers of Hacker News who don't know (and thus don't trust) the domain of this submitted article that it is actually a syndicated news story from the Associated Press, and I would have to say that I think the article is well reported. (In other words, I trust the statistics behind the article, which come from the federal government's National Social Survey.) The article includes some dire warning…

What about that whole thing about geographic proximity to the school in question?

How does one reconcile a particular choice if it involves a long commute or relocation? And do families living in close proximity receive priority enrollment over students residing outside of a given district?

Re: Americans don't trust each other anymore

#57

Post by jimmyfw »

grandalf wrote: post #8

There has been over a decade of propaganda telling people not to trust each other... all post-9/11 messaging intended to create insecurity in the population.

It is worth noting that before the early 2000s, the same messages of distrust came from citizens. Forums, IRC, Internet culture in general promoted distrust of the government, distrust of businesses small and large, and an attitude of "we are smarter than normal people".

All across the Internet, people like you and me would post about how incompetent the average American is. We would aspire to be independent, logical thinkers, but unfortunately, this mindset almost requires the distrust of other people.

Now that the Internet has become widely adopted in the mainstream, this type of thinking pervades, and perhaps has penetrated the mainstream attitude.

Re: Americans don't trust each other anymore

#58

Post by bredren »

I'm amazed this made it onto and off the front page with 50+ comments and not a single mention of a startup or tech startup ideas on how to solve this growing problem.

I'm most interested in how you can offer people the potential for trust (or to put it in terms of michaelochurch's comment, reduction of "mistrust.") I believe the establishment of reputation around a useful and flexible digital identity will be _the_ way that people combat distrust among each other. Social proof will come in the form of reviews based on past behavior.

There has been such a tiny amount of innovation or success in reputation systems, I believe this is a massive open opportunity.

Re: Americans don't trust each other anymore

#59

Post by dinkumthinkum »

tokenadult wrote: post #12

I'll note for other readers of Hacker News who don't know (and thus don't trust) the domain of this submitted article that it is actually a syndicated news story from the Associated Press, and I would have to say that I think the article is well reported. (In other words, I trust the statistics behind the article, which come from the federal government's National Social Survey.) The article includes some dire warning…

I don't know. I know you have an agenda with homeschooling but I'm not really seeing how this actually connects in a serious way to what the article is talking about. It seems more complex than this, no?

Re: Americans don't trust each other anymore

#60

Post by dinkumthinkum »

bmelton wrote: post #39
tokenadult wrote: post #12

I'll note for other readers of Hacker News who don't know (and thus don't trust) the domain of this submitted article that it is actually a syndicated news story from the Associated Press, and I would have to say that I think the article is well reported. (In other words, I trust the statistics behind the article, which come from the federal government's National Social Survey.) The article includes some dire warning…

I trust the reports, and I trust the data, but the trend has been pretty obvious, I'd wager, and predictable for some time now. People in the suburbs increasingly migrate to cul-de-sac communities, which isolate them from the rest of the world, to make them feel safer, depriving their children of the much-needed contact with a diverse population that builds trust. Beyond that, the news is more and more pervasive, and…

You seem to suggest those poor, sheltered suburbanites are al wrong. So should I have believed the guy at the bus stop when he told me he would sell a Rolex for $100 or the nice man at the gas station that asked for money for gas in his car with a long story, though he had no car in sight?

It's nice and hip to just imply people are not worldly but it may be that their distrust is justified.

You said some nice things about science ... But which set of assumptions really need to be examined here?

Post reply on HN