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On Trust


Sotha

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I've been reading the Climate Change Thread and wanted to start another discussion. This time it is on Trust.

 

Human societies are based on trust. The paper piece (money) in you pocket has value and can buy you things only because we have agreed together that it has value. You can safely buy land and property, because we have agreed you own them after the purchase and we have agreed that if someone comes to your own house, throws you out and claims it for their own, you can trust the state violence monopoly (police) comes to your assistance. You can trust the bus arrives roughly on schedule and that the trip costs the promised amount. The value of stocks and the economy stands on basic trust. If you lose trust, the economy collapses. Without trust, truth has little relevance, because truth cannot be transmitted between minds.

 

Without trust, we cannot have this society. Nothing would work anymore. We cannot agree on anything. We cannot even have a discussion, because the other party would be just lying and saying anything to get their way.

 

Trust seems to be eroding. Look at our situation:

*many people think the elite is conspiracing against the common people.

*politicians are lying all the time is the common perception and norm.

*people seem to think research results that they do not like are fraud.

*Trump got elected because at least partially because the voters wanted to demolish the elite because of deep distrust.

*is Brexit due to distrust of the British people towards the EU?

 

Lots of distrust. But yet the society still works. Signing contracts still have a meaning. But how much more distrust can the society endure?

 

How can we build trust? We need some kind of system for integrity enforcement. Trust builds trust and lying produces distrust. Thus, lying should have consequences: at least reputation loss. Maybe now trust is being destroyed, because lying has no consequences, integrity is not a required virtue and decency seems to be forgotten.

 

How do we go to the other direction?

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Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Broad topic here, old bean ! If you allow me, I'll start with a little excerpt from a Tolkien work:

 

'I had forgotten that,' said Éomer. 'It is hard to be sure of anything among so many marvels. The world is all grown strange. Elf and Dwarf in company walk in our daily fields; and folk speak with the Lady of the Wood and yet live; and the Sword comes back to war that was broken in the long ages ere the fathers of our fathers rode into the Mark! How shall a man judge what to do in such times?'

'As he ever has judged,' said Aragorn. 'Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man's part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house.''

 

Which brings me to my point: Trust isn't some birthright or virtue you gain for being part of some group, clicque, and so on. Trust is what you build yourself, by your own behaviour and ethics, including being truly selfless and being truthful and trustworthy, even when everyone else is doing the exact opposite. Just as you can't gain true, honest respect by intimidating and bullying people into submission, lying to yourself how they adore you (when you yourself think so little of them), you can't gain true trust by buying the sympathies of people, or pandering to them, or making bold promises that can't be kept, or trying to portray yourself as better than you are. Honest, sincere trust, always needs to go deeper than a superficial level. And it is hard work, though IMHO for a principled, ethical person, it is also second nature. Being careful not to trust too quickly, but at the same time, "assuming good faith" (as wiki would put it, oddly poetically) and giving people the chance of trusting them. Like everything in life, this is a lonely path to walk. Like-minded people unaffraid to walk that narrow and winding and sometimes downright unpleasant path can band together, though. To make the building of trust between people, the building of figurative bridges, a less Sisyphean task.

 

Lack of trust comes from fear. The more you fear the unknown, whether it's the future, other uncertainties, people from other countries, and so on, the less trust there is. And when there is little honest trust, we turn to trusting things we'd otherwise never trust, ones we'd disagree with if our mindset wasn't commanded by fear. In this philosophical sense, fear becomes a domineering deity, to the religious and irreligious alike. Fear doesn't need you to think, fear doesn't need you to be compassionate, fear doesn't need your "old-fashioned" empathy ("What if I was in that position ?"). Populists only ever make gains because people turn off their critical faculties and surrender to fear. The old cry of the populist, and virtually the only cry of the populist, is "I can save you, just stop thinking for yourself and follow me blindly". And people follow, even if the populist leads them silently (or with cheerful, distracting merriment and "Hoopla !") into a giant, open coffin.

 

Not to sound like an "edgy" street-wise philosopher, but with the greater secularisation of developed society, a new religion was born: Blind devotion and obedience to the state (more common in the past, during the wave of totalitarian/authoritarian governments in developed countries) and then, blind devotion and obedience to a political leader/party/ideology (common both in the past, as well as now). The society of today is not the society of a decade or century ago, nor is it the society we'll see in the future - but certain patterns of human thinking, especially impulsive and panic-y "thinking" tend to reemerge and rear their ugly head. Those who wish to abuse this in order to wield power over others often rely on a whole host of time-tested methods.

 

I think what you need to build trust with is dialogue. People not talking with each other and not wanting to hear each other out (at least in the sense that they'd try to understand their grievances or personal misfortunes) has always been a big issue in society. You can't build one resource without the other. Trust is a resource, and to get it working, you first need the resource that is dialogue. A marriage where no reasonable or honest dialogue can be had is a marriage that will be lacking in trust. Similarly, the complex threads of human societies will be bereft of trust if these societies simply stop talking to each other. Dialogue also isn't purely verbal. It's the little things we do in life, even the simple gestures of good will that we show. Get people together, at least those willing to talk to each other, and get them talking. Not arguing, talking with at least basic respect for each other.

 

One slightly barmy idea I've had for years is giving people free tickets for compulsory vacations in another country of the same continent, or some nearby continent. From my own experience, few things are as effective an innoculation against prejudice or BS beliefs, as travel and learning about the world around us. The people who most often support all-or-nothing saviour solutions, regardless of how nonsensical or nasty those solutions are, are people who've been stuck in one place or stuck in a rut for a while. If you feel constrained, forgotten about in one way or another, or if you feel the space around you, your area, etc., has been neglected, that fuels loads of gloomy thoughts, in any age group. And once the gloom takes over, fear begins to take over, and before you know it, your entire personal philosophy revolves around lashing out at the world. Not trusting anyone, seeing everyone as a potential enemy, slowly building your own little martyrdom mythos about being (or feeling) betrayed by everyone and everything, and not needing to talk to them, or even consider them. From justified grief or frustrations, there slowly grows a coldness and arrogance towards others... Those who become enamoured with its spell for too long might become a lost cause. If all you have is fear and grievance, if you see them as your hammer, then everything suddenly becomes an egg or a walnut. Everything suddenly becomes fair game, and you stop noticing that you're not really the hero of your life story. You might be a protag, but you might have crossed the murky line into personal scumbaggery towards others.

 

Role models, especially selfless RMs, who seek neither power, nor fame, nor recognition, nor devotion or obedience, nor any other vain thing like that, can be hard to come by. Again, from my own experience, it's often because these people tend to be humble and don't tend to brag about their achievements or the good they do in life, to the genuine benefit of others. Any loudmouth would-be messiah can offer benefit towards others, but want something in return, usually blind appreciation. The people who truly move society forward, though, are those quiet role models. The ones that might come forward and might be in the spotlight for a bit, to be seen and to encourage, but not for the sake of their self-aggrandisement. Just as you can't truly buy someone's honest trust and loyalty, you also can't buy someone's honest admiration to you as a role model. Principles and actions, their consistency and lack of contradiction, speak more than huge, calculated gestures by those who'd desire clout, but don't have the moral fiber to accumulate it. Clout can't be bought, it can't be bullied into people... It can only be attained through genuine effort. And clout is not a popularity contest. Popularity can wax and wane easily and very quickly. True, genuine clout, of a genuine, positive role model, is something that can stand the test of time.

 

On a final note, we shouldn't think that things are worse today than they have ever been. That's a self-fulfilling prophecy. And few manifestations of the prophecy are as prevalent as the fear-fueling obsession of declinism. Today, things are not perfect, because things are never perfect. Things are generally better, though. The issue today lies more in the subtleties of people's behaviour. What we do with the huge, sometimes seemingly endless options we have at hand. Including the option to help (I'll never get tired of altruism. As difficult as it is, altruism is one of the important antidotes to fear.) What we need to focus on is solving the challenges we have at hand now, rather than the challenges of the past we have already, for the most part, closed. Though we need to look back at the past for anamnesis, when the past becomes just as much a fetish as our fear(s), the past suffocates us. We cheer for an early grave, even though something within us tells us that we were never meant to wax lyrical about our own grave, especially not so soon.

 

----

 

There's this comic book from the 50s, about an astronaut from Earth who visits a planet of sapient robots, descended from robots created by man who declared independence on that planet and have lived their lives there ever since. The astronaut observes everything with great interest, but is saddened to see the divisions and prejudices existing in robot society. Often ones that are basically nonsensical, arbitrary, irrational, even oddly superstitious (even though the robots love to argue that they've outgrown any such highly subjective behaviour). The guy's robot guide is frustrated that he's so critical, not enjoying all the achievements around him, etc. As the astronaut bids the guide farewell, he notes that he might be a bit disappointed now, but he's convinced that things aren't over. The robots' society has the capacity for change, like humans did and do, and some of their flaws might be overcome one day, if they put up an honest effort.

 

Astronaut: "Of course, there's hope for you, my friend. For a while on Earth, it looked like there was no hope. But when mankind learned to live together, real progress first began. The universe was suddenly our's..."
Robot guide (curious): "And when we learn to live together ?"
Astronaut: "The universe will be your's too."

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I don't know, how to get to a more trustworthy society, but i would start by banning ads. Ads teach us from early on, that lying is okay and has to be done to sell anything.

 

But of course it is much harder than that. Our current economy is basically based on lies and bragging. The incentives are huge. You get better job chances if you brag and lie a lot as long as it is not too obvious. You sell more products (although most often not twice to the same customer), if you present them outright lies.

And there are no repercussions, as you just can move on and try on the next. Most of us live in cities containing millions of people and as long as others are not able to prove that you broke a law, nothing bad will actually happen most of the time. The social selfcleaning system, that worked well in a tribe is not working well for herds of millions of people.

 

Honesty has no value and the winner takes it all. If you trust people, most of them immediately take advantage as they are trained to do so from early on. They often do not even have to consciously decide to do so - as it seems to have become a reflex.

It is not possible to change such a culture in the timeframe of a generation. You can only try to act honest yourself and hope, that it sticks in your private life.

On the job, most of the time everyone will just assume it to be part of a strategy to get something in the long run though - especially the sales and marketing departments.

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There is one way to cure the current malady of distrust.

 

The Mainstream Media must acknowledge that the Wikileaks releases are Google DKIM signed and therefore impossible to forge.

The Mainstream Media must then acknowledge that real crimes were recorded in those releases.

They must discuss the CONTENT of those releases and not just the supposed crime of "hacking into the emails".

 

As long as the DNC connected news media tries to treat Wikileaks data as "Russian Propaganda" nobody will trust them.

 

Digital IT Forensics.

 

Signed data and path of ownership.

 

Full disclosure.

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http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

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Trust isn't what you want at all. Trust is a dangerous trap. Trust will only get you to fall prey to scammers, con-artists, opportunists, and corrupt politicians, as they all exploit your good-will and trust and compassion.

 

What you want is a system that works without the need for any of that.

 

In a video from the economist Walter E Williams that I linked yesterday to someone in that thread he briefly illustrates how the free market works precisely in that way, without the need for trust or as he mentioned good-will:

 

People from on one side of the earth will be extracting resources and selling them so they can get food on their table, which in turn will get food on the tables of those that bought them when they sell products made with them, and will better the lives of the people who buy the end products.

 

All of the people involved in this trade may hate each other's guts, they may have conflicting political or religious interests, they may not trust each other one bit, and still, by working to provide for themselves they can't help but also provide for everyone else. That's what you want.

 

There's also this one by Milton Friedman, which I think is a more complete explanation of how markets naturally work like that:

 

 

...you can trust the state violence monopoly (police) comes to your assistance.

Of all things, the state is the entity you should never, ever trust. Trusting the state leads to tyranny. You should always hold it to scrutiny, because power corrupts. The police won't help you in a tyrannical state that doesn't like your ideas.

Edited by Skaruts
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As Freud developed Pitagorean ideas - People always talk about what they lack, those want sex talk about sex, those who are hungry speak of food. But from me I would also add that politicians talk about morals.

 

Start from school by telling children to expect the worst, to know human wickedness and know what it is like not to have food, not to believe anyone, not to expect to have many friends.

Michel de Montaigne said that to philosophize means to know how to die. Death is the ultimate end and that is the final and only truth.

 

To conclude, as Montesquieu and his principle goes - ”expect the worst because good comes by itself”. Worth living by in my book.

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"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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@nbohr1more, the problem is if they speak in favor of wikileaks (and inherently against representatives of certain political parties), they can get their journalist licences revoked (and perhaps other licences) or favors-money withdrawn. I don't know what else can be making them affiliated with politics, but the simple fact that they are pretty much says they're no longer journalists but propagandists. (EDIT: and that applies to media on all sides of politics.)

 

A journalist should be the nº1 enemy of the state, not a vassal of it.

 

Fortunately things are changing with the internet, as people are doing journalism all over the place, not giving a damn about licencing or whatever other regulatory measures govs have in place that, purposefully or not, allow them control over information. (I know I'll probably piss someone off, but hey, the free market is working to solve the problem of government intervention! ^_^)

Edited by Skaruts
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Just want to address two things I didn't before:

Lots of distrust. But yet the society still works. Signing contracts still have a meaning. But how much more distrust can the society endure?

Indeed it still works, but it's distrust what keeps it working. Distrust is what will make you go out of your way to corroborate what you're told, instead of simply believing unquestioningly. And sometimes you find you were being deceived.

 

Distrust is the reason why contracts exist.

Take a look at the Scientific Method. It's 100% built on distrust (the same can't be said about pseudoscientific methodologies), and that's because scientists learned over the centuries that some people will abuse and jeopardize a system that trusts. In fact, one important aspect of the scientific method is that after laying out a hypothesis you don't run experiments to try to prove it, you run experiments to disprove it. Which is what protects scientists from even trusting their own flawed faculties, which will be wrong a lot of the time. Another important aspect of it, is that scientists, moved by adamant contrary biases, principled skepticism or dutiful professionalism, will distrust each other's faculties, such that they will repeat each others' experiments to try to disprove each others' hypothesis, and scrutinize each others' essays and reports, etc.

 

We, laymen, tend to trust scientists. What else can we do, we don't know how to work the math and the test tubes. But while many of us trust them, many others don't, and those that don't will read their reports and scrutinize them and will be happy to blow the whistle if they find any red flags.

Indeed whistle blowers should be celebrated. Distrust is actually what built Western societies, not trust. Distrust is what moved us beyond authoritarianism. There's never been societies in the past as free and prosperous as these.

 

That there may not be enough distrust is what may be the problem.

Trust builds trust and lying produces distrust.

Trust doesn't build trust. It's one thing to trust your lover or a close friend, and in those cases maybe your statement applies. But it's another thing to trust people in general.

So generally speaking, what trust builds is opportunities for liars and scammers. Hence what I was saying before, the more you trust people the higher the chances you'll be deceived. And if you build a system based on trust that has power over people and which deals with other-people's-money, then you can be sure the worst people on earth will push through the crowd to try to get their hands on it.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm not saying one should be obsessively paranoid about it. You can live your life trusting that most people like you won't try to screw you. If Humans were not generally predisposed to be good or neutral to each other, we would be an extinct species. What I'm saying is we should be vigilant about those in power, about speakers with the power to influence other people, and even about whistle blowers for that matter.

Edited by Skaruts

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Really good discussion, as expected!

 

@Skaruts,

I am a scientist myself, but I would not say that the scientific method is based on distrust. I would say it is based on critical scrutiny, which is different from distrust (but they could be thought to be distant cousins).

 

Trust is required in scientific progress. If you do not trust earlier data or findings, you do not have a foundation to build your own experiment (I.e. if you allow a a silly example: if you distrust the scientific consensus the Earth is round, but -looking yourself around your immediate area- conclude the Earth to be flat, you will have hard time putting satellites to the orbit.)

 

A lone scientist cannot know everything, so they must trust some sources when they build their work. Trusting does not prevent critical scrutiny. If they find an error in the previous data, of course they should then revise and report accordingly.

 

Thus, I would separate levels of trust like this: "Distrust", "Trust" and "Gullible Trust"

 

"Trust" is what I was looking for: people can interact based on basic trust. We are not gullible, but listen the other party with good faith, but you use critical scrutiny. We can reach consensus because we trust the other party does not screw us. The other party also trusts us (has calculated we have little incentive to screw them). The Trust generates a climate of cooperation and everyone wins. When there is Trust, you can make a contract or an agreement, because you trust the other party will honour their part of the bargain. Trust builds trust: when you have a partner with whom you have done previous transactions, who seems to honour their end of the bargain and everything ran smoothly, you will likely do business with them again.

 

"Distrust" is that is happening now inside America, and elsewhere. Different factions listen to each other with bad faith: assuming only lies and trickery. In that kind of climate, you cannot have a discussion. Discussion with bad faith and the expectation of lies is useless: it is just shouting and saying anything to get your way. Consensus is not possible. You will get dysfunction, hatred, and in extreme cases civil war. It is not a climate of cooperation. The winner takes it all, the loser loses all, everyone fights fiercely and truth does not matter anymore. When there is severe Distrust, there is no point in making contracts or agreements, You expect the other party will screw you over anyway, they can always interpret the contract fine print like the Devil.

 

"Gullible trust" it what you talked about, where you trust everything without critical scrutiny, and get conned. The favourite state for people in a dictatorship.

 

So the initial question of the OP would be, how to progress more into the direction of:

*more Trust

*less Distrust

*less gullible trust?

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Clipper

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You don't have to trust it, though. You can if you want, but you don't have to. This is what I mean, that a system is better the least Trust/Hope/Faith you have to have in it. If the current model is wrong, and the earth is flat, then when you try to send out a satellite it won't work reliably or at all, and that'll tell you something's wrong about the current data.

I can see why you can think "distrust" seems like an overstatement, but I don't think it is. You can't trust your senses, so you use a measurement mechanism, but you can't trust that mechanism because you built it, so you find a point of convergence between several independent measurement mechanisms, etc etc. Critical thinking/inquiry/scrutiny etc, also have a major role in that, but those were also developed out of the notion that you can't trust your own perception of reality and should always try to find the holes in it. As I understand it, all of these things were developed to mitigate as much as possible the need to work on the basis of trust/faith/hope/etc.

Maybe in some cases the motivation wasn't outright distrust, maybe it was some other realization. But thinking back to the times where frauds walked among scientists thumping their fists on the table yelling "preposterous!" at accusations of misconduct, thinking of all the weasel methods of pseudoscience and all the scams that were weeded out of science over the centuries, distrust seems like a very apt word for it.

Extrapolating it to the rest of the world, we can find more of that.
- Journalism started from distrust for power
- Police exists because we can't trust that everyone respects the non-aggression principle
- the judicial system exists because we can't trust that individuals will deliver proper justice, or even justifiably so
- and it enforces the principle of "guilty until proven innocent" because we learned people lie
- Contracts, because we learned we can't trust that people lie as well
- Security systems, because we can't trust that everyone will respect our property
- vetting systems, because we can't trust everyone does a good job at things
- etc... I'm blanking out...

I'd say one of the major flaws of democracy is that it's based on either the trust that votings will reflect the side of reason, or the hope that it won't be the end of the world if they don't. Democratic Republic tries to mitigate the problem of the "tyranny of the majority" that obviously originates from there, so that's a step forward, but still...

It may be by the same token that you think Distrust is an overstatement, that I think Trust is an overstatement regarding informed conclusions or decisions and critical thinking. Even with your distinction between Trust and Gullible Trust in mind, I can't help but remind myself that Trust is still a direct synonym of Belief/Faith/Hope, just not Blind Belief. I disagree with the popular notion that relationships are built on Trust; but rather on predictions based on a conceptual graph of observations, and in some cases assumptions, where you lay out the dots and draw a trajectory on them (like astronomers do to find out the trajectory of comets and meteors). That conscious or subconscious reasoning happens regardless of whether the relationship is going in good faith or in bad faith, though I wouldn't necessarily call it distrust in the former case. But distrust doesn't have to be in bad faith.

Trust is very much a thing though. People think and even vote with their hearts a lot of the time, among other things. Scientists are also bound to trust some of their peers and many other people. I think it's a biological bias.

So I don't think I could answer the question laid out in those terms. I think I'd rather have the option "Less Reliance On Trust", regarding the systems we built.

Or maybe there's not a perfect all-encompassing word for what we're talking about.

"Distrust" is that is happening now inside America, and elsewhere. Different factions listen to each other with bad faith: assuming only lies and trickery. In that kind of climate, you cannot have a discussion.

Very true. The only thing keeping me hopeful (ahhem :ph34r:) is that more and more people (philosophers, scientists, economists, etc) are having public discussions, especially in friendly terms, and attracting more and more attention, so maybe we're into something. They've been also highlighting the notion that we should hear all sides and we should disagree and discuss our disagreements.

I suspect the cause of the divisiveness we're living may be premeditated political subversion (not from russians, I also suspect -- from the inside). You might find interesting to watch (if you never watched) the lectures and interviews from the ex-KGB spy, Yuri Bezmenov. Subversion tactics was his expertise, and he explains how it's done. The most chilling point he made was that anything people strongly believe can be used to herd them to do what you want them to, or to cause social chaos which is more likely the desired outcome.

Might be a stretch. I don't know. But when I look at political divisiveness I'm always reminded of the old saying "divide and conquer".

Edited by Skaruts

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Is it a generational problem? Are the kids too educated by multimedia and social media these days and thereby able to analyse and formulate a bunch of worse case scenarios. For example, I met some of my little brothers friends recently and was courteous and sincere with all of them, yet still they were able to find a way to become paranoid and associate me with negativity. Is it because we are psychologically programming ourselves by doing stuff like driving cars? Where it is critical to assess situations and sum them up almost instantly. Somehow we all need to find a way to chill out, maybe learn to debrief ourselves better. I live in a country where our political system has become a joke, we have shock jocks and racist freaks in our senate! We are heading towards a crisis and it is of our own doing, we copied the Westminster system from England, instead of a house of lords we have a senate comprising of the biggest know-it-alls and egos ie. pseudo lords. Our government is almost always hung as the two sides abuse each other into a stalemate. The mistrust by the general public is so extreme that our government feels the need to make regular apologises. The only hope is that these confused kids are able to find a way out of this mess.

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  • 1 month later...

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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Great minds think alike, hey. I'm impressed about how the younger generations are willing to confront these issues. They seem to have lost trust in the older generations to give them the truth, and rightly so. Hopefully they can sort out some of the problems they are faced with, without having wars.

 

I might just add that I believe the capitalist system is flawed because of its reliance on trust, this was pointed out well in Sotha's article in OP. Because these economies are run using free enterprise, with the need for consistent profits, we have seen the rise and rise of scams. By definition a scam is a fraudulent or deceptive act or operation, is what just about everyone who is successful is partaking in. This is the elephant in the room and it ain't going away without a lot of rich people kicking and screaming into making some sacrifices. Who knows, maybe nature will have the final say, and we will be forced to change our ways.

Edited by Aldo
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  • 5 months later...

Not intending to beat a dead horse, but approaching the question from another angle.

In your opinion does the automatization, the digitalization of everything, electronic governance, e-Tenders, happen as fast as you'd want to? If so, do you feel that it helps tackle corruption in your respective countries?

Edited by Anderson

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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There is one way to cure the current malady of distrust.

 

The Mainstream Media must acknowledge that the Wikileaks releases are Google DKIM signed and therefore impossible to forge.

The Mainstream Media must then acknowledge that real crimes were recorded in those releases.

They must discuss the CONTENT of those releases and not just the supposed crime of "hacking into the emails".

 

As long as the DNC connected news media tries to treat Wikileaks data as "Russian Propaganda" nobody will trust them.

 

Digital IT Forensics.

 

Signed data and path of ownership.

 

Full disclosure.

 

Only problem there, is that anyone with access to that data+path can put WHATEVER there and claim it's legit, whether it is or not.

 

I used to cheer for wikileaks and the info the released but that tempered when it started being used as a political weapon, and releases started being timed to elections and such.

 

I don't know how to get out of the hole we're in, people are so fed up with the status quo that they're turning to people and systems that aren't any better, just to have something different.

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I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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Thanks for bringing up this interesting topic Sotha. I think part of the mistrust is caused by the amount of information you can find nowadays and how easy this is to find. With this comes the ease of spreading fake news. Even though there's a lot of information available, people tend to not really do any research and believe stuff first hand. Information is power and because people have seen examples of misuse of this information, they start mistrusting information that isn't 100% accurate. Research is as strong as the quality of it and you have to take everything into consideration to get an accurate result.

 

Take climate change for example. There's a lot of information available that counteracts the statements that the majority is making, but there's also a lot information available that supports it. When you look at both these forms of information, you can come to the conclusion that we don't really know what's going to happen. It could get worse, better or nothing will really change. The problem though is when politics start using information that isn't 100% certain to fuel their agendas.

 

Another example is the elections. All the 'experts' were certain that Clinton would be President. Could it be though that these experts were actually spreading this information because they wanted Clinton to be President or were they just using information acquired from city regions, where Trump in general wasn't really popular?

 

I myself started mistrusting the news we were given when my brothers were in Afghanistan and the information that they told me was partily or complete different from what the media was telling. Does this mean all the news is fake? Certainly not, but it's important to check the information you receive before you believe what is told, especially if this information could change your view on an important subject.

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2 minutes ago, stefanapopa said:

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I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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