Trust
Quoting Christoffer
But do you trust Google?
In my dotage, I am starting to discern something I could call the physics of social relations.
Trust is a universal force analogous to gravity. Without trust people would literally fall apart, one from another. I walk down the street trusting that no one will start attacking me with a machete. I go into a shop to buy milk trusting that I will not be given bleach, and pay with money that I trust is not counterfeit or a card that I trust will register in some place I trust without the least clue where it is, the correct amount of money.
When this trust is destroyed, by terrorists or invading armies, or by thieves and fraudsters. life cannot continue as before. Society fragments into little groups who know and trust each other. A society where everyone has to test their bottle of milk before they drink it is not viable.
So trust is a major concern for government. The concern for "law and order" is the concern to maintain trust. The concern for "health and safety" is the concern to maintain trust. The concern for keeping a balanced economy is the concern to maintain trust in the medium of exchange.
So trust, as a psychological disposition makes social relations possible, and trust is maintained by honour. The manufacturer honours the milk label by putting milk in the milk bottle. And I honour the forum by putting philosophy in my posts. Hopefully, I honour your trust by telling the truth as best I can, and that is with some competence.
But we know that people are not always honest or honourable. Or even competent.But as long as it is the exception, trust is maintained, more or less. Every now and then, some idiot drives on the wrong side of the road, but we still trust that people will not as long as it is very rare. Some people who have had bad experiences become paranoid or anxious, poor fellows.
So back in the day, and it survives to an extent, you didn't have to tell people that your product did what it said on the tin, because if it didn't, you would be prosecuted for fraud or mis-selling or whatever, under the Trade Descriptions Act. If a politician was found to have lied, they had to resign. The value of truth was recognised and enforced. Not that everyone was honest, or that no one got away with anything. In some ways it was worse because secrets were easier to keep, and lies easier to maintain.
Economists call it 'confidence' and measure it. It is real, it is social, it is the glue of society, and the media that betray it are more destructive than war and terrorism.
Do you trust Google? Should you? is there any way of checking Google? Is there any way of holding Google to account?
We also need a standardized marking system for online information. Official, scientific, trustworthy media, trustworthy individuals and red marks for those who actively spread disinformation/misinformation. Such markings can start off as being handled by Google as Google handles most of the searches in the world.
But do you trust Google?
In my dotage, I am starting to discern something I could call the physics of social relations.
Trust is a universal force analogous to gravity. Without trust people would literally fall apart, one from another. I walk down the street trusting that no one will start attacking me with a machete. I go into a shop to buy milk trusting that I will not be given bleach, and pay with money that I trust is not counterfeit or a card that I trust will register in some place I trust without the least clue where it is, the correct amount of money.
When this trust is destroyed, by terrorists or invading armies, or by thieves and fraudsters. life cannot continue as before. Society fragments into little groups who know and trust each other. A society where everyone has to test their bottle of milk before they drink it is not viable.
So trust is a major concern for government. The concern for "law and order" is the concern to maintain trust. The concern for "health and safety" is the concern to maintain trust. The concern for keeping a balanced economy is the concern to maintain trust in the medium of exchange.
So trust, as a psychological disposition makes social relations possible, and trust is maintained by honour. The manufacturer honours the milk label by putting milk in the milk bottle. And I honour the forum by putting philosophy in my posts. Hopefully, I honour your trust by telling the truth as best I can, and that is with some competence.
But we know that people are not always honest or honourable. Or even competent.But as long as it is the exception, trust is maintained, more or less. Every now and then, some idiot drives on the wrong side of the road, but we still trust that people will not as long as it is very rare. Some people who have had bad experiences become paranoid or anxious, poor fellows.
So back in the day, and it survives to an extent, you didn't have to tell people that your product did what it said on the tin, because if it didn't, you would be prosecuted for fraud or mis-selling or whatever, under the Trade Descriptions Act. If a politician was found to have lied, they had to resign. The value of truth was recognised and enforced. Not that everyone was honest, or that no one got away with anything. In some ways it was worse because secrets were easier to keep, and lies easier to maintain.
Economists call it 'confidence' and measure it. It is real, it is social, it is the glue of society, and the media that betray it are more destructive than war and terrorism.
Do you trust Google? Should you? is there any way of checking Google? Is there any way of holding Google to account?
Comments (124)
This fragmentation is the goal for anarchism, being composed of people who have no trust in government.
Quoting unenlightened
Top concern for the government would be to maintain trust in the government, because its subsistence depends on that.
Quoting unenlightened
No. All you need to do is look at the order of priority by which they present your search results to you, to know that Google is not trustworthy. And, I really don't think people in general would be more inclined to trust Google over trusting the government, and there seems to be a significant number of anarchists out there in the world.
Quoting unenlightened
Not really, but I trust corporate image and Google is actually in the business of trust. Their lifeblood is that we trust the safety google provides and that the services provided are trustworthy. When reports came in about how Google handled paid search results it was a major blow to their brand. Same goes for Facebook, who need to keep the trust of their users.
As long as the business requires the trust of its users, then it's a level of trust that can be used by the users themselves. I believe that a Google-branded trust-marking system is possible, because Google wants to be the most trustworthy search engine. And if they start to mark pages as trustworthy because those pages pay Google for it, that would be a blow to their brand of trust that is hard to recover from.
We can trust the fear of losing trust. As long as there's a cold war balance in trust between consumers and producers in a capitalist society, it will regulate itself. Customers want to trust a company and the company needs the customer's trust. Failure to comply results in failure of the business.
So can we trust google? No, but we can trust that they want to keep their business. It's important not to become naive and comfy in their care, always question them, always question everyone. By constantly challenging them and reviewing them we challenge their handle of our trust and they will do anything to keep that trust. The risk of mishandling trust is such a bad business strategy that it gives us enough trust for the life we live. But always question them, otherwise they will find loopholes.
Nonsense. I have already outlined the obvious, that trust is destroyed by untruth and deliberate betrayal such as terrorism. Do not buy into the myth of the bomb-carrying anarchist. It is the fascist, the fanatic and the totalitarian who seek to destroy trust. Anarchy depends upon it absolutely.
This is not really true. A company may work hard to gain the trust of customers, but once they receive it they have the customers by the balls. And since the company's priority is always its financial well-being there is no good reason why the company would not abuse that trust.
Quoting unenlightened
Anarchy depends on trust of the government?
Yes, just like the milk seller depends on trust. Government, business, everyone in a society depends on trust for every interaction. And if we do not trust google, do we trust the independent body supervising them?
I propose that the sickness of the age is that blows to trust have proliferated and they are indeed hard to recover from. But we cannot function without trust, and we cannot function without a search engine. I don't think there is another answer. Trust comes from honour, and so without honour we die. Thus the unreality of morality is seen to be somewhat exaggerated.
Yes, agreed, that's why I said:
Quoting Christoffer
In essence, the larger the corporation, the heavier the fall. If financial well-being is their concern, a major blow to trust would be a major blow to financial well-being. The more a company relies on trust in their business, the worse the consequences of trust abuse.
That's why we always have to review these companies, that's why it's so important with things like whistleblowers, protection of them, and company practice transparency.
The thing I wrote about markings though, has to do standardized markings of websites that provide information. It would be in Google's interest to do this since people want a trustworthy search engine. There isn't much gain to abuse such a marking system for their searches and they would be praised for battling the post-truth era problems of information.
No.
Yes, this is the fundamental problem of the post-truth era and it's a tricky one. I think that trust comes from repetition. Repetition of competence, repetition of providing evidence and facts.
If a political leader provides facts and evidence, act upon educated ideas etc. they will after repetition of such conduct be treated as trustworthy political leaders.
An independent body supervising this marking system will have to be founded by trustworthy people that exist within its committee. Experts in their field that has earned trust through repetition within their job. Then the independent body itself needs to repeat until being labeled trustworthy.
The marking system itself is based on repetition, repeated acts of trustworthy nature will keep the marking for their websites. Misconduct will mark them as not trustworthy. It might even need regulations and laws around it, so that Google is not handling it, but maybe demanded to have it and if they abuse it, it's considered a crime against information.
The big question is, in a time when no one can be trustworthy, can we create a system that can guide people to trustworthy sources of information? If we can have systems of review within science in order to exclude pseudoscience, why not for marking information so that people know where to find evidence and facts and where to be careful. I think it's possible and I think the alternative is worse chaos.
The problem though is that we can do things which are untrustworthy without losing the trust of the others. That is called deception, and so long as the deception goes unexposed the trust remains, and the person being deceived is taken advantage of. This is an issue of morality.
We don't really know exactly which situations will lead to people secretly doing untrustworthy things, and we can't predict the future anyway, so we can't predict what type of untrustworthy things people might start doing, and therefore we cannot be on guard for those things, to expose them if they occur. If they do occur, people will have been taken advantage of, (and not just a small number, due to the type of business Google is) and it will be too late to prevent these people from being taken advantage of. Haven't we already learned that lesson with Facebook?
Quoting Christoffer
The whistleblowing is after the fact. What good is closing the barn door when the horse is long gone? Sure you might punish some perpetrators, but that doesn't prevent the harm from being done.
Quoting Christoffer
You can say this, but generally speaking, if abuse is possible people will find a way to make a gain from it. That's how it earns its name "abuse", people using it for bad purposes. And they wouldn't do it if there was no gain to be made.
Google is just a search engine that provides links to trustworthy, or untrustworthy information. It's not so much should you trust Google, but should you trust the sites that Google provides as a result of your search? Do you trust your own site-searching skills, and use of keywords, to find the right information you are looking for?
Quoting unenlightened
The same can be said of all the philosophers that are constantly quoted on these forums. The way Witt is quoted on this forum, it would seem that he would be the most trustworthy of all philosophers. :chin:
So what level of trust is enough for a functioning society? Do you trust scientists? Do you trust hospitals? Do you trust your mechanic not to tamper with the breaks? The building blocks around trust are many more than "if there's a chance of abuse, there will be abuse". That's a Murphy's law type reasoning that isn't very nuanced. It is true that abuse happens, so how do we minimize it? We can't get rid of the risk of abuse without losing freedom, so we can only minimize it. Repercussions to companies conducting such abuse, risk of closure, legal actions etc. Alongside that the risk of the business losing the trust of the customers which is a major part of having a business running. Risking that trust is not a good business strategy and doing so requires extreme measures that could be even riskier.
So what level of trust can you work with? And if you can't give trust in any direction how would you solve that?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Exactly and it's in their interest to look trustworthy. They do not gain anything from falsely marking other websites as trustworthy or not, quite the opposite, people would want to use Google more in order to be certain in their web searches if there was a clear marking system for trustworthy sites in the searches.
First, the distrust of government is obviously not new. The question for liberal democracies (of which I include the US) is how to deal with that. In the US system (ideally), the President cannot act without the approval of the Senate, without the approval of the House, without the approval of the Court, and they are all ultimately checked by the people, and the people are even checked by the rights set forth in the Constitution. These checks and balances were forged as the result of distrust of the government.
Second, I agree that distrust is the result of prior dishonesty, but it's often far less sinister than that. The first question the judge will ask prospective jurors when they walk in the courtroom is whether they are related by blood or marriage to the litigants, whether they have a financial interest in the outcome of the case, or whether they have formed any opinions prior to hearing any evidence. The purpose for these questions is to exclude on the basis of bias. I cannot hear a case involving my mother not because I am a scoundrel or liar when it comes to my mother, but it's because I am hopelessly biased as to all things that might relate to her. By the same token, if I will be called upon to pay the verdict in a civil case, I cannot sit as a juror. In a criminal case, I cannot sit if I was a prior victim of the accused, and I suppose we could imagine a number of other such cases. None these exclusions are based upon my propensity to lie or be dishonest. In fact, a judge is required to recuse herself if there's even the appearance of impropriety, despite the fact she may possess the wisdom of Solomon and the trust of all the community.
When one looks to the various news outlets, we see distrust from one side or the other. The left watches CNN and the right FoxNews. The complaint du jour by the right is that CNN is not covering the allegations of Biden's prior sexual misconduct. The argument isn't that CNN is filled with liars and cheaters, but that it's biased. It's that it does not stand as a neutral, but as an advocate. It's that everything is spun and then advocated or condemned. The general complaint of our time is that of polarization, where everyone is now an advocate and everyone is selling a point of view.
Thirty years ago, we trusted our news outlets not to be biased, but today, not so much. I'd submit that we haven't degenerated from a trusting bunch to a skeptical bunch, but that we've simply shaken away some amount of naivete and that we're now more sophisticated. Your question about whether we should trust Google is a good one because it recognizes that Google has in fact become the current check and balance for our news, where we can determine for ourselves if we've got our facts straight. And maybe it is time to become skeptical of it, not because we're further degenerating, but because we're becoming even more sophisticated. But the answer is that I do expect (and there likely already is one) a new search engine that will emerge that the right will say is less biased or one the left will say is less biased. Regardless, that's a good thing, as I see no reason to trust the folks at Google not to also be selling something or some point of view.
Your point about bias is a good one, and the judicial tradition is well versed in maximising the potential for trust. Indeed when it comes to matters close to the heart or wallet, one should perhaps not trust oneself.
I suggest that the invention of advertising - an offshoot of psychology has caused some degeneration in trust over the last century, but sure it is nothing new in essence. Still it perhaps offers a third strand of failure of relationship, bias, manipulation, and dishonesty.
But here I want to hold the line that trust is always naive, by definition, and sophistication is always mistrustful. The justice system is sophisticated, because its business is to deal with the failure and collapse of relationships of trust. And the queen of justice systems is restorative justice, because it is in the business of restoring relationships of trust.
I put this in ethics, not politics, because I think trust is the ground of relationships and institutions of all kinds. A lot of the responses so far have been suggestions for remedies in this or that situation, or defences of their overall honesty.
When trust is lost, there are laws and punishments and hierarchies of watchdogs watching each other. But trust is not restored, except by honesty.
Highly speculative but deliciously quotable.
In the business world trust is redirected to trust in the rule of law. I was reading that Islam was merchant law throughout Central Asia and spread quietly by virtue of that, not by the sword.
So that affirms your point, but with a modification in the object of trust.
I applaud your honesty, and trust your expression of distrust. But alas, you probably do not trust my expressions of approval. So where can we go from here?
It seems to me that we cannot communicate without trust, so I start to wonder why you participate in this process if you do not trust the participants?
Because I'm a man and a man has nothing else to do. I just go through the motions. If people want to be jerks, it's not really my problem.
I can easily picture being redflagged by Google just for not being status quo. It's the same old story everywhere I go.
At the end of my life I'll determine who was trustworthy. Until then I'll just wait for the other shoe to drop. Everywhere I've been I've just encountered lowly people.
I don't believe you know whereof you speak.
Quoting neonspectraltoast
I don't believe this. I think you care.
Quoting Professor Death
You are wrong. And you know you are wrong because you take the trouble to say something. So your trust is being displayed even as you deny it. It is terrible and true that people voted for the Nazis, and we are so fortunate to understand that without having lived it. I trust that understanding in us.
Quoting neonspectraltoast
If you wait for everybody else to be perfect, you will indeed be waiting a good while.
I don't demand perfection. But I believe in good hearts. The more light, the deeper the shadows. But I'd rather confront them in the light than in the dark.
Then who we distrust is people with too much power over others. Do you trust others to make your life's choices?
Quoting Zophie
A deepity.
How much is too much? My milk provider has the power of life and death over me, because I drink the stuff without testing it. Think bus driver rather than supreme leader.
If you don't trust your dentist, you gonna suffer some pain.
Do you guys not walk down streets or buy stuff in shops? Of course you all do. So at every point you put your trust in others. You are playing at the sophistication of mistrust for rhetorical or egotistic purposes. Stop it now, because this a is rather serious matter that requires some thought and a rigorous honesty.
I do but I also have to be aware that someone could rip me off or make a mistake on the total purchase amount so I might check the receipt or whatever. Healthy paranoia.
We're all skeptical of things that do not conform to our expectations, we can make a game of this and reassure ourselves by defeating all "enemy ideas", leaving the unarticulated position we inhabit the only thing that feels left standing.
If the ability to share the same sources of trust, those grounds that doubt leaves standing, is diminished, so is the social fabric those grounds together constitute.
But in such a state of alienation, things will still be trusted in this sense by necessity, people do stuff upon a background their expectations hold fixed.
There's honesty and then there's truth. We only know if someone is honest if we are able to otherwise find the truth. And if we can find the truth ourselves, we don't need to appeal to any authority. We just go take a look for ourselves.
So, to restore honesty would make things more expedient because we wouldn't have to spend the time checking up on people, but it would also make us more subject to being conned by those who remain dishonest. Could all this really mean that we're just seeing the consequences of the information age come to fruition? We no longer need to trust Walter Cronkite. We can look for ourselves. And what we've learned when we looked for ourselves is that those we had trusted may have just been selling a point a view.
Maybe we've lost trust, but we've found truth. Is that so bad an exchange? Maybe the truth is that there never really was all this honesty.
I know if I am honest. If I can otherwise find the truth, I don't have to care about your honesty.
Quoting Hanover
I don't know who you think has found truth and lost trust, or how or when this happened. I ask you the same question - do you walk down the street and buy stuff in the shops, travel on public transport, fire bullets made in a factory, let the dentist near your face with his needles and drills? Then you haven't lost trust.
Well, sure, total trust has not been lost. But do I trust the dentists like I once did, and do I just take my medicine as prescribed? I probably do a whole lot more research now than before, as I'd suspect we all do. And all this happened once that information became accessible to me, which is very much a Google thing.
Exactly. It's subjective. Some people give some of their decision-making power to others because making decisions is hard for them. How much power someone is willing to give up is subjective, so how much power a government should have is subjective and therefore shouldn't be imposed on others who can make most of the decisions for themselves. There is no government that one size fits all. That's the whole point.
Excellent. This is where I want to start, with our inescapable mutual dependence. I switch the light on trusting that it has been wired up so it doesn't give me a shock or set fire to the house. We need to trust. therefore we need to be honest. We need to communicate, therefore we need to be honest.
All this mistrust is macho posing, and chronic anxiety. But at the same time it is being normalised by the media and by politics - and alas, by philosophy.
Quoting Harry Hindu
What is subjective? That I buy milk? That I drink it without testing it? that I doesn't kill me?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Well no Harry, the whole premise of this thread is that it is not subjective and there is no choice. Every aspect of modern live relies on other people behaving responsibly, as a matter of life and death and this is inescapable. I have already given many examples of everyday life that require trust, because everyday folks have each other's life in their hands giving injections, footing ladders, driving vehicles, building houses. The government merely conducts this orchestra of mutual trust. These are facts, not subjective at all.
Quoting unenlightened
What about certainty? I have had a series of misfortunes in my life. I find it exhausting and rather not expose myself. Yet, I am afraid of dying in the sense that I do not trust the world or physical laws itself.
Should God be trusted if not Google?
Yes, if you have been betrayed by those you needed to trust, then the fact that you keep having to trust people causes anxiety.
Quoting Shawn
I don't say you should or shouldn't trust either of them. I say you have to trust the world and the people who make your dinners and fill your prescriptions . Or starve in unmedicated isolation.
I'm saying we all depend for our lives on the decency of strangers and neighbours. The really extraordinary thing is that there should be any debate whatsoever about this; that I have come to an age, and the world has come to a state where this needs to be mentioned at all. The age of the rational self-interested man, and his trophy wife.
I don't look at this as a matter of trust. I do business with a lot of different people, many of whom I don't particularly trust, the question of whether I trust them or not just doesn't come up in my mind. The situation is more like one of need. I need the service they offer, so I do business with them without thinking about whether or not I ought to trust them. You, and unenlightened, might argue that the fact I do choose to do business with them implies that I trust them. I don't think that way, and I know that I do business with a few whom I particularly don't trust. I just need to be more wary of these people.
Quoting Christoffer
So I would look at the Google issue more as a question of need. If they offer a service which is needed, then we use it, whether or not we trust them. But doing business with someone whom you do not particularly trust means that you need to be wary. We could assume, that just like doing business with anyone else, the company would want to give us honest service to maintain a reputation, but such assumptions are what leave us vulnerable.
Quoting unenlightened
I think you are giving trust too much credit here. As I say above, the motivation to shop, or to do any sort of business is a person's wants and needs. Because I do business with someone, doesn't necessarily mean that I trust that person. You might call this 'putting my trust in others', and that's an apt expression, because I am relying on the other person to fulfill their side of the deal, and provide for me, but I don't think trust even enters my mind in most cases, despite that expression. I just take it for granted that the person will do what is supposed to be done, and if they do not, I'm disappointed. It seems to me, like trust only enters my mind if I see some reason for distrust. Then I'll question whether I ought to trust the person or not. But lack of distrust does not necessarily imply trust. If you look up "trust" in The Oxford, you'll see it defined as "a firm belief in the reliability...". In my habitual day to day interactions with people, I tend to be more in the middle with my attitude toward these people, having neither a firm belief in the reliability of the person, nor a firm belief in the person's unreliability. I would hope, and I do expect, that the person will fulfill their end of the bargain, but I cannot say that I generally have a firm belief that they will. It's far too often that I've been disappointed. I can say truthfully, that I wouldn't make a judgement as to whether I trust or distrust a person until I got to know them reasonably well.
Quoting unenlightened
I still think you're giving trust too much credit. There are very many things which we need, and trust is not one of them. Trust is a luxury, which is extremely beneficial to have, but you seem to take it for granted. You switch a light on, and you think that you would only do this if you trust the person who did the wiring. But I don't think that's accurate, you most likely don't even know the person. How can you claim to trust someone you don't even know? I think you are switching "habit" for "firm belief". You switch the light on because it is your habit, not because you have a firm belief in the reliability of whoever it was who did the wiring.
Quoting unenlightened
I completely agree with this, but I think you are misrepresenting our interdependence as a matter of trust. We need to interact, but we can interact without trust, basing such actions in hope instead, for example. We need, and depend on certain things, and we can live with the hope that we will get them, without actually trusting that we will. Trust being a firm belief, hope being a less than firm belief. However, it seems very obvious that if a society could replace hope with trust, it would be much more pleasant and stress-free place to live, because we wouldn't always be looking over our shoulders. So it would be very good to try and keep levels of trust as high as possible. In the case of a corporate entity having respect for moral standards, good luck with that. I think hope is the best I can do here.
I think you have hit upon the stumbling block for many here. This is the naivety of trust, that it does not occur to one to do otherwise. The veteran of Afghanistan who has a panic attack whenever he see[s a curtain twitch has lost his trust in the benignity of strangers. To those of us who have not experienced the constant danger of snipers, it seems a bit mad - we call it PTSD. Why would you think a moving curtain is dangerous?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No. I don't want to get into a mere terminological dispute, but trust is not a firm belief. I have to remind myself that I am sometimes talking to the chronically anxious or mildly paranoid, who are always doubting, like the veteran, the stability of the environment and the safety of their persons. If you say that you conduct your life in a state of hope, not trust, I have to believe you, knowing you are an honest and thoughtful person. And I have to say that I feel sorry for you. But by trust I really mean the absence of doubt, not even wondering if there is a sniper somewhere across the road. This is totally different to hoping there isn't one.
You and I have a different understanding of what constitutes "trust". You are willing to say that if you are carrying out a business transaction with a person, a complete stranger, and you put that person into a position where they might take advantage of you, you necessarily trust that person, or else you would not put the person in that position. I want to restrict "trust" to a higher level, reserving it only for use in cases of proven reliability.
So in the case of doing business with a complete stranger, I would not give that person trust. But this would not prevent me from doing business with the person though. If the person provided services which I needed I would do business with them even if I did not trust them. I would proceed with the requisite caution though, not paying in advance, etc.. The person might still take advantage of me though, in ways that I'm unprepared for (giving me inferior product or service, for example). And, the only way that I can rationalize doing business with this person whom I do not particularly trust, and might take advantage of me, is through the hope that they will not do that.
The person is a complete stranger, and I definitely would not say that I trust the person. You, on the other hand would say that you trust the person. I don't think it's the case that you would trust the person, and I would not trust the person, I think that you are using the word "trust" more freely than I. I think we both would have a similar attitude toward the transaction, knowing that the other person might take advantage, yet proceeding anyway, and this would justify a degree of doubt, in either one of us, yet you would say that you trust the other person, and I would not.
Quoting unenlightened
According to what you've posted, doesn't this contradict your actual use of "trust"? You would "trust" a complete stranger, to do business with that person. How can you say that there is an absence of doubt in that situation? "Absence of doubt" is more consistent with my definition of "trust", "firm belief", and this is what you rejected.
The whole premise of this thread is wrong.
How much power someone is willing to give someone else over them is subjective. It is why we have different choices of political affiliations. If there were no choice then why do you berate people for their political choices on this forum?
It seems to me, that if there were no choice (your premise), or that some type of government is the best for everyone is subjective (my premise), then it would be a waste of time discussing politics in the first place, just like it's a waste of time discussing religion. :roll:
Quoting neonspectraltoast
And we wouldn't need a police force or laws if we trusted each other.
All one needs to do is go back and read previous unenlightened threads to see how they don't trust Trump, conservatives, whites, or anyone that disagrees with them.
Quoting unenlightened
I think that it's a problem of interpretation of the word trust, then. We use trust when we mean need or dependence. As we look at money, which is a social construct around trust, need, necessity for the cogs of society to work etc. As we talk about trust we will bend the word and its definition into many different types of interpretations. But they are indeed different versions of the same concept and the concept is the core we need to discuss.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Exactly, but I think that's the thing here, trust is need, is a necessity, is a contract. It's a contract that works until society sees it not working. How many companies have died because of misconduct? It happens and the fear within companies to do things that destroy themselves is indeed a reality, just as the reality of people fearing the companies doing misconduct. This is why we have ethical boards, laws and regulations, in order to keep everyone in fear of doing things wrong.
It's also a question of morality. We have laws that force us not to kill each other, but people can also already have morals that prevent them from killing, as a basic result of empathy. As long as the company isn't corrupted by its own complexity, it will have some form of morality through the people working there. And of course, that morality fails, just as people fail and do crimes. But as a general rule, we have trust not in each other, but in the morality of others, which guides us even if we don't have laws.
So can we trust Google? I don't think so. Can we trust them to do their best to be moral against their customers? Yes. If they don't they will one day fall as a company as long as society is upheld as free and laws and morality can review them. Being morally bad in front of their customers is not good for business, so either they don't do it or they hide it. But hiding such actions is a very risky venture, possibly lethal for a company. All it takes is one person with empathy to speak out against the company and their misconduct is stamped out, or the entire company itself.
So, as you say, we can only assume them to be good, just as we can only assume others around us to be good. But outside moral theory, most people have empathy which guides many moral choices and people make up the companies we do business with. Google is a massive company, so there can be misconduct in some areas while others are perfectly fine, the key here is that we know we are vulnerable. As long as we do, we question.
To question a service we use, is a kind of agreement in the contract of trust. It's the "I can trust you with this, right?" -interchangeable with "if I can't trust you with this, I will take you down". This kind of agreement is a foundation of the trust we give and have; fear and trust is two sides of the same coin. If we are to trust someone we agree upon the fear of breaking that trust. The trust comes out of an agreement of that fear.
Just look at the level of distrust between different political parties today.
Yes, I understand. It's a legitimate way of talking.
What you describe is exactly that sophisticated measured provisional trust. 'I'll put some cash on the table and turn my back and see if it goes missing', and that's an investment in finding out if I can trust you a bit further. I think you can see that in business situations such as you describe there is an element of trust and an element of distrust. And when one knows the builder well, one can give him the keys and let him get on with it. One reaches 'proven reliability'. I do not deny this to be the norm of many relationships. I just want to talk about the trust element and not the distrust element. If I don't altogether trust, I hope and I am cautious.
Yes. I have been a bit loose with the term, and my ideas develop in discussion. So the core is the trust of a child that relaxes completely into the arms of an adult, with no consideration of negative consequences - being crushed or being dropped.
We want to trust Google. Nobody is asking if we can trust The Onion. Obviously we cannot, and obviously we don't want to. We want to laugh.
And that the question arises indicates that we don't altogether trust Google, at least not in that childlike unquestioning way that I think most people did maybe 10 or 20 years ago. "Google is your friend" we used to say when someone asked a straightforward factual question, that it was beneath our dignity to answer. No one has said that for a while. We used to believe in the freedom of the web, until the pedophiles spoilt it for us.
Harry, I'm really struggling to make sense of your posts. What have you been led to believe? It is almost as if you are saying that because there is a lot of distrust in the world, there cannot also be a lot of trust. Is that what you are saying? Do me a favour and try and put it simply and clearly, and without the political jibes.
Yes, but the purpose of your OP couldn't have been to convince us of the virtue of honesty because I would think that's largely uncontested. We all understand that thou shalt not lie.
The OP seemed to suggest a lament, that we've degenerated from a point of trust to our current dismal state of affairs where we look for angles and ulterior motives in everyone's acts and speech. For example, is Trump a great big fat liar of grander proportions than we've ever known such that we need to rethink where we are and thereby return to our purer state? Or, have our leaders always been big fat liars, but we're just now more leery? I think it's the latter really, as I think about leaders the world over and throughout history.
Since this is really a prayer of sorts, I'd more fundamentally pray for kindness and understanding and I'd expect the honesty you pray for to flow from that. After all, I just want to be treated as I'd like to be treated myself. The rest, as they say, is commentary upon that.
I agree our leaders have always been big fat liars, but I disagree we are more leery. Au contraire, we are much less leery; our leaders can now tell blatant lies that everyone can see are blatant lies, then contradict themselves, and then accuse their critics of being liars. In the good old days, they didn't usually get caught out, but if they did they were booted out. Well perhaps that was never the universal tradition, I'm not sure.
No, it was the rule. Even the priest had to be moved to another parish once he'd been caught buggering the choirboys a few times.
Quoting Hanover What you need is one of those lamps with a genie in it. P'raps Jeff Bezos will lend you his?
It would be questionable whether money is constructed around trust or distrust, if you take that approach, but more likely that is completely the wrong approach, and it was developed simply as a memory aid, an IOU; being written on paper, or in the form of coins, we don't forget, get confused, or disagree.
Quoting Christoffer
This is what I disagree with. The different ways of describing "trust" exposed by unenlightened and I, are not different versions of the same concept, I think they are completely different ways of understanding the same word. Have you read Plato's Republic, where they discuss the meaning of "just"? Those were not different versions of the same concept being discussed, they were different ways of understanding the same word,
Quoting Christoffer
"Trust is need"? How so?
Quoting Christoffer
I don't buy this. A company consults lawyers to determine what they are allowed to do, and what they ought not do. You don't generally see a bunch of ethicists or moralists sitting around the boardroom, but you will find lawyers. In determining what the company must do, and what it must not do, the lawyers only have the laws to consult. If a new way to make money is presented, which is not illegal, but some moralists might think it is immoral, the lawyers can give the CEO no reason not to proceed with this new way. If the CEO says they ought not proceed because the procedure might be immoral (notice there's never any firm determination in this situation, just the thought that it might be immoral), the board will likely get the CEO fired.
Quoting unenlightened
That's not really trust though, it's comfort. As they say, innocence is bliss. The adult loves and cares for the child, and would not bounce it off the floor, but the child doesn't know any of this, only instinctually feeling the safety of the warm embrace, which it has come to recognize as comfort. I don't think we can say that recognizing a situation as comfortable is the same as having trust.
Quoting unenlightened
I don't know about that, I think the abusers were lurking all along, we were just innocent and naïve, comfortable like the child in the adult's arms, until the child gets into the arms of the wrong adult. The illusion is shattered.
Quoting Hanover
No we don't. That is not one of the ten commandments. And there are various arguments from ethicists concerning when it is and is not acceptable to lie. As unenlightened pointed out we are accustomed to having the rulers lie to us. That this is an acceptable principle is documented as far back as Plato's noble lie, and probably extends beyond written history, as old as communication itself. So we cannot categorically exclude lying, from our arsenal of virtuous acts.
Well, yeah. That sounds logical.
If distrust is the absence of trust, then yes, more distrust equals less trust.
So you tell me, Unenlightened: how much trust vs distrust is in the world, and how would you know?
Quoting unenlightened
You're confusing trust with expectation. Trust is analogous to faith. Expectations are strong beliefs in what will, or is suppose to, happen based on prior experience or knowledge.
Is it that we trust our milkman, or have an expectation that he will follow the law, and not poison me? In poisoning me, is he not ruining his reputation with the rest of society? Will anyone want to buy his milk if they know that there is a possibility that it could be poisoned? Because of these factors, I expect the milkman to not poison me.
If there were no laws, and no consequences to the milkman's actions, then I would have faith, or trust, the milkman won't poison me.
I think that Richard Dawkin's Selfish Gene provides an excellent explanation as to how complex social relationships, like altruism and cooperation, are established. It explains how many of our cognitive features and skills developed as a means of "tit-for-tat" strategies and finding better ways of cheating and detecting cheating in others and holding them accountable.
I am telling you, Harry. I started this thread for that purpose.
Imagine for a moment that no one ever told the truth. There would be no trust at all in what anyone says.
No one would bother listening or having any regard for anything anyone says, and the language would be useless and fall into disuse. Language only has functionality if on average, people tell the truth most of the time. Even lies only work if mostly people tell the truth.
Similarly, society only has functionality if on average, people cooperate most of the time.
So there has to be more trust than distrust in the world or society would collapse. I think society is close to collapse right now. So I am telling you, and anyone who is prepared to listen, that we all need to trust, and need the truth to be told, and need to cooperate, or we will not survive. Like the boy who cried 'Wolf' we will be eaten by wolves if we do not cooperate and tell the truth, because wolves do cooperate and tell the truth, and that makes them stronger than they are as individuals.
I blame the russian government. They've been systematically trying to turn us against each other for years
If there was a conspiracy, then it could be exposed and defeated. But the case is worse than that. The enemy is within, it is in all the fake friendship, all the fake unity, all the fake flag waving and sacrifice for the nation, all the glorious economic necessity and fake freedom enforced at gunpoint and so on and on. You cannot tell the truth yourself, but recite this trope about Russians on autopilot. It is exactly your lack of trust that leaves you open to such exploitation. Perhaps there are Russians sowing discontent, There are certainly plenty of Americans and Europeans doing so too.
Why are so many of the world's leaders complete turnips? It's not because there is a grand conspiracy of turnips to take over the world, it's because people prefer pleasant bullshit to truth.
When were these good old days? The days of the monarch or the dictator, or does that go back too far? At least now our leaders feel like they have to lie. Back then they could just tell you all the terrible things they had planned and there was no other recourse. Quoting unenlightenedThis assumes that karma controls the world. I'd love to think that North Korea will fall due to the falsehoods and propaganda it imposes on its citizens. Sort through history and consider every time and every leader, and do we see that their demise is owed to the collapse of truth and honesty within the society? Do we really see that time and time again the innocent and pure rise and take power because there is no more assured way to success than by embracing righteousness? I really don't think so.
This isn't to say that a society built upon the foundation of dishonesty is one anyone would like to live in, but I think it's wishful thinking to suggest that there is this karmic system of self-correction that results in the collapse of those societies that fail to seek honesty.
At any rate, I have the exact reaction to the loss of trust, kindness, and compassion that you do, but mine is due to the inherent sacredness of such things, as opposed to whatever pragmatic pain I may suffer from their loss. I have full trust in the ingenuity of humankind to create a fully functioning, sustainable, and workable system that is propped up by nothing but bullshit. Such systems don't crumble under their own weight, but they are typically destroyed by the intentional acts of the heroic. We give them such names as "revolutionaries" and "founding fathers." Mothers too, of course.
Maybe I can't, but I also don't want tyrants and kleptocrats taking over the world
You may have to wait, but it is not a magic justice system I am proposing but the bite of reality. Perhaps you can fool all of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool a virus, you cannot fool the climate, you cannot fool reality with propaganda.
For example, the UK government recently downgraded the status of Corona virus:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid
This has not changed the virus, but it has changed the legislated protection that health workers are entitled to. So it helps the virus spread. There is no question but that a regime can kill millions of its citizens. Governments can and do betray their citizens, and parents can and do betray their children. And people die when they do, because ... wait for it ... people are dependent, and people need to trust each other.
My rose tinted spectacles take me back to the fifties in the UK. But even quite recently, The prime minister resigned when he called a referendum and lost it.
I could see a taxonomy of trusts identifying negative and positive aspects to trust in each embedded context to which a form of trust applies, but I suppose the simple answer to the conundrum is that we should selectively, critically, and appropriately apply trust/mistrust. Selectively, in that we eschew a naive mistrust of everything and accept that trust is sometimes both good and necessary. Critically, in that when we do apply mistrust, we do so in accordance with reason. Our mistrust should be [I]warranted[/i]. And appropriately, in that we apply mistrust of the right degree, of the right scope, and at the right level.
Degree e.g. We distrust a mainstream media outlet and are warranted in doing so, does that mean we should dismiss everything they say tout court as "Fake news"? Not necessarily.
Scope e.g. We distrust a mainstream media outlet and are warranted in doing so, does that mean we should dismiss all msm outlets? Again, not necessarily, we first need a separate warrant and even if we get one, it's back to the degree question.
Level e.g. We distrust the political world, so should we withdraw from the social and cultural too. Not necessarily. The degree and scope of warranted mistrust may be very different at each level.
And so on.
Tl;dr As good as it is to be skeptical of our social and interpersonal environment, getting too skeptical can fuck things up an' shit.
Thanks, that's a very helpful clarification. Certainly as one grows up, one is likely to uncover the frailties of even the most benign parent, so that one no longer trusts their infinite wisdom on all things, while continuing, hopefully, to trust their benevolent orientation towards their offspring.
To relate all this to the philosophical tradition, Hume's scepticism declares that there is no reason to expect the world to continue in the orderly causal way that it has in the past; but we trust that it will. Such is the base level of trust that as it percolates upwards to other people and expects decent people to carry on being decent, and rogues to carry on being rogues, becomes what one might think of as a natural conservatism. "every day as sure as the clock, somebody hears the postman's knock."
Agriculture, the necessary foundation of civilisation, is only possible if the peasant trusts both that the seasons will follow their usual succession and that one's neighbours will allow ones cabbages to come to fruition. "Good faces make good neighbours.", not because neighbours cannot climb fences, but because they clarify which are my cabbages, and which are my neighbour's.
And if I cannot trust all my neighbours, or at least the raiding parties from far away, of Vikings or American oil-men, then I need to trust policemen and armies and the local warlords to protect my cabbages, because i have to eat, and I have to sleep.
So if I am a peasant in North Korea, or an abused child in Essex, life is shit, no one can be trusted, and the outlook is pretty damn poor. This does not demonstrate that trust is unnecessary.
Why must we dichotomize things in such a way that we look for the degree of trust or mistrust in every relation we have with the world? I would place both trust and mistrust as reasoned approaches, like you do here, but the majority of interactions which we have are habitual of nature, and therefore fall outside the classification of a reasoned approach, and cannot be described as either trusting or mistrusting.
So I see a problem with this approach, because if we look with hindsight, at our actions, (and it must be hindsight, because looking ahead would be reasoning about possible actions), and try to determine what was the reason for doing this or that, was it trust or mistrust, it turns out to be very difficult to determine such reasons. That I believe is due to the force of habit. Habit makes us go ahead and do things without reason. And when we assign a reason for these habitual acts, in hindsight, it's just a matter of rationalizing, which does not give us the true reason, being the force of habit. Therefore there is a large variety of actions and interactions which cannot be classed in the two opposing categories of trusting and mistrusting, because they are better described as habitual actions rather than reasoned actions.
Quoting unenlightened
Why call this "trust" though? Does it make sense to you to say that you trust the inanimate world? Yes it does, but shouldn't we distinguish two fundamentally different forms of "trust" then? Surely, if I say I trust that the sun will come up tomorrow morning, it doesn't mean the same thing as when I say that I trust you to deliver what we agreed upon. To begin with, we could look at statistics and probability, and see that there's a significant difference between the two. Then if I look deeper I can see that the way I relate to the reliability of the sun coming up, and the way that I relate to the reliability of you carrying out your side of the deal, is not even similar.
I don't even consider it a real possibility that the inanimate world could behave in a way contrary to my understanding of it, yet in my understanding of human beings, it appears like they need to be cultured in a particular way in order that I can even begin to understand their behaviour. I see very little reliability in the behaviour of other animals for example. It's just cultured human beings and some domesticated creatures, who display even a minimal degree of reliability. What I find is that the inanimate realm appears to be fundamentally reliable, while the animate realm appears as fundamentally unreliable. Human beings demonstrate some degree of reliability so we assign "trust" to them. But this is in comparison to the fundamentally unreliable behaviour of other living creatures. If I compare this to the reliability of the inanimate world, it doesn't even come close to the qualifications of "trust" in that sense.
:clap:
Hume calls it 'habit'.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I suppose you are saying that the sun has proved more reliable than me in the past. :sad: Or is there another difference? Every day the sun rises, and the postman delivers. I can imagine a theory or two of physics and psychology/biology that would lead me to have more confidence in the sun than the postman. But as to it not meaning the same thing to say I trust them both, I don't see it.
Because the premise here is that trust is basic to the human condition.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Your leveraging of a distinction here related to habit only highlights the usefulness of a deeper analysis of the concept of trust. You even seem to acknowledge this in the rest of your post. Is it that I was speaking normatively not descriptively the stumbling block? Yes, we do things out of habit. Sometimes that is justified and sometimes not. We should apply reason to know the difference. i.e. that habit is not always borne of conscious reasoning is not a justification for not applying conscious reasoning to it, and when we do, we see habit is largely a matter of trust and largely within our control.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There's no fundamental dichotomy there. Trust occurs both across a spectrum of relationship levels and relates to a spectrum of expectations. What we require for our trust is what determines its character. And looking at these requirements, we can hypothesize and debate the exact nature of many "trusts" and come to no definitive answer. But the point is more to recognize distinctions that help clarify both why we grant trust at different levels or in different contexts and what the justifications for this are.
For example (at a minimum):
Trust of family presumes love.
Trust of friends presumes loyalty.
Trust of acquaintances presumes integrity.
Trust of workmates presumes competence.
Trust of companies presumes production of value.
Trust of the media presumes accuracy.
Trust of the justice system presumes impartiality.
Trust of the military presumes strength.
Trust of a political system presumes equality of opportunity.
Trust of the physical world presumes a fixed nature.
In the final case above, the instantiation of habit (fixed behaviour) occurs as a reflection of and in response to the physical world's fixed nature and that's not something that normally needs to be questioned. But habit can and does appear at every level in different ways. Also, further to the above, we can get our wires crossed and either grant trust on an irrational presumption or withhold it on an irrational expectation. And so we move from the descriptive to the normative. Why should we trust X? And the (easier): Why should we not trust X?
I've posited above, for example, that we require at least loyalty from our friends to avoid mistrust. To me, that seems fairly uncontroversial. So, someone who put their trust in a friend who was disloyal would be setting themselves up for a fall. But we're talking necessary not sufficient conditions here, so for justified trust, we may need more depending on the context, e.g. reliability if we're to lend them money etc.
It would be easy to get bogged down in this, but I want to bring up the issue of political leaders, which are not on the list but are where I think we make some of the biggest mistakes in terms of trust. The question would be: What is a minimum requirement for trust in a political leader to be rational?
For a lot of people, the answer seems to be "strength" and I think that's the wrong answer, not only because strength is often confused with stubbornness, arrogance, fecklessness, aggressiveness etc. but because we need our political leaders to work for us and "strength" is the domain of warriors not servants. We need something more inclusive. Any ideas?
I ought to have mentioned that your previous post was very close to what I was trying to express there. :up:
You thought it through much better than I did.
That's because trust/mistrust comes in degrees. If you don't fully trust, then logically, there is a degree of mistrust. Who, or what, do you fully trust?
(Anderson, 2011, in http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.197.6937&rep=rep1&type=pdf)
Reason....use it or lose it.
You use "trust" here to mean you accept its veracity, except with your last example where you use it to mean you expect certain results. You have therefore equivocated.
To say "I trust the physical world to offer me stabilty" is different from saying "I trust my friend." The former usage allows for such comments as "I trust China will lie, that Ted Bundy will slaughter, and that covid will hospitalize." The latter is a generalized statement of veracity, where "I trust China" would be a questionable statement, but "I trust China to lie" would be accurate.
Nitpicked your examples maybe, but I do think the distiction is one to point out because there is a pragmatic argument that could be made that distrust of a person's veracity is not a bad thing as long as that dishonesty is predictable enough to allow others to successfully navigate it. That is, as long as I know there's dogshit on the sidewalk, I can avoid stepping in it.
I see a big difference. I see inanimate things as fundamentally reliable, and living things as fundamentally unreliable. If the temperature goes down the water will freeze. But just when you get to know the postman he might quit the job and be replaced by someone else. The reliability of human beings is attributable to the social structures, and these have very little temporal extension. The water has been freezing, and the sun has been rising for billions of years. The postman has only been coming for a few hundred, and that phase will likely be done soon.
Quoting Baden
I don't see that in my habits, I see the exact opposite. The habits seem to be largely outside my control. I can control the habit if I put conscious effort into it, but as soon as I'm not putting that conscious effort into it, i.e. forget to, the habit takes over for that moment. That it is within my control is an illusion, because it seems to be within my control, while I am actively controlling it, but the habit will find a way to take control back when I let down my guard for some reason. The ability to control a habit cannot be taken for granted. Depending on the type of habit some are easier to control than others.
Quoting Baden
I wouldn't call it a dichotomy, just fundamentally different forms of trust, as I explained to unenlightened. The trust I have of the physical world, is based in the assumption that it's behaviour is, as you say "fixed". The trust I have for a living being is based in the assumption that it's behaviour is not fixed. So for example, if something about the physical world appeared a little bit unfixed, or unpredictable, like the weather, I'd say that I don't trust the weather. But the weather is actually a whole lot more predictable and fixed, than the actions of the most trustworthy human being. So it is through a completely different set of criteria that we judge the trustworthiness of aspects of the physical world, from the ones that we use to judge the trustworthiness of living beings. That is why I say that "trust" has a different meaning in each of these cases.
Quoting Baden
I think you misuse "habit" here. A habit is what a living being has, and it is not appropriate to speak of the physical world as having habits. Doing this will likely confused the two distinct types of "trust" referred to above. We cannot say that our trust in the reliability of the physical world is due to the "habits" of that world, because this would imply that the physical world might use conscious effort to change its habits, just like human beings, and that doesn't really make any sense. So we need to distinguish trusting a living creature because we know its habits (recognizing that this is fundamentally unreliable), from trusting the physical world due to it's fixedness (recognizing this as fundamentally reliable). We ought not use the same word "habit" here.
However, the supposed "fixed nature" of the physical world is still something which needs to be questioned. This is because there are many aspects of the physical world which do not appear to be completely fixed, like the example of the weather for instance. Furthermore there is the question of how living things come into existence, which seem to have a fundamental unreliability about them, and only seem to become reliable through the existence of habits. So it looks like there may not be a clear boundary between which aspects of the world need to be judged as trustworthy by the one set of criteria, and which aspects ought to be judged by the other criteria for trust.
Quoting Baden
Here, I think we can draw an analogy between trusting the physical world, and trusting human beings. There are many different aspects of the physical world, and some are much more trustworthy than others. The sun coming up tomorrow is very trustworthy, but the weather isn't so trustworthy. We could say the same of human beings, a human being is trustworthy in some aspects, but not in others. The problem with human beings though, is that the aspect which is trustworthy in one is not in another, and there's a whole lot of different characteristics which we might judge for trustworthiness. So I might trust one person for one thing, another for another thing, and so on, depending on each person's character, but finding no one who is completely, and overall trustworthy in an absolute way. Therefore it doesn't make sense to talk about trust for a person in an absolute sense, we need to qualify it, saying I trust the person in this or that particular way.
"Strength" doesn't seem to be a very good qualification. I trust the person's strength? What would that give me in terms of reliability? Maybe it'd good for protection, but for some reason strong doesn't seem to be a good indicator of reliable behaviour.
Yes. The way I would put it is that things are indifferent, whereas people at least, maybe animals, can be benevolent or malevolent. But if you are saying you trust things more than people, then you yourself are using the same term and making a comparison in the same terms. As you say the weather is also unreliable, but we don't tend to personify it as folks used to, though we still talk about angry skies or cruel sea.
We're in danger of getting lost in semantics here. But to clear up a few misunderstandings:
1) My analysis involved a mini-taxonomy of trusts. I recognize the differences in type you both pointed out. There's no equivocation seeing as I was pointing to differences not trying to obscure them.
2) My point about fixed-nature is that it's predictably fixed in terms of physical laws not outcomes. And our expectations tend to be fixed in terms of the former not the latter, which matters when it comes to complexity. We expect stuff to fall when we drop it, but we can't be sure about the weather.
3) I never claimed the physical world had "habits". I used the term "fixed-nature" as above to refer to physical laws. But we do have habits in our behaviours and attitudes towards both physical and non-physical things that are analagous.
:point:
Quoting unenlightened
Quoting unenlightened
It's the same word, but used in a different way, therefore having different meaning. I'm not saying that I trust things more than I trust people, I'm saying that these two instances give "trust" a completely different meaning. If you pretend that the meaning is the same, it's equivocation, as Hanover mentioned. This creates a problem in the sense that the reader needs to be able to determine which way the word is used every time it is used, in order to understand what the author is saying, but if the author blurs the distinction (creating ambiguity) by crossing back and forth, it's likely the reader will never be able to understand what has been written.
It is not a mistake to make a comparison between the distinct uses of the word, looking for the reasons why there are distinct uses, and trying to establish boundaries so that equivocation can be avoided.in future use. It is an exercise in clarification which is necessary for understanding. That's what Plato demonstrated with his dialectics.
This requires determining what is actually meant in particular instances of use, to identify the exact nature of the difference. So for example, when I say that I do not trust the weather, I'm really saying that my ability to understand what might happen is insufficient to make a judgement. But when I say that I do not trust my neighbour, I'm really saying that my ability to understand is sufficient to make a judgement. Do you see how these two are opposed? One is produced from having insufficient knowledge, the other is produced from having sufficient knowledge. Whether or not to trust a physical thing is directly related to one's degree of knowledge of that thing, the better the knowledge and understanding of the thing, the more the trust of the thing. But in judging whether to trust a human being, there is no such direct relationship, knowing and understanding the person may just as well lead to a judgement of untrustworthy, as it may lead to a judgement of trustworthy. And increasing one's knowledge of the person will not take away that untrustworthiness. Therefore a judgement of "trust" directed at a physical object is substantiated by, as a direct representation of one's own knowledge. But a judgement of "trust" directed at a human being is substantiated by, and meant to be a representation of the actions of that person.
My whole point of doing what I did was to identify different types of trust. So, I'm making distinctions not obscuring them. There is a sense in which the meaning is the same and in which it's different, which I've made clear (and which we can debate further). But it is not like there are two fundamentally different meanings here, like ball (football) and ball (dance). I'll read the rest of your post when I've stopped being irritated at your inability to understand my previous explanation, which should have been enough on this point.
Ok. I don't know if it will rain or be fine so I take a coat.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Ok. I know he's thieving bastard, so I lock the door when I go out. (You can trust Mr Thing to take advantage as soon as your back is turned)
But I would want to say, because I am banging on about necessity here:
I don't trust the weather, so I have to trust my coat.
I don't trust my neighbour, so I have to trust my door lock.
Of course in each case I could maybe just not go out, but then I would have to trust my roof to keep me dry, or my presence to keep me from being burgled.
Each thing I employ to deal with the unreliability might require a further back up, so I think that going down the road of distrust points us toward the skeptic's infinite regress. So, let's turn this thing around, and put an end to the infinite regress by inserting something trustworthy.
In the case of the rain, there are many things I can trust, my coat, my roof, etc., which will assure me that the infinite regress of not knowing is ended, allowing me to sleep in peace, knowing that I can beat the uncertainty of the weather. In the case of the untrustworthy person though, I am dealing with an intelligent being. The intelligent being can change its ways, so I have to be very wary that the person may always try to outsmart me (the door's locked, the window's open), coming up with new forms of behaviour which I am not prepared for, and which are also dishonest. So unlike the weather, dealing with the untrustworthy person is not a case of coming up with something reliable, which would put an end to the infinite regress of unreliability, because it's always possible that the person (being dishonest in the first place) may find a way around it. Therefore it appears like the only way to properly deal with the untrustworthy person is to actually change the person, conversion. Would you agree? And do you think that this is even possible?.
That is a heck of a big question. But I'm happy to move on to it, as we seem to have reached the point where the disagreement is more about terminology than substance.
Let's lay out some simple assumptions.
1. People vary. Some are more trustworthy than others.
2. Thou and I and the other contributors are more trustworthy than untrustworthy. (Especially as we can't get near each other's throats or stashes.)
So you are asking how we might best deal with Mr Thing, the hypothetical untrustworthy person.
It seems to me, that because we are trustworthy, we can only deal with Mr thing in a trustworthy manner. If we are not trustworthy from Mr Thing's POV, then we are not trustworthy. I think that means that we cannot even try to change the person against their will. Cannot, that is, without changing ourselves in the other direction, and becoming untrustworthy.
But people can change, at least.
I think that is sufficiently convoluted to stop there and see how it goes down with some of you trustworthy folks. Can you swallow it?
And here's a big fat dissertation in case the unenlightened diet is a bit rich for you. I've only just started it myself, but it looks relevant.
This all feels like pragmatics. Sure, it's better to be able to trust, just so I can know what to expect. I trust the Klansman to be a racist, and in a perverse way prefer him over the person pretending not to be racist, but who is. I trust my parking brake to fail because the cable is broken, so I park my car against the curb.
What I want though really are people who aren't racist and a car that won't roll down a hill. I want to be able to say I trust people to be good, for cars to be good, for everything to be good. The breakdown in society comes not from the symptom that dishonesty has led to unreliability and unpredictability, but from the fact that people are immoral.
Maybe we're saying the same thing here because I do note that in every one of your examples you reference something that had a positive result flowing from the trust, so you seem to see trust as a good thing when honorable, which is just another way of saying we need more morality in the world. I can drink to that, and I'd add that in addition to there being a need for more of thou shalt not lie, we need more of thou shalt not steal and thou shalt not murder as well. And I'd say we need all of those things even if the world were a worse and less reliable place because of it.
I'm also not convinced that the dishonesty we experience today is a sign of our times. I think it's a sign of our species.
Great subject matter. Wish I had time...
Indeed so. Annoying, but i completely agree with this. So could we say that the Klansman is reliably untrustworthy, whereas the shamefaced racist is unreliably untrustworthy? Well we can argue about the terminology, but the substance is clear enough I think.
For example, one of my friends has a tendency to exaggerate, and sometimes even to fabricate. I can't trust that he is always telling me the truth, but then as long as I keep that in mind, it causes me no hardship. But in a crisis, I would trust him with my life. I trust that he wouldn't harm me, and would come through for me if I needed it.
Trust can also be very specific. Perhaps I need to leave a message for someone with their receptionist. I don't know the receptionist, so I have no idea whether I could trust them as such, but I can get some sense by their phone manner as to their professionalism, and if that impression is a good one then I will feel that I can trust them to pass on the message correctly.
So for me, it's important to qualify trust. I don't tend to ask myself 'Do I trust this person?'. But I might ask myself 'Do I trust this person to tell me the truth?'. Or 'Do I trust this person not to steal my wallet if they find it lying around?'.
Some insightful analysis there. Putting it together, does something like the following schema cover the examples provided?:
Trust
1) Awareness – Habitual/nonhabitual (Part of background assumptions vs. requires more of a conscious decision).
2) Scope – General/Specific (trust in general vs. trust to be/trust to do something specific).
3) Agency – Agent/Non-agent
4) Polarity – Positive/Negative
E.g.
"I trust friends."
Habitual – General – Agent – Positive
(Friends are the type of people I trust)
"I trust my friend."
Nonhabitual – General – Agent – Positive
(My friend has shown himself to be trustworthy)
"I don't trust my friend to be on time."
Nonhabitual – Specific – Agent - Negative
(I may trust my friend, in general, but that doesn't mean I trust him/her to do specific things the way I want.)
Quoting Hanover
[Also analyzable as: "I don't trust the Klansman not to be a racist"]
Habitual – Specific – Agent – Negative.
(It's part of the nature of Klansmen to be racist).
Quoting Hanover
Habitual – Specific – Agent – Positive
Quoting unenlightened
Non-habitual – General – Non-agent – Negative
"I don't trust the weather (in general)."
Habitual – General – Non-agent – Negative
Quoting Baden
Habitual – General – Non-agent – Positive
Etc.
Anything not fit?
Edit: Cross-posted with @fishnchips. Maybe addresses some of that.
Economic confidence is a belief in how the economy will grow in the future and many things can influence that prediction. I imagine it's possible, for instance, for Google to tweak its algorithm to favor search results that contain negative words or phrases in association with economic growth, possibly influencing user's economic forecasts on an unconscious level and ultimately lead to a downturn, potentially causing more destruction, in terms of human suffering, than war or terrorism.
I have trust issues.
This might be specific and not general. All other examples of specific cases had prepositional phrases except this one. Unless you assert "to be good" is a redundancy subsumed by the word "trust," it's a specific case. That is if "I trust people" is the same as saying "I trust people to be good, " only then is this the general case.
I say not because "I trust people to be bad" proves goodness is not inherent in trust, meaning the prepositional phrase is not superfluous.
In fact, I'd go as far to say that there is an equivocation error throughout because the word "trust" changes meaning when the prepositional phrase is added. I trust you to be here at 9 am means I expect you'll be here at 9 am. It has nothing to do with an assessment of your veracity, but just my expectation. But, if I say "I trust you," that's an assertion of my belief in your honesty..
Consider substituting "expect" for "trust" in those examples with the prepositional phrase. That cannot be done in those without because it has a different meaning. E.g. "I expect you to be nice" versus the meaningless "I expect you."
OK, I'd agree that we really can't try to change someone against their will. Usually we'll determine how they've broken the law, and lock them up or some other punishment, hoping that they might learn a lesson and change their ways. So people can change, and we actually might get a person to change one's own will. Then the changing of the person from being untrustworthy to being trustworthy would not be against their will, they would want to be trustworthy. I don't think punishment is the right way to go about this, because it's not a matter of breaking the person's will, it's a matter of changing the person's will. I think we need to ask what makes people into nice, trustworthy people.
But that's going off track of the point I was getting at. What I was saying is that when we're dealing with untrustworthy inanimate things like the weather, we can always provide safe guards to protect us from the parts we don't trust. But when we're dealing with untrustworthy human beings, they're always going to find ways around the safeguards, so our only recourse is to make sure that we're not dealing with those dishonest people, to begin with. These are two distinct approaches for dealing with things which we cannot trust. Which category does a company like Google fall into? Is it like an inanimate thing, and if we establish the proper protection we'd be protected from any untrustworthiness within it, or is it like a human person, such that the only way to really protect ourselves is to excluded all untrustworthiness from within it?
Yup. Edited.
Quoting Hanover
Firstly, trust in general is not limited to an assessment of veracity. I trust the military not primarily because they tell me the truth but because they can protect me. The word changes sense with context. Secondly, the "trust you to do/be" is an implied extension, even when not specified. If trust is about veracity then it is not just "I trust you" but also 'I trust you (to be truthful with me)" and "I expect you to be truthful with me". In trust there is an implied expectation. I trust my wife means I expect her to be faithful and honest etc. But I guess when we use the word "trust" we imply some further emotional investment, some deeper significance than mere expectation. Still, it's there. So, there's no equivocation, just shades of meaning.
Edit: I'm impressed you almost know what a prepositional phrase is except it's not but an object complement made up of a non-finite clause in which is embedded a prepositional phrase.
Companies are even more predictable than the weather as long as you know what feeds the bottom line. You can trust Google as long as its profits align with your interests. Period. The trick is figuring out if, how, and when they do.
Thank me for giving you an opportunity to use your otherwise useless knowledge.
Thanks :up: Not wasting my 10,000th post on you though, so don't expect an encore. :fire:
This kind of talk makes me so wet. Said nobody ever.
That's a funnier comment so I added it.
Then you're saying a company is an inanimate thing. Knowing it makes it trustworthy. The weather is predictable if you know "the bottom line". The problem with human influence is that what feeds "the bottom line" might change, but with the weather it always stays the same. The question then is how much of this is publicly disclosed, or to what extent can the company hide the exact nature of what it feeds on. A company must be endowed with some capacity for privacy to provide competitive equity.
There's a sense in which a company can be seen to have agency. Loosely, we speak of companies making decisions and so on. But they're better viewed as systems of opportunities and constraints closer to weather events than human agents in my view. Market forces are transparent enough for that to be the case.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, companies can maintain privacy on certain issues and can mislead and manipulate us, but the 'rules of the game' are largely transparent and the playing field in full view. We can make intelligents presumptions on risk/return of deceitful behavior etc. So, yes, they might fuck around a bit with our data but they won't deliberately give us the wrong result when we search for a cake recipe. In other words, the contours of the trust landscape are well-defined.
This bring us around to the human influence. It's human beings who interpret the rules, know their extent, and plan strategies. The untrustworthy person looks for loopholes, and new activities, places to take advantage of others, where the rules don't yet extend.
Quoting Baden
I don't agree with this. It's been very obvious with advancement in technology that the rules tend to follow well behind the advancements. And so, people are taken advantage of, and then rules are created to prevent this from happening again. The "contours of the trust landscape" can only be mapped after they are navigated, and we have to look at what type of people might navigate this landscape. The untrustworthy see a lot to gain from navigating this landscape, and they are the ones who are inspired to navigate it.
Not sure where the point of disagreement is. I don't trust Google with my data, but I trust them to provide me with my cake recipe. Am I wrong on this? Or is there another specific sense in which the contours of the landscape are ill-defined. Give me an example.
Isn't data what they deal with, so ultimately you don't trust them, right? Your trust is misplaced. What you said is like saying I trust the thief to supply me with goods, but I don't trust that it won't be stolen goods. You really cannot trust that supply of goods, if it's wrongfully sourced, it's dishonest and not trustworthy, even though it might be reliable in that aspect.
When we trust that one who denounces white supremacy is against it, we are trusting the truthfulness of their testimony. That is... we are assuming sincerity in their speech; that they are being reliable 'truth'-tellers; that they believe (that)what they are saying(is true).
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Along with some of the other considerations heretofore, trust is more completely and better understood in terms of voluntary and involuntary types of trust and/or situations when trust is operative/influential to the agent's subsequent thought and behaviour.
When we approach the cupboard to grab a cup, we trust that there will(or at least could) be one in there. There is no choice in this matter. We either believe that there is one, we believe that there is not, or we aren't certain. We do not approach the cupboard to get a cup when we believe that it is empty.
We do not approach a white supremacist looking for or expecting fairness or empathy from them for non whites, for that is akin to looking for a cup in a cupboard that we believe is empty.
When we swerve our vehicle to the left to avoid an accident, we are trusting our senses to be reliable sources of information about all the stuff happening around us. We believe that we just avoided an accident.
When we are first learning how to talk about the world and/or ourselves, we trust the trustfulness of the teachers' testimony. That is especially true when we're looking for confirmation that we're calling something by the right namesake. That unquestioned trust underwrites each and every language users' worldview across the board. Here again, there is no choice in the matter. We quite simply do not get to decide what the names of things are while we're learning what they are called.
This last bit sheds a bit of light upon trust as an inevitable precondition and/or prerequisite for the ability to acquire language, and supports Un's vein of thought concerning how deeply embedded trusting others can be and is for all humans due to our social interdependent nature.
Trust does evolve into different 'kinds' which may be better understood in terms of what we knowingly trust another to do and/or be(after realizing that not everyone and/or everything is trustworthy). We have no choice but to trust, until we're aware of our own fallibility. Then, some may learn to look a bit closer at whether or not something or another is dependable; at what can be counted on; at what can be confidently relied upon for some specific reason/purpose. In addition, we ought also think about further considering what - exactly as possible - ought we allow ourselves to be dependent upon them for...
Not all who are trusted for some things are trusted for all things. One who is always fashionably late may or may not be as dependable as can be expected for being a source of good entertainment...
The inevitable logical consequence of equivocation is self-contradiction on the face of what's said at two different times. Self contradiction is often prima facie evidence of an equivocation fallacy being hard at work.
Shades of meaning are wonderful. They do not require an equivocation of terms.
When we place trust upon another to tell us about the world and/or ourselves, we expect sincerity. That is true for everyone. We expect them to believe what they say.
Some however also expect truth. On my view, that sort of expectation is no different in content than expecting another to form, have, and/or hold nothing but true belief. The problem, of course, is that everyone forms, has, and/or holds false belief at some point in time. So...
Omniscience is not required for honesty, sincerity, "telling the 'truth'", and thus trustworthiness. It is clearly unreasonable to expect otherwise. None of us are omniscient. Not one. Not any. All of us are not.
It follows from this reasonable, and still yet readily attainable, criterion for "truth telling" that...
Truth is not necessary for trustworthiness.
What sense does it make then? Well, sincerity is all it takes. The speaker must only believe what they say as well as believing that they've said all that's relevant to the matter. The takeaway here is that the very idea and/or notion of "telling the truth" conflates truth and belief or demands omniscience. Neither is acceptable. That's shameful - to put it mildly - given the influential power of it's use.
Truth is presupposed in all thought, belief, and statements thereof somewhere along the line. Telling the truth is simply stating all that you believe to be relevant to the matter at hand(whatever it may be).
The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth...
...is an impossible criterion to satisfy at face value if everything said must be true. People could go to jail for saying exactly what they believed to be the case, simply because they expressed false belief. They would be convicted and sentenced for perjury simply for holding false belief, if counsel could convince the juror of perjury for giving false testimony, for not telling the truth.
Thus, to continue to expect any individual to always say true things shows an emaciated understanding of how thought and belief work. No one can do that.
A representative form of government(a republic) is successful if and only if the overwhelming majority is better off as a result of policy and/or legislation passed. When far too few end up with all the power and the many have none, then it's not working properly.
That is the case in the US.
:razz:
Not all members are guilty. Now is the time to separate them and respond appropriately to their demonstrable lack of caring about public health overall.
'My' shops frequented are chock full of people who are taking the actions necessary to best protect everyone around them including, but certainly not limited to, themselves. Smiling eyes escape the confines of the masks. Those people have earned my trust that they are willingly to do something that is otherwise uncomfortable and inconvenient as a means for improving the overall common good of everyone else. It's little price to pay for the safety and well-being of everyone.
:gasp:
Mr. President, Mr. Vice president...
Take fucking notes.
The administrative medical staff recently visited by Mike Pence has legitimate grounds for suit based upon the facts showing him knowingly and voluntarily placing their lives at unnecessary risk at his own whim, and against the advice given by the foremost knowledgable experts on the matter regarding everyone's new behavioural guidelines.
It's fucking despicable. What a fucking dangerous aire of superiority based in sheer ignorance, myth, and otherwise false belief...
Sorry Un...
... jumps off bandwagon and exits stage left.
No apologies required. This is exactly where I want to end up. Lies, propaganda and the manipulation of beliefs are destructive of meaning and destructive of social relations. They kill. People are dying of lies. Be annoyed, Be very annoyed.
Conspiracy theories are the natural outcome of untrustworthy government and untrustworthy media. Nothing is trustworthy, so anything is believable. and a large portion of the blame lies with the moral relativism/nihilism of much modern philosophy.
I don't think so. If people are drawn to relativism and nihilism, it's because they're drawn to explanations that resonate with their life. I'd place the majority of the blame on what social/cultural features make that philosophy resonate in people when they read it. People do not give an iota of a damn about the prevailing mood of academic philosophy, because it's (seen as) all just worthless irrelevant intellectual masturbation; another pile of lies pretending to be a font of truth.
Quoting fdrake
I agree with this, but philosophy percolates through social science that again most people ignore, and from there into think tanks, and so to political rhetoric and media headlines. "There's no such thing as society", "Greed is good." These are what resonate, and what people give a damn about, and philosophy opens the way to them, and gives them a veneer of plausibility.
Seems to me the prevalent mood of philosophy is deflationism and silentism on the big questions rather than nihilism/relativism. "Whereof one cannot speak..." etc. Whereas the prevalent mood among the populace is a mixture of obliviousness, confusion, and cynicism. The attitudes occupy complementary sections of a landscape over which neither has control, and the type of mistrust is distinct from an epistemic point of view. It's access to knowledge that leads the philosopher to self-circumscribe away from big-picture answers, whereas its a perceived alienation from knowledge that leads the layman to a similar (but more disconcerting from their perspective) position.
Ha! I wish.
I can't think of a single occasion where any of the work I've done, nor that of any of my colleagues has been either informed by philosophy, nor had the opportunity to determine headlines and political rhetoric.
The politicians sometimes come asking for an opinion. If they don't like the one you give, they find someone else.
I think there's a time lag. Of about 50 years. Which has to be added to the 50 years for, say, Wittgenstein to become the orthodox philosophy. So expect much sage nodding and silence from politicians in about another 30 years, in the meantime we are living with the politics of logical positivism. :vomit:
This is not philosophy which percolates here, it's a lack of philosophy, a deprivation. But since a deprived philosophy is still apprehended and classified as one's "philosophy", just like a person's immorality is classified as one's "morality", we refer to this deprivation as "philosophy" even though we look down at it in disagreement as a lacking. So we judge an immoral person as having a "morality", though it's recognized as a deprived morality, and It's better called "immorality". Therefore, the deprived philosophy ought to have a better name like "unphilosophy" or something like that.
The evidence is overwhelming. When pieces of legislation result in demonstrable financial harm to tremendous swathes of the population, that does not count as evidence that the government is working. Rather, it counts as relevant adequate and more than sufficient evidence that it's not.
That's not philosophy. That's plain 'ole common sense. That's what makes a democracy what it is, or a republic, or a representative form of government... but only when when it lives up to the name.
Thats a really attractive slogan. What of the protection of minorities? What you have there is the tyranny of the majority, the dictatorship of the proletariat, or rampant populism.
I'll give you another slogan. The form and makeup of a government is less important than its moral stature. A good king would be better than a corrupt and venal populism, which loves to persecute minorities as scapegoats.
I think you start with the belief that all government is corrupt and dishonest and you institute rules that check its power. You water down everyone's power, make every attempt to use power checked by someone else's power, institute fundamental rules that cannot be changed and so on. And then when the government attempts to bring about major social change, you accept that it's extremely difficult due to all those checks on power and the distrust you've acknowledged from the outset.
Yeah that's a bit of a problem, the 51% oppress the other 49, and take measures to ensure that they never surpass the threshold of 50%. It could become slavery.
There is a commonly held belief that the United States government consists of elected officials that make certain promises that they never intend to keep; that it consists of people who say whatever it takes to get elected. These statements are all true on their face, for the government does indeed include precisely such people. However, this vein of thought requires a bit of refinement and/or nuance. It is far too short-sighted as it is. With just a small amount of additional rhetoric, this line of thought could be used to convince one to generally believe that there are no honest politicians in American government. In fact, there are many Americans who would readily agree with such a statement, although that is not true. Nevertheless, the majority of Americans believe otherwise, and they also believe that there is not anything that can be done about it; that that's just the way it is and it is not going to change anytime in the foreseeable future.
Dishonesty has become accepted as a normal thing. It's easy to do when the overwhelming majority has a general distrust in elected officials that often manifests into repeating statements like "They all...(pick your reason for distrust)". The examples of this are far too many to hold any well grounded doubt about it. That is the way it is.
So, here's the problem...
There is an irrevocable and indubitable need for Americans to be able trust elected officials to act only as a means for somehow, and in some way increasing the overall well-being of American lives and/or livelihoods. That is the only criterion needing to be satisfied by a representative republic with strong democratic traditions such as the United States of America purports itself to be. This is the primary responsibility of American government and elected officials. That ought be the highest priority and/or guiding principle influencing the everyday thought, belief, and actions of any and all elected American officials.
What's in the best interest of the overwhelming majority of all Americans ought be the framework in which all governmental actions are considered in terms of. It's not. The results speak for themselves. The overwhelming majority of Americans are not recipients of the effects/affects of government policy which has improved their quality of life... their overall well-being. That's just not the case. It ought be, and would if everyone in the American government followed the aforementioned principles/priorities.
In order for elected officials to successfully do their job, in order for them to actually take action which results in increasing the quality of life for of all it's citizens each and every time it acts, it must act each and every time with exactly these things in mind. When this is done, there are other considerations that arise. Particularly, how to go about actually doing what's in the best interest of the overwhelming majority of Americans, and/or how to best judge when there are conflicting opinions on the matter at hand(whatever it may be).
So, there will be disputes. What grounds each side? What are those suggestions for action based upon? Clearly, the official believes certain actions ought be taken. What are the expectations of the actions? Do they expect that it will benefit the overwhelming majority? Will the results provide a better quality of American life to the overwhelming majority of Americans? These reasons are often sold to the American public as a means for preparation and/or 'manufacturing' consent.
Far too often, the legislation/policies resulted in exactly the opposite. This repetitive failure has resulted in permanent demonstrable financial harm to a very large swathe of the American population. This grounds many people's general distrust in government. The failure to ever correct the direct harm further bolsters it.
In order to increase the quality of life, in order to increase the overall wellbeing of Americans, one must act in ways that do so. When there is a conflict of interest between the many and few, it is always best to err on the side of many, aside from racism, sexism, and what have you(when the majority are sexist, racist, etc). When there is a conflict of interest between the least privileged and the most privileged, any government purporting to be "of the people, for the people, and by the people"(a representative form of government) ought always err on the side of least. This has quite simply not taken place nearly as often as it ought. Distrust ensues.
So...
...when and if enough people hold firmly to the belief that all politicians are untrustworthy, there can be and will be no further discrimination between those who are trustworthy and those who are not. The process is itself muddled with distraction and irrelevance and thus gets neglected. Dishonesty becomes the expectation.
We are there.
Oppression of minorities and spreading racism, sexism, and xenophobia are not in the best interest of the overwhelming majority.
What we have currently is a horribly financially corrupt majority of elected officials.