4 ms·

Was there ever a time people would trust a piece of paper in isolation? Let us look at the example of Solidarność (the first independent trade union that manage

by lrem 5y ago

Was there ever a time people would trust a piece of paper in isolation? Let us look at the example of Solidarność (the first independent trade union that managed to survive in the Warsaw pact; 30% of society being members). Unlike Stasi, Polish equivalent didn't believe in fancy tech. When regime falling was imminent, they simply burned the documents, leaving no hope to glue shreds back together. Except the documents that proved that the leadership of Solidarność, including Lech Wałęsa (Nobel peace prize winner, first post-communist president) were actually moles on regular secret informant payroll. Nobody doubts the veracity of those documents... But the question "do you believe they actually were moles?" is an infallible predictor of who did a person vote for in the last couple decades.

li2uR3ce 5y ago
> Was there ever a time people would trust a piece of paper in isolation? Pretty much all of history. We love it when facts supporting our beliefs are isolated in a single source. We also love it when a source is ambiguous enough to let us draw our own conclusions. The lie of omission has a long track record of being effective. It has the benefit of being useful to the source and/or the receiver. There's redundancy in falsehood selectors. Either the source will lie or we, on the receiving end, will lie. The truth often doesn't stand a chance; somebody is gonna find a way to isolate. Trust is not a behavior that is reliably rational. One could argue that it always has an element of emotional attachment to the familiar.
garaetjjte 5y ago
>Except the documents that proved that the leadership of Solidarność, including Lech Wałęsa (Nobel peace prize winner, first post-communist president) were actually moles on regular secret informant payroll. To be clear, documents show that he was secret informant in years 1970-1976, while he only became leader of Solidarność in 1980.

by lrem 5y ago

li2uR3ce 5y ago

> Was there ever a time people would trust a piece of paper in isolation? Pretty much all of history. We love it when facts supporting our beliefs are isolated in a single source. We also love it when a source is ambiguous enough to let us draw our own conclusions. The lie of omission has a long track record of being effective. It has the benefit of being useful to the source and/or the receiver. There's redundancy in falsehood selectors. Either the source will lie or we, on the receiving end, will lie. The truth often doesn't stand a chance; somebody is gonna find a way to isolate. Trust is not a behavior that is reliably rational. One could argue that it always has an element of emotional attachment to the familiar.

garaetjjte 5y ago

>Except the documents that proved that the leadership of Solidarność, including Lech Wałęsa (Nobel peace prize winner, first post-communist president) were actually moles on regular secret informant payroll. To be clear, documents show that he was secret informant in years 1970-1976, while he only became leader of Solidarność in 1980.