Here's a heuristic on trust that will make you happy, straight from game theory: use the tit-for-tat method [1]. You assume a person is honest at first, and tr

Here's a heuristic on trust that will make you happy, straight from game theory: use the tit-for-tat method [1]. You assume a person is honest at first, and try to amicably cooperate. Then, if they break the trust, you assume they're simply a snake looking to maximize their personal gain at the expense of others. The method works best when you can learn the lesson at first for cheap. If you cooperate a few times to get stiffed for a massive amount later, you'd be losing. This is really what the acid test story is about - the lawyer is trying to find a cheap way to reliably test the VC for good faith [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat#Game_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat#Game_theory