If there is a problem with trust, in human-made technologies there will always be a link in the chain where trust can be violated by a human; the higher up the

If there is a problem with trust, in human-made technologies there will always be a link in the chain where trust can be violated by a human; the higher up the chain the link, the bigger the impact of the violation. On the other hand, if there is no problem with trust (humans are all nice to each other), then trying to enforce trust through the straightjacket of Worldcoin and other blockchain technologies is a complete waste of resources. And it’s more than just waste. There is a well-known labeling effect in psychology, where the way people are treated affects the way they act by making them subconsciously adapt to what is expected of them. (If you are treated as if you were dumb as a student, your actual capability and intelligence may not even matter: unless you happen to be sociopathic enough—no judgement, welcome to the club—it becomes your persona; later, every verification in daily life is a subtle invitation into the mind of those abusing the system and benefitting from it enough to warrant the extra checks.) It always makes me think about the implications of such technologies becoming part of the fabric of society where all humans are treated as inherently untrustworthy. Making it more difficult to violate trust, with appropriately increased payoff, is never the solution—it only raises the incentives. The solution is to work with humans, understand what causes us to want to violate it in the first place, and treat them as inherently trustoworthy by allowing violation at lower levels where the impact is smaller.