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It’s the opposite. Trust nothing, and we end up with pure chaos and the tragedy of the commons. Trust institutions (arguably had been the right choice), and soc

It’s the opposite. Trust nothing, and we end up with pure chaos and the tragedy of the commons. Trust institutions (arguably had been the right choice), and society can move in lockstep forward together.

ARandomerDude 2y ago
> lockstep forward Those words are the problem. Why even have a democratic system if everything is done in “lockstep”? Moreover, “forward” is a highly opinionated term. Perhaps we can all, in lockstep, take a Great Leap Forward. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward
- anigbrowl 2y ago
  Coordination and shared purpose are often good things actually. I'm so tired of people decrying any pursuit of consensus and collective action as tyranny, it's intellectually lazy and just leads to further atomization.
  - ARandomerDude 2y ago
    Voluntary coordination and shared purpose are great things. Otherwise, all the “forward” and “shared purpose” euphemisms do not change the fact that you have a tyrannical system, nor do the “intellectually lazy” ad hominems.
    - ribadeo 2y ago
      Uninformed or misinformed people can make choices against their own interests, such is MAGA. Facts and physical primary reality matter more than ones opinion, but we paint the sun on the sky and order the tides to recede to please the king anyway. An informed populace can make informed decisions. Lying fake news not so much... Aka $50million for condoms in Gaza is a lie. Alternative facts will bite us all when the pedal hits the metal.
    - stevenAthompson 2y ago
      > Voluntary coordination and shared purpose are great things. To an extent. We can never have 100% agreement. For example, we would still have Polio if the anti-science squad hadn't been forced to go along with the plan. At the risk of sounding "elitist", fifty-four percent of Americans now read below the sixth grade level. We should not let their inability to function in the modern world keep our entire society functioning at or below the sixth grade level.
- OfficeChad 2y ago
  [dead]
Galatians4_16 2y ago
You can move in lockstep with the mob if you like. I will scout ahead, and tell anyone openminded enough to listen, if there's a minefield or cliff coming up.
- bilbo0s 2y ago
  But the commenter is right about the first part of zero trust. Put another way, you aren't scouting ahead if no one is following you. You're homesteading. Which is a fine thing to do, but it won't get any significant bridges built. You, alone, won't be able to span the Mississippi with resources you find on your homestead. I think we have entered a post trust era. All that said, democracy is a team sport, so zero trust seems to be the population level consensus. So it's what should happen. Maybe it ends well? More likely it ends poorly. But either way, others will be able to learn from it and other human societies will benefit from the knowledge.
  - Galatians4_16 2y ago
    The purpose of scouting is not to be followed, but to find obstacles and hazards, that may need to be circumnavigated, or overcome. In the course of their duties, a scout may need to travel across rougher terrain than the main group, as scouting often involves seeking higher ground to surveil the planned path from a different angle. The scout will have to retrace their steps many times to find paths suitable for the entire group, with or without equipment, or for the weakest members. The group may need to split up to outflank a threat, or to accomodate the mission parameters. It is the scout's duty to identify hazards and report them back to the group.
    - bilbo0s 2y ago
      The fundamental assumption with scouting, however, is that there is a “group”. In a post trust society, there is no “group”. There is zero trust. There exists no one who trusts the scout, nor anyone who trusts his/her report. To have a “group”, you need some trust somewhere. “How to function, and what happens when there is no trust anywhere?”, is the question most of us are pondering.
ars 2y ago
And when your lockstep forward = my lockstep backwards? Lockstep is never a good thing. And institutions are absolutely not trustworthy.
godelski 2y ago
> It's the opposite. Trust nothing, and we end up with pure chaos and the tragedy of the commons. I think it is worse. We only need to look at popular authoritarian countries. Talk to the peoples that grew up there. Where they fear their neighbors. And that is the point, that is part of the control, you don't know who will "turn you in" for speaking up, so you don't. So you live in fear, you stay quiet for so long that the thoughts become even quiet to yourself. Trust is a necessary part of a society. Trust, but verify. But you still need trust. Without trust, the burdens are far too great. The world is too complex for one man to know everything. We have so much information and there is so much to know, one man is unlikely to even truly know one thing. Look at those with PhDs for an example. How narrow the research is. How narrow their expertise is. Do one yourself and you'll see that there are deep rabbitholes even in what appears to be a very simple topic.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  > Talk to the peoples that grew up there. Where they fear their neighbors Well I can talk to my parents who grew up in the Jim Crow south where they weren’t trusted to drink from the same water fountain go to the same school or get in the same pool. Or today you can look at any neighborhood’s NextDoor forum when they see a black person “suspiciously” walking in the neighborhood and entering a home with their key. https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/ving-rhames-officers-pulled-guns-home/story?id=56890288 https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/ving-rhames-officers-pulled-gu... Not to mention we just elected a President who ran on Haitians are eating pets and fear mongering of “other”.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    > Not to mention we just elected a President who ran on Haitians are eating pets and fear mongering of “other”. Prompted by unverified claims going viral on TikTok. Ceding mindshare to organizations whose only allegiance is to profit (and therefore eyeball time) is a loss, even compared to a world of less-than-perfect professional journalism. Journalism as a well-funded, independent, competitive market for news is the cornerstone of any democracy. Because without it, a populace can't be educated enough to vote in even their own best interests. (Exhibit A: Trump being elected on a manufactured illegal border crossing crisis)
peterbecich 2y ago
Agreed. For instance, 99% of people including myself cannot prove to themselves that vaccines are safe. The full explanation of vaccine safety down to the lowest level would be beyond my understanding. Trust in the authority figure is required.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  The "anti-vaxxer" movement thing is muddying the water alot concerning vaccines. I feel like valid concerns are downplayed nowadays which in it self will feed the sentiment. I really hope it doesn't leak the US more than it allready has. I prefer lifestyle subcultures centred around music taste.
  - taurknaut 2y ago
    > I prefer lifestyle subcultures centred around music taste. Class is going to dominate culture until the politics improves. I don’t really see any way around this.
  - Aunche 2y ago
    There are indeed valid concerns about vaccinations, but I'm not convinced that vast majority of anti-vaxxers made any effort to represent that stance with an good faith. Hell, they politicized wearing a mask during a pandemic, which ordinarily would be considered the most harmless and least controversial thing to do during a pandemic.
    - rightbyte 2y ago
      Ye I think a big problem might be that those who raises concerns about a specific vaccin might be tauted as "anti-vaxxers". Like, how crack pots and tin foil hats have been used to discredit proper regime critics. "Well, yes, Alex Jones also says PFASs are bad. Cooking in ... no I don't watch his show ... what? No, I have no prescriptions" etc. (I don't know if he said Telfon pots were bad before it was generally known to be true but lets pretend he did). The mask thing was a great messup. Going from "it does nothing" to "you must wear them" is not very pedagogical.
surgical_fire 2y ago
Trust has to be earned and kept. You can't force trust. More important than mistrusting institutions is how you mistrust them. Understand their incentives, their patterns of behavior, their past actions, and hold them up against the theoretical ideals they set for themselves. Far too often I see people mistrusting institutions on lazy, poorly thought out grounds - "government bad, regulations bad, taxes bad, press bad" etc and so forth.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ethbr1 2y ago
  > and hold them up against the theoretical ideals they set for themselves. The perfect being the enemy of the good (and the path to inaction) is the curse of youth. Imperfect institutions can absolutely be better than alternatives. (Often: no thing) It's a hard lesson to learn, but a corollary to it being harder to build something than to tear it down. Yet some things need destroying or reshaping. The best square to the circle I've figured out is 'Don't break things you aren't willing to put ideas, time, and effort into rebuilding.'
jhanschoo 2y ago
> One of the big problems of the past was the insane level of trust in institutions that were at best credulous and more realistically just lying continuously and brazenly. > It’s the opposite. Trust nothing, and we end up with pure chaos and the tragedy of the commons. The parent comment you are responding to is appropriately qualified, and you are throwing away that qualification. Trusting institutions that taking advantage of you to look out for your interests is worse than not trusting institutions at all (example: the institution of slavery, justified by racist pseudoscience, when you are not a protected class). Yes, the existence of institutions that can be trusted to look out for your interests (example: food safety regulators wrt. hygiene) is important, if that is what you are trying to say.
- RealityVoid 2y ago
  I would argue the paragraph you point out is appropriately qualified, but the comment itself is NOT appropriately qualified. The reason is OP feels hopeful about this lack of trust. And OP did not say what institutions he deems untrustwordy. Is it the "institution" of slavery? (I am always confused by calling this a instituion, it's not like it's an organization and a front desk) or CDC and FEMA? I agree, you should trust untrustwordy entities and trust trustwordy ones. It feels like a truism, but a lot of people revert to the behavior that misplaced trust is too costly and let's not trust at all because of this. Lack of trust comes with a hefty price itself. I personally feel that this leads to the unraveling of society.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    > And OP did not say what institutions he deems untrustwordy. In context I think it is fairly clear what OP meant - big tech and the traditional media sources like newspapers, corporate news and radio. Although if you hear "untrustworthy institutions" and the groups that sprig to mind are the CDC and FEMA, maybe someone should work on making them more trustworthy too.
    - RealityVoid 2y ago
      If you hear someone say they can't see the curvature of the earth and and think flat earth someone should make the earth rounder. You get what I'm hinting at, someone having some sort of belief does not ground that belief in reality.

ARandomerDude 2y ago

> lockstep forward Those words are the problem. Why even have a democratic system if everything is done in “lockstep”? Moreover, “forward” is a highly opinionated term. Perhaps we can all, in lockstep, take a Great Leap Forward. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward

anigbrowl 2y ago
Coordination and shared purpose are often good things actually. I'm so tired of people decrying any pursuit of consensus and collective action as tyranny, it's intellectually lazy and just leads to further atomization.
- ARandomerDude 2y ago
  Voluntary coordination and shared purpose are great things. Otherwise, all the “forward” and “shared purpose” euphemisms do not change the fact that you have a tyrannical system, nor do the “intellectually lazy” ad hominems.
  - ribadeo 2y ago
    Uninformed or misinformed people can make choices against their own interests, such is MAGA. Facts and physical primary reality matter more than ones opinion, but we paint the sun on the sky and order the tides to recede to please the king anyway. An informed populace can make informed decisions. Lying fake news not so much... Aka $50million for condoms in Gaza is a lie. Alternative facts will bite us all when the pedal hits the metal.
  - stevenAthompson 2y ago
    > Voluntary coordination and shared purpose are great things. To an extent. We can never have 100% agreement. For example, we would still have Polio if the anti-science squad hadn't been forced to go along with the plan. At the risk of sounding "elitist", fifty-four percent of Americans now read below the sixth grade level. We should not let their inability to function in the modern world keep our entire society functioning at or below the sixth grade level.
OfficeChad 2y ago
[dead]

Galatians4_16 2y ago

You can move in lockstep with the mob if you like. I will scout ahead, and tell anyone openminded enough to listen, if there's a minefield or cliff coming up.

bilbo0s 2y ago
But the commenter is right about the first part of zero trust. Put another way, you aren't scouting ahead if no one is following you. You're homesteading. Which is a fine thing to do, but it won't get any significant bridges built. You, alone, won't be able to span the Mississippi with resources you find on your homestead. I think we have entered a post trust era. All that said, democracy is a team sport, so zero trust seems to be the population level consensus. So it's what should happen. Maybe it ends well? More likely it ends poorly. But either way, others will be able to learn from it and other human societies will benefit from the knowledge.
- Galatians4_16 2y ago
  The purpose of scouting is not to be followed, but to find obstacles and hazards, that may need to be circumnavigated, or overcome. In the course of their duties, a scout may need to travel across rougher terrain than the main group, as scouting often involves seeking higher ground to surveil the planned path from a different angle. The scout will have to retrace their steps many times to find paths suitable for the entire group, with or without equipment, or for the weakest members. The group may need to split up to outflank a threat, or to accomodate the mission parameters. It is the scout's duty to identify hazards and report them back to the group.
  - bilbo0s 2y ago
    The fundamental assumption with scouting, however, is that there is a “group”. In a post trust society, there is no “group”. There is zero trust. There exists no one who trusts the scout, nor anyone who trusts his/her report. To have a “group”, you need some trust somewhere. “How to function, and what happens when there is no trust anywhere?”, is the question most of us are pondering.

ars 2y ago

And when your lockstep forward = my lockstep backwards? Lockstep is never a good thing. And institutions are absolutely not trustworthy.

godelski 2y ago

> It's the opposite. Trust nothing, and we end up with pure chaos and the tragedy of the commons. I think it is worse. We only need to look at popular authoritarian countries. Talk to the peoples that grew up there. Where they fear their neighbors. And that is the point, that is part of the control, you don't know who will "turn you in" for speaking up, so you don't. So you live in fear, you stay quiet for so long that the thoughts become even quiet to yourself. Trust is a necessary part of a society. Trust, but verify. But you still need trust. Without trust, the burdens are far too great. The world is too complex for one man to know everything. We have so much information and there is so much to know, one man is unlikely to even truly know one thing. Look at those with PhDs for an example. How narrow the research is. How narrow their expertise is. Do one yourself and you'll see that there are deep rabbitholes even in what appears to be a very simple topic.

scarface_74 2y ago
> Talk to the peoples that grew up there. Where they fear their neighbors Well I can talk to my parents who grew up in the Jim Crow south where they weren’t trusted to drink from the same water fountain go to the same school or get in the same pool. Or today you can look at any neighborhood’s NextDoor forum when they see a black person “suspiciously” walking in the neighborhood and entering a home with their key. https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/ving-rhames-officers-pulled-guns-home/story?id=56890288 https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/ving-rhames-officers-pulled-gu... Not to mention we just elected a President who ran on Haitians are eating pets and fear mongering of “other”.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  > Not to mention we just elected a President who ran on Haitians are eating pets and fear mongering of “other”. Prompted by unverified claims going viral on TikTok. Ceding mindshare to organizations whose only allegiance is to profit (and therefore eyeball time) is a loss, even compared to a world of less-than-perfect professional journalism. Journalism as a well-funded, independent, competitive market for news is the cornerstone of any democracy. Because without it, a populace can't be educated enough to vote in even their own best interests. (Exhibit A: Trump being elected on a manufactured illegal border crossing crisis)

peterbecich 2y ago

Agreed. For instance, 99% of people including myself cannot prove to themselves that vaccines are safe. The full explanation of vaccine safety down to the lowest level would be beyond my understanding. Trust in the authority figure is required.

rightbyte 2y ago
The "anti-vaxxer" movement thing is muddying the water alot concerning vaccines. I feel like valid concerns are downplayed nowadays which in it self will feed the sentiment. I really hope it doesn't leak the US more than it allready has. I prefer lifestyle subcultures centred around music taste.
- taurknaut 2y ago
  > I prefer lifestyle subcultures centred around music taste. Class is going to dominate culture until the politics improves. I don’t really see any way around this.
- Aunche 2y ago
  There are indeed valid concerns about vaccinations, but I'm not convinced that vast majority of anti-vaxxers made any effort to represent that stance with an good faith. Hell, they politicized wearing a mask during a pandemic, which ordinarily would be considered the most harmless and least controversial thing to do during a pandemic.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    Ye I think a big problem might be that those who raises concerns about a specific vaccin might be tauted as "anti-vaxxers". Like, how crack pots and tin foil hats have been used to discredit proper regime critics. "Well, yes, Alex Jones also says PFASs are bad. Cooking in ... no I don't watch his show ... what? No, I have no prescriptions" etc. (I don't know if he said Telfon pots were bad before it was generally known to be true but lets pretend he did). The mask thing was a great messup. Going from "it does nothing" to "you must wear them" is not very pedagogical.

surgical_fire 2y ago

Trust has to be earned and kept. You can't force trust. More important than mistrusting institutions is how you mistrust them. Understand their incentives, their patterns of behavior, their past actions, and hold them up against the theoretical ideals they set for themselves. Far too often I see people mistrusting institutions on lazy, poorly thought out grounds - "government bad, regulations bad, taxes bad, press bad" etc and so forth.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ethbr1 2y ago
> and hold them up against the theoretical ideals they set for themselves. The perfect being the enemy of the good (and the path to inaction) is the curse of youth. Imperfect institutions can absolutely be better than alternatives. (Often: no thing) It's a hard lesson to learn, but a corollary to it being harder to build something than to tear it down. Yet some things need destroying or reshaping. The best square to the circle I've figured out is 'Don't break things you aren't willing to put ideas, time, and effort into rebuilding.'

jhanschoo 2y ago

> One of the big problems of the past was the insane level of trust in institutions that were at best credulous and more realistically just lying continuously and brazenly. > It’s the opposite. Trust nothing, and we end up with pure chaos and the tragedy of the commons. The parent comment you are responding to is appropriately qualified, and you are throwing away that qualification. Trusting institutions that taking advantage of you to look out for your interests is worse than not trusting institutions at all (example: the institution of slavery, justified by racist pseudoscience, when you are not a protected class). Yes, the existence of institutions that can be trusted to look out for your interests (example: food safety regulators wrt. hygiene) is important, if that is what you are trying to say.

RealityVoid 2y ago
I would argue the paragraph you point out is appropriately qualified, but the comment itself is NOT appropriately qualified. The reason is OP feels hopeful about this lack of trust. And OP did not say what institutions he deems untrustwordy. Is it the "institution" of slavery? (I am always confused by calling this a instituion, it's not like it's an organization and a front desk) or CDC and FEMA? I agree, you should trust untrustwordy entities and trust trustwordy ones. It feels like a truism, but a lot of people revert to the behavior that misplaced trust is too costly and let's not trust at all because of this. Lack of trust comes with a hefty price itself. I personally feel that this leads to the unraveling of society.
- roenxi 2y ago
  > And OP did not say what institutions he deems untrustwordy. In context I think it is fairly clear what OP meant - big tech and the traditional media sources like newspapers, corporate news and radio. Although if you hear "untrustworthy institutions" and the groups that sprig to mind are the CDC and FEMA, maybe someone should work on making them more trustworthy too.
  - RealityVoid 2y ago
    If you hear someone say they can't see the curvature of the earth and and think flat earth someone should make the earth rounder. You get what I'm hinting at, someone having some sort of belief does not ground that belief in reality.