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People blame AI but in reality it's more about America transitioning from a high-trust society to a low-trust one.
by CSMastermind 5mo ago
People blame AI but in reality it's more about America transitioning from a high-trust society to a low-trust one.
- throwaway198846 5mo agoWhen was the USA a high trust society?
- losteric 5mo agoRight after WW2, trust was way higher. There was a belief in common good and progress and all that.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- shimman 5mo agoSomething tells me this trust evaporated once the Vietnam War was in full swing and the USA started murdering labor activists in South America.
- platevoltage 5mo agoBack during the Red Scare obviously \s
- dmd 5mo agoIn the General Social Survey, the share of adults saying “most people can be trusted” fell from 46% in 1972 to 34% in 2018, and Pew found the same 34% in a 2023 to 2024 poll. - https://www.pewresearch.org/2025/05/08/americans-trust-in-one-another/ https://www.pewresearch.org/2025/05/08/americans-trust-in-on...
- ComplexSystems 5mo agoYou know, back when it was a noble democracy where all men were free, or something.
- rayiner 5mo agoBeing a high trust society isn’t the same thing as being a fully egalitarian society. Getting to “high trust for the majority” is the 0 to 1 of civilizational development. Most societies never get there—they’re low trust for everyone.
- heggerd 5mo ago[flagged]
- ok_dad 5mo agoTell that to Hawaii. Your whole argument is destroyed by Hawaii’s culture. America (the continent) is broken socially because American whites cannot get along with others and they’ve gone mask off, destroying the cohesion we once had when they were trying to seem less hateful.
- runsWphotons 5mo agoHawaii is rife with ethnic tensions, not some exception.
- ok_dad 5mo agoNah everyone gets along except the haoles
- fhn 5mo agoyou're just racist
- anonymars 5mo agoIt might not be quite that simple. See for example: https://www.jstor.org/stable/48588978 https://www.jstor.org/stable/48588978
- bloqs 5mo agoIt later resolves, but by definition of the human condition, it does initially I'm afraid. It's less about colour and more about values and creed
- array_key_first 5mo agoIt is most definitely disputable that it destroy social cohesion. The US was cohesive after WWII, by that point we already had a LOT of non-white people. Also black Americans have been here since the start.
- burnt-resistor 5mo agoUp until the Powell memo.
- paulpauper 5mo agoObviously subjective, but I would argue it was higher before stores began putting the items behind glass/locks.
- hattmall 5mo agoSort of, but there's a difference, the rise in anti-shoplifting stuff is in contrast to a decline in things like burglar bars. Stealing from residential property is seen as mostly the domain of drug addicts. Stealing from a multi-national corporation doesn't have the same stigma.
- wallst07 5mo agoHigh property rights, low crime rates are [among others] is textbook definition of high trust societies. It doesn't matter whom it's from.
- nradov 5mo agoIt's not a matter of stigma, it's a matter of lax enforcement. The majority of shoplifting is done by organized criminal gangs. They'll do it if they can escape without serious punishment, regardless of any stigma. https://www.inc.com/bruce-crumley/shoplifting-gangs-have-plagued-retailers-for-years-law-enforcement-just-struck-back/91198869 https://www.inc.com/bruce-crumley/shoplifting-gangs-have-pla...
- rayiner 5mo agoParts of America still are high trust: https://qctimes.com/entertainment/dining/article_5371e735-5344-5e1a-b692-55a580d7dd1e.html https://qctimes.com/entertainment/dining/article_5371e735-53... When Lee Kuan Yew visited London for the first time after World War II, he was impressed by the fact that it had unattended newspaper stands where people were trusted to take a newspaper and leave money: https://youtu.be/b_6H26fpZp8 https://youtu.be/b_6H26fpZp8. As someone from a low trust society, I fully concur with his assessment that this was the mark of a truly “civilized society.”
- hattmall 5mo agoThese sort of unmanned roadside stands are all over the southern US.
- rayiner 5mo agoIn major cities? LKY was talking about an unmanned newspaper stand and cash box in Trafalgar Square. Would that work in Times Square today?
- drstewart 5mo agoWould it work in Trafalgar Square today?
- graemep 5mo agoProbably. There certainly used to be places in London with similar systems not long ago. That said, the UK is becoming lower trust.
- nerdsniper 5mo agoWe do have "little libraries" where anyone can take or leave books in many people's yards. But I haven't seen the honor system produce stands in urban areas for the past 10+ years.
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- uejfiweun 5mo agoI don't think we were ever a "high trust" society in the way that like Denmark is or something. But I'd find it hard to argue with the assertion that rather, the US has become increasingly more of a low trust society recently, more than we already were.
- Longlius 5mo agoGiven your username, you're not going to like the answer to that question.
- throwaway198846 5mo agoWhat do you think my username mean? Some kind of a dog whistle? In reality it is me misremembering 196884 from monstrous moonshine.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- paulpauper 5mo agocheating in school has always existed though-- the article mentions that. AI has made it easier.
- elgertam 5mo ago> it's more about America transitioning from a high-trust society to a low-trust one. We're talking about Princeton, here. Trust among elites remains persistently high. In fact, it's likely higher than ever due to assortative mating & geographic sorting. Elites, even students in the Ivies, still have trust of government and elite institutions, which the elite stratum itself runs. Trust between elites and lower strata has declined, where elites and middle- and lower-classes have significant mistrust between each other, and the latter have lower trust within their own strata than in the past. What's more likely IMO is that 1) the cost of cheating (i.e. the cost of assembling a ripped off assignment multiplied by the risk of being caught) has declined precipitously due to LLMs and 2) elite institutions remain the most ruthlessly competitive in the country and even the world.
- badlibrarian 5mo agoThe morgue manager at Harvard Medical School spent five years selling donated body parts online. The Cornell president just backed his Cadillac into a student asking him a question in a parking lot. This isn't high-trust culture. It's people who stopped believing anyone was watching.
- marticode 5mo ago> It's people who stopped believing anyone was watching. Which, in the era of social media, video surveillance, smartphones and dashcams, is crazy. Once you leave your home, you have to assume everything you do is recorded and might end up online or in court.
- cucumber3732842 5mo agoThese people don't operated under that assumption because they run the systems. They don't care if it's recorded because the system will never make a big deal out of it. Ain't no different than a cop driving drunk because his coworkers won't prosecute him.
- rationalist 5mo agoAnd with IoT, assume everything in your house is also being recorded.
- bdlowery 5mo ago[flagged]
- bluegatty 5mo agoMaybe a bit that - but it's far more the change of elite 'class' institutions - to elite 'competitive' institutions. 'Grades Did Not Matter' 100 years ago so much. It was where 'the only educated people sent their kids to be educated'. Or maybe the nouveau riche bourgois did. Now it's a 'Giant International Competition'. You can see this where students are competitive with grades elsewhere in the world. They're competing for jobs at OpenAI among a million others. I'm shamed to admit I can't remember the quote from someone who lamented the fact that traditionally people 'knew their place' and there was on some level a quietude in that, a zen - but when 'anyone can be anything' it creates hyper competition, anxiety, sense of failure for most people who can never live up to being the 'most exceptional at whatever', and the constant stress of 'keeping up with the Jones's'. See: Instagram - it's not pictures of family and friends - it's almost entirely 'social competition through lifestyle narration' ... which that includes University's as 'brand'. Hence the competition.
- marsten 5mo agoThis is exactly right. Gone are the days when you could get a C+ average at Harvard and still land a good job or a spot in a prestigious law program – purely by virtue of having gone to Harvard. Everyone is in competition now. Everyone has to prove their worth, all the time. It's more egalitarian but it also creates a lot of stress.
- bluefirebrand 5mo agoI'm skeptical that it is really more egalitarian in practice, anyways. There is still a lot of bias and in -group preferences present in hiring. Not to mention that most places will weight candidates who are recommended by employees higher than unconnected external applicants. That might be a reasonable filter but it unquestionably is not egalitarian
- bluegatty 5mo agoIt's vastly more egalitarian than it was before- - that said, it's still a bit closed, but the manner in which it is closed is more related to 'hyper competition' than anything. Admissions for elite schools is just crazy - they can't go purely by 'scores', they have gender/national/racial issues which are actual quite real, even if it becomes unfair - there is just no way to do it in the ultra egalitarian way in which some would want. It's a very scarce resource and that's it. If it were a 'common' thing - like local state college, then it takes a different form. But the acute nature of the situation really brings out some ugly dynamics.
- scoofy 5mo agoI mean, I find myself saying this all the time. It explains so, so much about American culture. We're transitioning from an honor culture to a "don't be a sucker" culture. The example I always point to is golf. I'm a huge golf nerd, and if there's one thing I hate it's professional golf. They sit there and pretend it's a "gentleman's game" and then let people like Patrick Reed openly and obviously cheat... repeatedly. They even got rid of the ability for fans to call in rules violations. Why? Because it's no fun, boo. Players used to want to not win when they broke the rules. Gambling in college and pro sports? We went from the Black Sox shame and a Pete Rose being banned, to now players getting slaps on the wrist. Our society does not reward honor, so most people will not be honorable, plain and simple. Yes, there are plenty of us who will care more about integrity, but the vast majority of us won't care.
- throwaway2037 5mo agoFor the record: Las Vegas had sports betting (other than horses) from the mid 1970s. The real issue is the recent mass legalisation of sports betting by many US states and the ability the gamble from your mobile phone. Last: I never heard of Patrick Reed before your post. I Googled him. Check it out: "Reed's collegiate career was cut short following his dismissal from the University of Georgia golf team. Allegations from teammates included cheating in qualifying rounds and stealing merchandise and money from the team locker room..." What a stand up guy!
- throwaway2037 5mo agoDid you get that idea from here? https://www.persuasion.community/p/getting-to-denmark https://www.persuasion.community/p/getting-to-denmark Francis Fukuyama wrote in a recent blog post: "The United States is no longer a high-trust country. We must regain what’s been lost." I object to these "wide brush" social commentaries. Normally, they are written by powerful/famous men and frequently negative. I call it "Packaged Doomerism". The US is so huge that is hard to generalise about its culture. There are at least six distinctive cultural regions. Take California as an example: There is a surprisingly large cultural gap between the north (Bay Area) and south (LA/Orange/San Diego). That is just one state. In the same way that the US is huge, so is Europe -- about 50 countries. I cringe when I see the phrase, "In Europe, ..."
- nixon_why69 5mo agoWas it ever a high trust country? Our founding stories are various rebellions and a lawless west.
- wallst07 5mo agoI'm interested in discussion around "high trust societies" and I look for clues because I want to live in one. Here is just an example of one: Moving from Brooklyn to a small surbuban town: - very few lock their bikes at the local schools, or "town center". Bikes aren't stolen and kids don't worry about it. - "town center" has umbrellas out for public use, people use them and put them back. - People generally don't lock front doors, or don't worry if they aren't. - If there are problems, people call police, they show up quick [non emergency] and they sort out the problem. - People happy to pay taxes and they know where it goes I can go on... these are just examples I've seen.
- rationalist 5mo agoIt sounds like trust is important when people can be held accountable. And it's hard to be held accountable when you're just an anonymous person in a sea of hundreds of thousands or millions.
- DonsDiscountGas 5mo agoThe fact that they didn't have any kind of exam proctor up until now shows that they actually wanted students to cheat and not get caught, and now they've changed their mind for some reason. Minimal role enforcement is not "low trust" Or maybe it is, but it's good.
- make3 5mo agono proctors is insane, seeing as I've experienced a number of people trying to cheat off of me in proctored exams (and I was not a particularly good student)