8 ms·
Americans don't trust each other anymore
- thenerdfiles 13y agoHow does this spill over into our trust of digital currencies like bitcoin, litecoin, and others?
- Glide 13y agoProbably makes it worse. If you tell people the currency doesn't leave a paper trail then they'll worry about people scamming them or screwing them over in some way, shape, or form.
- thenerdfiles 13y agoThat point raises, I believe, the question of what exactly is motivating these digital currencies' adoption, assuming that the strongest economic power has a growing rate of social distrust.
- SkyMarshal 13y agoBecause bitcoin is an algorithmic solution to exactly that problem - trust in a distributed system, casually known as the Byzantine Generals Problem, or Two Generals problem [1]. The innovators and early adopters were motivated by their understanding of the utility in finally achieving a solution to that problem in the context of digital currency (not historically possible for digital currencies till the invention of 1) the Internet and 2) the BitTorrent protocol, so essentially a major breakthrough and first in human history). They provided the critical mass, social proof, and wealth effect that then drove later adoption. [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Generals%27_Problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Generals%27_Problem
- thenerdfiles 13y agoThis!
- hendzen 13y agoJust to nitpick a bit, the Two Generals problem is actually different than the Byzantine Generals Problem. 2GP deals with the (simpler) case of achieving consensus in a distributed system with unreliable communications. That is, messages can be reordered, lost or arbitrarily delayed, but end hosts are assumed to be trustworthy. BGP deals with the aforementioned scenario where nodes can be malicious as well.
- SkyMarshal 13y agoYes, good distinction. I should have linked the Byzantine Fault Tolerance page [1] since it describes that distinction better. Not sure why I went with Two Generals since I looked at both. [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Generals%27_Problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Generals%27_Problem
- pjscott 13y agoNo paper trail? But that's what the Bitcoin mechanism is -- a way of publicly recording all transactions!
- csandreasen 13y agoI've never understood the whole "Bitcoin transactions are anonymous" theory. If anything, the Bitcoin model promotes a sort of hyper-transparency. The anonymity today lies in the fact that no one knows what wallet is linked to what person/business. If it becomes a widely-accepted currency among retailers, it would eventually become trivial to look at any given wallet and see that $x was spent at Amazon on this day, $x was spent on groceries, so-and-so filled up their gas tank at this particular station, etc. You can shuffle coins between wallets to obscure your tracks somewhat, but you're still broadcasting every transaction you make to the world. I think this is horrible for the average person, but would be a great thing to implement for transactions where you would want some form of accountability, like political donations, charities, investments, taxes, etc. If I give my money to some organization, I can use the block chain to see that they're using the money they receive for exactly the purposes I expect them to be using it for.
- huragok 13y agoAnd who could blame them. As an outsider who didn't grow up in the U.S. but has spent the past year living here, people are generally amiable and friendly but will take advantage of you for a mile if you give an inch. Rabid consumerism, shows of status, workaholism and an overwhelming feeling of fuck you got mine seems to pervade the collective psyche because you can't really lean on others (save for a few nonconformists).
- thenerdfiles 13y agoI believe TyphonBlue's Theory of Apexuality[0] could also explain a lot of this: > The third term is ‘Apexual’. This is a portmanteau of ‘Apex’ and ‘sexual’ and refers to a male-bodied individual who derives its primary identity from its position within a status hierarchy rather then a positive relationship with other male-bodied individuals. [...] > In light of that can you actually trust apexuals to have the best interests of the male-bodied at heart even if they are male bodied themselves? [0]: http://www.genderratic.com/p/1140/patriarchy-1-0-and-the-apexual/ http://www.genderratic.com/p/1140/patriarchy-1-0-and-the-ape...
- alayne 13y agoYou can't generalize across 300 million people based on one year of personal experiences.
- notdrunkatall 13y agoSure you can. You may not be entirely correct, but there is nothing wrong with stating an opinion based on personal experience.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- bcoates 13y agoI think you're experiencing some culture shock. Even if you can trust people to be decent, you still have to share norms as to what the other guy considers "decent". Americans tend to have a fairly individualist/independent view of ethical behavior that can be jarring to someone not used to it but it doesn't prevent social cohesion or a trusting society.
- grandalf 13y agoThere has been over a decade of propaganda telling people not to trust each other... all post-9/11 messaging intended to create insecurity in the population.
- acodesmith 13y agoIf you see something, say something.
- 0xEA 13y agoWW2 had a ton of propaganda about distrusting people, yet according to this article that was a very trusting time.
- Cowicide 13y ago>WW2 had a ton of propaganda about distrusting people Yes, but that propaganda was nothing compared to the much more advanced and sophisticated level of indoctrination techniques we have in more modern history via mainstream television and radio. And, don't forget WWII had wonderful internment camps and plenty of racism towards blacks in America. So it wasn't the most trusting place for everyone.
- philwelch 13y agoWWII propaganda was about Americans coming together to kick Japan and Germany's ass. Unless you were Japanese or German, most of the propaganda and the general sentiment around the war effort was about all Americans joining forces to win the war. There's even a part in one of Frank Capra's "Why We Fight" propaganda films calling on Americans of all ethnicities to set aside their differences and work together to win the war.
- jimmyfw 13y agoIt is worth noting that before the early 2000s, the same messages of distrust came from citizens. Forums, IRC, Internet culture in general promoted distrust of the government, distrust of businesses small and large, and an attitude of "we are smarter than normal people". All across the Internet, people like you and me would post about how incompetent the average American is. We would aspire to be independent, logical thinkers, but unfortunately, this mindset almost requires the distrust of other people. Now that the Internet has become widely adopted in the mainstream, this type of thinking pervades, and perhaps has penetrated the mainstream attitude.
- hacknat 13y agoAmericans also live in a much more diverse and accepting society than they did 40 years ago. Let's give it some time, hmmm? Articles like this make me peevish. I really dislike articles that glorify the 1950s-1990s, in anyway, without acknowledging what a strange time it was. Post-war America deserves far more criticism than it ever receives; I often think this is because boomers have a hard time criticizing the era they grew up in. Citing a similar poll from the 1970s is a brief glimmer into a period that wasn't actually that long ago. Did people from the 1970s actually trust each other more, or did they just say that they did? What about the 1920s? The 1870s? The 1840s? Did Americans trust each other more then? Ecclesiastes 7:10
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- GregBuchholz 13y agoYes, it seems weirdly PC to leave the changing demographic situation out of the picture. The Extraordinary 30-Year Growth of the U.S. Hispanic Population http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/08/extraordinary-growth-americas-hispanic-population/6733/ http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/08/extra... US ethnic minorities make up 49.9 per cent of under-fives http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10117951/US-ethnic-minorities-make-up-49.9-per-cent-of-under-fives.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...
- bilbo0s 13y agoIt's strange... because traditional minorities, ie - slave descended blacks and native americans, make up a smaller portion of the population today than they did in 1960. But the explosive growth in the non-traditional minorities MORE than makes up for the decline. Add in the fact that many of the new arrivals speak english only as a second language... and you would think some degree of mistrust would not be a surprise considering our history.
- dwaltrip 13y agoSay not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this. Yeah, because being inquisitive and asking questions is bad!
- lotharbot 13y ago> "Americans have abandoned their bowling leagues and Elks lodges to stay home and watch TV. Less socializing and fewer community meetings" Americans have just as many social and community interactions as ever -- but a much higher percentage are semi-broadcasts through social media. Hanging out with your friends at the bowling league, you might be a little bit cautious about expressing political views, and when there is disagreement it will be set aside by the tenth frame. As a result, people learned to trust each other in spite of disagreement. Online, certain views tend to be broadcast, and when there is disagreement it often turns into a quick unfriending and behind-the-back trash talking about what an intolerant jerk the ex-friend is. As a result, people learn that outsiders are bad people who should never ever be trusted.
- tokenadult 13y agoI'll note for other readers of Hacker News who don't know (and thus don't trust) the domain of this submitted article that it is actually a syndicated news story from the Associated Press, and I would have to say that I think the article is well reported. (In other words, I trust the statistics behind the article, which come from the federal government's National Social Survey.) The article includes some dire warnings about decline of social trust in the United States during the last forty years, and also some ideas about how social trust can increase. "People do get a little more trusting as they age. But beginning with the baby boomers, each generation has started off adulthood less trusting than those who came before them." I daresay it is correct that MOST Americans become more trusting as they age. In my middle age, I feel very comfortable both in the community I live in and as I travel about the United States. (I have been to all of the fifty United States, and to other territories of my country.) To take the article seriously, and to suggest a possible help that was not suggested in the article, I will propose for your thoughtful discussion (I trust you here on Hacker News) one policy that might help. Let's take care of the economic gap problem mentioned in the article and some other factors that harm social trust by building all of the public school systems in the United States on the foundational principle of family choice. I have seen an example of how this policy could help where I live. Minnesota, where I now live and where I grew up, has had largely equal per-capita funding for public school pupils statewide since the 1970s. That reduces the effect of family income differences on the availability of adequately funded schools. The state law change that made most school funding come from general state appropriations rather than from local property taxes was called the "Minnesota miracle."[1] Today most funding for schools is distributed by the state government on a per-pupil enrollment basis.[2] The funding reform in the 1970s was followed up by two further reforms in the 1980s. First, the former compulsory instruction statute in Minnesota was ruled unconstitutional in a court case involving a homeschooling family, and a new compulsory instruction statute explicitly allows more nonpublic school alternatives for families who seek those. Second, the Legislature, pushed by the then Governor, set up statewide open enrollment[3] and the opportunity for advanced learners to attend up to two years of college while still high school students on the state's dime.[4] And Minnesota also has the oldest charter school statute in the United States.[5] Parents in Minnesota now have more power to shop than parents in most states. That gets closer to the ideal of detecting the optimum education environment for each student (by parents observing what works for each of their differing children) and giving it to them by open-enrolling in another school district (my school district has inbound open-enrollment students from forty-one other school districts of residence) or by homeschooling, or by postsecondary study at high school age, or by exercising other choices. And I think that builds social trust by making school communities more nearly communities of choice than communities of compulsion. The educational results of Minnesota schools are well above the meager results of most United States schools, and almost competitive (but not fully competitive) with the better schools in the newly industrialized countries of east Asia and southeast Asia. And the social trust level in Minnesota seems to be above the United States national average, although I'd have to check the National Social Survey data to be sure about that. A good country to compare in this regard to the United States would be the Netherlands, which by its constitution has had pervasive school choice for the last century. [1] http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.html http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.htm... [2] http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/mnschfin.pdf http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/mnschfin.pdf http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/SchSup/SchFin/index.html http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/SchSup/SchFin/index.html [3] http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.html http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.h... [4] http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/CollReadi/PSEO/index.html http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/CollReadi/PSEO/index... [5] http://www.amazon.com/Zero-Chance-Passage-Pioneering-Charter/dp/1592984762/ http://www.amazon.com/Zero-Chance-Passage-Pioneering-Charter...
- brosco45 13y agoWe don't even trust co-workers anymore.
- GeneralList 13y agoI'm not even sure about myself.
- PythonicAlpha 13y agoTrust is a decision: A society, that does not have trust in each other, will fail, sooner or later.
- Cowicide 13y agoIn my opinion, decades of corporatist conditioning and manufacturing consent are at least partially responsible for this situation. The corporate mass media has induced distrust in Americans with one another in many ways. One of which is all those articles portraying average Americans as extremely litigious and corrupt with bunk stories on hot McDonald's coffee, etc. http://boingboing.net/2013/10/21/the-true-story-about-the-woman.html http://boingboing.net/2013/10/21/the-true-story-about-the-wo... The media focuses much more on crime and how we hurt each other than on the many more cases in which we cooperate and help one another. In more recent years, corporations and parts of the military-industrial complex have been poisoning Americans against each other via the Internet by astroturfing comment threads, etc. and spreading general fear, uncertainty and doubt with a nice sprinkling of intolerance and hatred. The mass media glosses over corporate welfare while focusing like a laser on welfare fraud by the poor, etc. They want us to despise each other to gain by the oldest tactic in the book - divide and conquer. It's been working.
- dinkumthinkum 13y agoI think it is more subtle than conspiracy theories.
- Cowicide 13y agoHow about you actually try to debunk the facts I present instead of inanely and pompously labeling them a "conspiracy theory"?
- rooshdi 13y agoRapacious systems can only last so long before collective trust dissipates.
- Zigurd 13y agoThis article, if not the study itself, is a hash of influences and results. It seems as if the government makes larger, and riskier mistakes, but it's not as if Vietnam wasn't a similarly large disaster for its time. The large prison population makes this "African-Americans consistently have expressed far less faith in 'most people' than the white majority does. Racism, discrimination and a high rate of poverty destroy trust." no surprise. But it seems like discrimination and institutionalized hostility toward blacks was at least as bad in the past. So is it distrust of government? Commerce? One's neighbors? Hard to tell from the article. Some parts of society deserve less trust and we are more aware why this is so.
- hackula1 13y agoThe stuff we are going through right now might seem scary, but McCarthyism was not exactly the golden age of trust. It was not so long ago that "mainstream" society did not trust blacks, working women, the japanese, or jews. We (royal "we" here, emphasis on the royalty) still don't seem to trust gays, atheists, or many other groups. Mistrust is what keeps humanity sharp, but it is also what has been holding us since the beginning.
- ams6110 13y agoMistrust or suspicion of different-looking people and/or foreigners is most likely an evolutionary survival instinct: trust the tribe, fear invaders.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Futurebot 13y agoA lot of this is covered in the excellent book "The Cheating Culture", which I recommend. "Bowling Alone", as the article mentions, covers the "stay home and do your own thing" part of it, but the economic system we've set up, I believe, is far a far stronger influence. We've set up a system that's dog-eat-dog, every man for himself, "everything that happens to you is your own fault", "lift yourself up by your bootstraps" and approaching hypercompetition. When it feels like you're one medical emergency, job loss, or bad debt away from homelessness, and have only pathetic (and painted as only for life's losers) safety nets there for you, you're out of necessity going to have to trust less. Add in the fact that many areas in this country have to deal with the daily threat of violence, and you get a toxic brew of distrust. This is sad for more than sentimental reasons, as the article mentions. The "Economics of Trust" is important for easy dealmaking, credit, and other things. More here: http://trustedadvisor.com/trustmatters/software-programming-and-the-economics-of-trust-vs-transactions http://trustedadvisor.com/trustmatters/software-programming-...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Amadou 13y agoThe clearest finding was that the more diverse the area, the less people trusted each other. I grew up in Hawaii, arguably one of the most racially and culturally diverse populations in the world. As an adult I've lived in 10-15 cities on the mainland and none of them had as much warmth and acceptance in the culture as Hawaii does. If I had to pick one reason for that, I'd say it is because Hawaii has less correlation between race and wealth than most places in the US. Still not completely egalitarian, but closer.
- notdrunkatall 13y agoIf I had to pick one reason for that, I'd say it was because Hawaii is an island. Island cultures are notoriously laid back and friendly around the world.
- plainOldText 13y agoInterestingly enough, in the developer community we fork and clone each others' repos like never before; I bet most people don't check the source code, unless they need to make changes. I believe there's still some trust left.
- deadghost 13y agoI think the keywords are "developer community". People aren't going to trust each other if there's no sense of community. Are the people around you friends you haven't met or just plain strangers?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- michaelochurch 13y agoSorry to do this, but it has to be done. Mistrust != distrust. Distrust is when you don't trust someone. Mistrust is when you trust someone you should not. For a more serious note, I've noticed this trend as well. One of the reasons I expect Silicon Valley's decline into irrelevance to be even faster than it looks is that it really was the pay-it-forward culture that made something of the place. That's what built it, in the 1970s. Now that it has been replaced by Sean Parker and Snapchat and "fuck you, I've got mine", it has no locational advantage other than history.
- emmelaich 13y agoGreat comment. I think it's interesting that the word "trustworthy" doesn't appear in the article. And it only appears in these HN comments once. (well, twice now :)
- bredren 13y agoI'm amazed this made it onto and off the front page with 50+ comments and not a single mention of a startup or tech startup ideas on how to solve this growing problem. I'm most interested in how you can offer people the potential for trust (or to put it in terms of michaelochurch's comment, reduction of "mistrust.") I believe the establishment of reputation around a useful and flexible digital identity will be _the_ way that people combat distrust among each other. Social proof will come in the form of reviews based on past behavior. There has been such a tiny amount of innovation or success in reputation systems, I believe this is a massive open opportunity.