8 ms·

Suspicious Minds – Why No One Trusts People In Authority

74 points by yiedyie 13y ago

yiedyie 13y ago
I linked to the entire blog instead of this specific post: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/SUSPICIOUS-MINDS http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/SUSPICIOUS-MINDS Please, can a moderator correct this? Thanks.
- dang 13y ago
  Done. I also removed the author name from the title. For the most part, we keep author names out of HN titles. It's a trick I learned from pg for keeping the focus on content rather than personalities. Of course there are always exceptions.
  - yiedyie 13y ago
    Thanks again, no need for the author in the title, who has seen his documentaries will notice his name instantly on the article, if not his style will be obvious in the first video.
rayiner 13y ago
Has anybody ever trusted people in authority? During the bootlegger era, it was common for public officials to be quite openly on the take. Can you even imagine,[1] something like that being tolerated today? What is different,[2] now is that trust has been eroded in institutions. I think people in my parents generation (born in the early 1950's) still believe that government more or less acts in the best interests of the people.[3] I think that belief is a lot less common in my generation, and I'm quite past the age of generic rebelliousness (born mid 1980's). What strikes me as interesting are two related facts: 1) Those who are the most distrustful of government tend to skew libertarian; but 2) Many of the biggest changes in the U.S. since 1970 have been in the direction of deregulation, increased emphasis on markets, and smaller government.[4] Measures that should be increasing trust in the system are having the opposite effect. In the 1970's, it was considered reasonable for government to outright set prices and rates. Today, even subsidies draw strong attack. To be fair, I agree with much of the agenda of deregulation since the 1970's, so this isn't a criticism of that trend. But I also believe a nation can't do great things if people don't have faith in its basic institutions. It is, to me, one of the most striking differences between the West and the East, and I don't think it's coincidental that societal prosperity is highly correlated with the amount of faith people have in their basic institutions. [1] Without resorting to the facile false equivalency between campaign donations and outright bribery. [2] Although not new--it has been described elsewhere that these moods are cyclic. [3] It can be argued that the government really does act in the interests of upper middle class baby boomers (like my parents). [4] People will contest this, but it's hard to argue with the facts. From 1970 to 2002, federal spending exclusive of interest, social security, and medicare dropped from 15% of GDP to 10% of GDP. It spiked during the recession, but is trending back towards hitting 10% by early in the next decade. Deregulation has moved similarly. We might complain about lack of competition in telecom today, but in 1970 AT&T was still a sanctioned, national monopoly.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- sp332 13y ago
  If you're looking for a turning point in American sentiment, I think the Vietnam War is a good candidate.
  - angersock 13y ago
    I think that the reason you could make that case is because of the sudden involvement of television and mass media--Korea was similarly unpopular, I think.
- pmorici 13y ago
  "2) Many of the biggest changes in the U.S. since 1970 have been in the direction of deregulation, increased emphasis on markets, and smaller government." I think the problem is there is a ton of rhetoric about deregulation and smaller government but in practice if you look very close government is mostly much bigger and a lot of the things that have been "deregulated" aren't subject to the competition that deregulation implies because of the nature of the industries involved. Sure you can deregulate electric rates but you still don't have a choice in who carries that power to your house. On the other hand look at an industry like car dealerships where deregulating would actually improve things and people fight tooth and nail to keep it because they know there is no natural barrier to protect their profits.
  - angersock 13y ago
    I think that's very much it--deregulation for industries where there are high barriers to entry (building roads, running fiber, setting up powerlines) is less useful than for industries without such barriers to industry. Interesting question, though, is if this logic applies to things like medicine: there isn't any barrier to entry other than buying a scalpel and a stethoscope, and yet I'd much rather have some degree of regulation there.
    - 13y ago
afiler 13y ago
This is by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curtis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curtis , who's done some amazing documentary work in the past, asking a lot of "big questions" like this.
- yiedyie 13y ago
  I saw The Century of the self and then I wanted to see them all.
  - joshbert 13y ago
    The Century of the Self is one of my five favorite documentaries, I would recommend it to anyone regardless of profession.
Spooky23 13y ago
I think that the advancement of the "science" of marketing has left us all jaded. Public figures do not speak like normal humans, they communicate in PR-ese, saying as little as possible with flowery speech. We're subjected to so much marketing and PR spin that we've become immune to it. Look at Twitter and how that's evolved -- one of their big business models is gathering TV viewer sentiment in real-time. I think that we've all been trained to distrust most things communicated in a public setting, because chances are that somebody is selling something.
applecore 13y ago
Build systems that obviate the need for trusted authorities.
- crusso 13y ago
  Exactly. Why question whether or not our suspicion is greater or less than it was in some bygone era? It's like saying, "Cancer survival rates are much better now than they were a hundred years ago, so let's question peoples' motivation for continuing to battle cancer."
- jjoonathan 13y ago
  Systems that obviate the need for authorities can be just as corrupt* and stupid as the authorities themselves. Systems should be treated with the same level of skepticism as powerful individuals. It's a shame that they usually aren't. * By "corrupt" I mean that a system arbitrarily facilitates the self-interest of a small group of people over others. Symmetric starting conditions aren't enough; instability breaks initial symmetries faster than a kid breaks toys.
- im3w1l 13y ago
  Interestingly, twitter sort of does this, in that it sort of works like a web of trust. One difference is that the main mechanism of trust propagation is endorsement of statements (retweet) rather than endorsement of people (follow).
- ars 13y ago
  You still have to trust whoever built the system. And don't think you can check it yourself - for 99.9% of people that's impossible. And don't say "so trust that 0.1% of people" because you did nothing except add a layer of indirection.
  - marcosdumay 13y ago
    Well, once the system works it's easy to trust, and it tends to stay that way. The problem, as jjoonathan said, is when it does not work. I'd say that it's worse than a corrupt politician, because the politician is much easier to replace (if you are not under a system that makes all of them equally corrupt).
taybin 13y ago
This is pretty rambling. Can someone summarize it?
- nirnira 13y ago
  Everyone in Britain hates each other.
- contingencies 13y ago
  It's full of trivia the way only British can write, but I skimmed it, and I guess a rough TLDR is... Today the establishment (a term invented in the 1950s) can read the mass psychology's wants (via technological means) and fulfil them (directly, in order to remedy popular discontent) instead of engaging in old-school frame-up tactics. Note that the article doesn't disclaim continued use of these tactics though, so it's not really drawing any particularly informative or useful conclusions.
benched 13y ago
The entire concept of authority is inherently suspicious. It's so easy to confuse it for people with advantages using their advantages to enjoy their advantages.
- StephenBuckley 13y ago
  It's easy to tack on the word "inherent" here, but it's misused. There's nothing inherently suspicious about authority. The Zeitgeist, though, is so strong that it's difficult to think of counterexamples, and easy to believe that how you perceive it now is how it's always been.
  - benched 13y ago
    I have no idea what you're saying, so I'll just add to my point. Did authority originate as 'the people' purposefully vesting some of their power into one or more leaders, in order to organize society more effectively? Or is that how we post-rationalize the state we're born into?
    - naturalethic 13y ago
      I think you're on to something...
  - logfromblammo 13y ago
    While it is ultimately a matter of opinion and personal judgment, mine disagrees with yours. I do find authority to be inherently suspicious, because it substitutes use of force for the use of rationality, and usually only for the sake of the authority-haver's personal convenience. If you are correct, and can prove it, no authority is required. Otherwise the authority, if available, is inevitably used to win by rhetorical distraction rather than by the strength of the reasoning. And a swat on the noggin with a baton is very distracting indeed. As they say, you can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride. That's not to say authority is useless. It is often the only way to achieve timely results. But is is no less suspicious, and should always be ratified by a deliberative, non-authoritative process.
personjerry 13y ago
I disagree with the generalization of the statement of this title. I think it's part of the political culture of wherever you live. I'm Canadian and find that often Canadians believe our government is doing fine and is trustworthy, simply because of Canada's supposed reputation.
- clockworkelf 13y ago
  I'm Canadian and I find that Canadians believe authority is completely corrupt but feel powerless about doing anything about it.
jophde 13y ago
Maybe it has something to do with our government killing more Native Americans than the Nazi's killed Jews, imprisoning Japenese Americans during WWII, using nukes, and more recently Orwellian Surveillance and drone strikes against American Citizens without trial. And these are just the facts. I haven't even gone into any extremely plausible "conspiracy" theories.
- Wingman4l7 13y ago
  Like this fan favorite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
- naturalethic 13y ago
  Keep saying "our government" and they'll keep getting away with it.

74 points by yiedyie 13y ago

I linked to the entire blog instead of this specific post: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/SUSPICIOUS-MINDS http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/SUSPICIOUS-MINDS Please, can a moderator correct this? Thanks.

dang 13y ago
Done. I also removed the author name from the title. For the most part, we keep author names out of HN titles. It's a trick I learned from pg for keeping the focus on content rather than personalities. Of course there are always exceptions.
- yiedyie 13y ago
  Thanks again, no need for the author in the title, who has seen his documentaries will notice his name instantly on the article, if not his style will be obvious in the first video.

rayiner 13y ago

Has anybody ever trusted people in authority? During the bootlegger era, it was common for public officials to be quite openly on the take. Can you even imagine,[1] something like that being tolerated today? What is different,[2] now is that trust has been eroded in institutions. I think people in my parents generation (born in the early 1950's) still believe that government more or less acts in the best interests of the people.[3] I think that belief is a lot less common in my generation, and I'm quite past the age of generic rebelliousness (born mid 1980's). What strikes me as interesting are two related facts: 1) Those who are the most distrustful of government tend to skew libertarian; but 2) Many of the biggest changes in the U.S. since 1970 have been in the direction of deregulation, increased emphasis on markets, and smaller government.[4] Measures that should be increasing trust in the system are having the opposite effect. In the 1970's, it was considered reasonable for government to outright set prices and rates. Today, even subsidies draw strong attack. To be fair, I agree with much of the agenda of deregulation since the 1970's, so this isn't a criticism of that trend. But I also believe a nation can't do great things if people don't have faith in its basic institutions. It is, to me, one of the most striking differences between the West and the East, and I don't think it's coincidental that societal prosperity is highly correlated with the amount of faith people have in their basic institutions. [1] Without resorting to the facile false equivalency between campaign donations and outright bribery. [2] Although not new--it has been described elsewhere that these moods are cyclic. [3] It can be argued that the government really does act in the interests of upper middle class baby boomers (like my parents). [4] People will contest this, but it's hard to argue with the facts. From 1970 to 2002, federal spending exclusive of interest, social security, and medicare dropped from 15% of GDP to 10% of GDP. It spiked during the recession, but is trending back towards hitting 10% by early in the next decade. Deregulation has moved similarly. We might complain about lack of competition in telecom today, but in 1970 AT&T was still a sanctioned, national monopoly.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
sp332 13y ago
If you're looking for a turning point in American sentiment, I think the Vietnam War is a good candidate.
- angersock 13y ago
  I think that the reason you could make that case is because of the sudden involvement of television and mass media--Korea was similarly unpopular, I think.
pmorici 13y ago
"2) Many of the biggest changes in the U.S. since 1970 have been in the direction of deregulation, increased emphasis on markets, and smaller government." I think the problem is there is a ton of rhetoric about deregulation and smaller government but in practice if you look very close government is mostly much bigger and a lot of the things that have been "deregulated" aren't subject to the competition that deregulation implies because of the nature of the industries involved. Sure you can deregulate electric rates but you still don't have a choice in who carries that power to your house. On the other hand look at an industry like car dealerships where deregulating would actually improve things and people fight tooth and nail to keep it because they know there is no natural barrier to protect their profits.
- angersock 13y ago
  I think that's very much it--deregulation for industries where there are high barriers to entry (building roads, running fiber, setting up powerlines) is less useful than for industries without such barriers to industry. Interesting question, though, is if this logic applies to things like medicine: there isn't any barrier to entry other than buying a scalpel and a stethoscope, and yet I'd much rather have some degree of regulation there.
  - 13y ago

afiler 13y ago

This is by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curtis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curtis , who's done some amazing documentary work in the past, asking a lot of "big questions" like this.

yiedyie 13y ago
I saw The Century of the self and then I wanted to see them all.
- joshbert 13y ago
  The Century of the Self is one of my five favorite documentaries, I would recommend it to anyone regardless of profession.

Spooky23 13y ago

I think that the advancement of the "science" of marketing has left us all jaded. Public figures do not speak like normal humans, they communicate in PR-ese, saying as little as possible with flowery speech. We're subjected to so much marketing and PR spin that we've become immune to it. Look at Twitter and how that's evolved -- one of their big business models is gathering TV viewer sentiment in real-time. I think that we've all been trained to distrust most things communicated in a public setting, because chances are that somebody is selling something.

applecore 13y ago

Build systems that obviate the need for trusted authorities.

crusso 13y ago
Exactly. Why question whether or not our suspicion is greater or less than it was in some bygone era? It's like saying, "Cancer survival rates are much better now than they were a hundred years ago, so let's question peoples' motivation for continuing to battle cancer."
jjoonathan 13y ago
Systems that obviate the need for authorities can be just as corrupt* and stupid as the authorities themselves. Systems should be treated with the same level of skepticism as powerful individuals. It's a shame that they usually aren't. * By "corrupt" I mean that a system arbitrarily facilitates the self-interest of a small group of people over others. Symmetric starting conditions aren't enough; instability breaks initial symmetries faster than a kid breaks toys.
im3w1l 13y ago
Interestingly, twitter sort of does this, in that it sort of works like a web of trust. One difference is that the main mechanism of trust propagation is endorsement of statements (retweet) rather than endorsement of people (follow).
ars 13y ago
You still have to trust whoever built the system. And don't think you can check it yourself - for 99.9% of people that's impossible. And don't say "so trust that 0.1% of people" because you did nothing except add a layer of indirection.
- marcosdumay 13y ago
  Well, once the system works it's easy to trust, and it tends to stay that way. The problem, as jjoonathan said, is when it does not work. I'd say that it's worse than a corrupt politician, because the politician is much easier to replace (if you are not under a system that makes all of them equally corrupt).

taybin 13y ago

This is pretty rambling. Can someone summarize it?

nirnira 13y ago
Everyone in Britain hates each other.
contingencies 13y ago
It's full of trivia the way only British can write, but I skimmed it, and I guess a rough TLDR is... Today the establishment (a term invented in the 1950s) can read the mass psychology's wants (via technological means) and fulfil them (directly, in order to remedy popular discontent) instead of engaging in old-school frame-up tactics. Note that the article doesn't disclaim continued use of these tactics though, so it's not really drawing any particularly informative or useful conclusions.

benched 13y ago

The entire concept of authority is inherently suspicious. It's so easy to confuse it for people with advantages using their advantages to enjoy their advantages.

StephenBuckley 13y ago
It's easy to tack on the word "inherent" here, but it's misused. There's nothing inherently suspicious about authority. The Zeitgeist, though, is so strong that it's difficult to think of counterexamples, and easy to believe that how you perceive it now is how it's always been.
- benched 13y ago
  I have no idea what you're saying, so I'll just add to my point. Did authority originate as 'the people' purposefully vesting some of their power into one or more leaders, in order to organize society more effectively? Or is that how we post-rationalize the state we're born into?
  - naturalethic 13y ago
    I think you're on to something...
- logfromblammo 13y ago
  While it is ultimately a matter of opinion and personal judgment, mine disagrees with yours. I do find authority to be inherently suspicious, because it substitutes use of force for the use of rationality, and usually only for the sake of the authority-haver's personal convenience. If you are correct, and can prove it, no authority is required. Otherwise the authority, if available, is inevitably used to win by rhetorical distraction rather than by the strength of the reasoning. And a swat on the noggin with a baton is very distracting indeed. As they say, you can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride. That's not to say authority is useless. It is often the only way to achieve timely results. But is is no less suspicious, and should always be ratified by a deliberative, non-authoritative process.

personjerry 13y ago

I disagree with the generalization of the statement of this title. I think it's part of the political culture of wherever you live. I'm Canadian and find that often Canadians believe our government is doing fine and is trustworthy, simply because of Canada's supposed reputation.

clockworkelf 13y ago
I'm Canadian and I find that Canadians believe authority is completely corrupt but feel powerless about doing anything about it.

jophde 13y ago

Maybe it has something to do with our government killing more Native Americans than the Nazi's killed Jews, imprisoning Japenese Americans during WWII, using nukes, and more recently Orwellian Surveillance and drone strikes against American Citizens without trial. And these are just the facts. I haven't even gone into any extremely plausible "conspiracy" theories.

Wingman4l7 13y ago
Like this fan favorite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
naturalethic 13y ago
Keep saying "our government" and they'll keep getting away with it.