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The trust in this case is trust of strangers who are calling you to ask you polling questions.

When it comes to media, all information you consume must be read with a critical eye. You need to understand what assumptions are driving what is said, what the tone is and where they are drawing their conclusions from.



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I can relate to your last sentence regarding trust. Happens alarmingly often when I read popular takes on things I know a fair bit about.

Which makes me wonder about the extent to which I can trust popular takes in things outside my wheelhouse.


Um, no. You gain people's trust by being consistently worthy of trust.

This article seems to think that trust is it's own fungible but inconvertible substance (the media has lost theirs, so someone else needs to give them some), rather than something that derives from an objective reality.


Trust implies a lack of critical thinking. When we trust something we don't think about it deeply, we just accept it.

You can develop a (mental) trust chain.

Verify yourself that a few people seem both well-informed and unbiased, using your personal experience or research. Put a decent amount of trust in them.

When a person you trust appears to have high regard for another person's opinion, add some trust to that other person.

When you notice someone says dumb or biased stuff, reduce your trust in them by a lot.

Continue like that for years, mixing some independent verification here and there, and you'll have some idea of what's going on.


How are they demonstrating this "trust"?

Trust is determined by evaluating the institution. You don't get to ask for a partial refund of your newspaper subscription because you disliked one article.

How do you deal with the trust question? That's an interesting problem

Bias maybe unavoidable, but trustworthy is an earned personal attribute. Context doesn’t affect it.

Some people have integrity and have earned their credibility. This exact kind of situation is when that matters.


Trust is a product of statistical evidence and probabilities. How does trust builds up? By observing that the source you monitor is very often right. How does one lose trust? By observing that the source is not right often enough. If you cannot or don't want to verify it's not trust, it is blind faith. Trust only allows you to assume that your source is right when you cannot (afford to) verify.

This seems to me to be about trust.

Trust is a fickle thing, and requires credibility.

> interpersonal trust (the sort of trust that might be captured by a poll about whether people trust businesses vs. government)

That's not how I read "interpersonal trust"; I read it as the kind of trust you might confer on a natural person that you know well.


We are discussing trust. It's obvious that one trusts or not, so why is it surprising we see it mirrored in a group of people discussing trust? Answer: It's not.

It's not simply a matter of trust. You should assume it's all insecure. It's a matter of whose interests align with yours the most.

Eh, the idea of "trust" gets into non-quantifiable territory very quickly. Further, your analogy with newspapers is, quite frankly, not good. I would say that generally speaking, if a newspaper consistently confirms one's biases it is more likely to be deemed "trustworthy" and vice-versa with "non-trustworthy" newspapers.

This requires knowing others' intentions. And that means you have to ask & trust what they say & not make assumptions about what their intentions are.

> Just as important are frequent, honest checkins to see how everyone is feeling on an interpersonal level.

That only becomes meaningful when there is already 100% trust. People learn very quickly (usually the hard way) that honest answers are not always in their best interest.


My point is that blind trust or distrust is bad. We should always listen to people with a healthy level of skepticism.

Experts can make mistakes just like non-experts can occasionally contribute at an expert level or prove an expert wrong.


Trust is the faith that the subject won’t betray you or your interests despite being in a position to do so.

It’s a belief, not an emotion.

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