This already assumes people are good and get along and are high trust.
What if I’m in a crew am a nice talker and get to scope things out for my crew as we chit chat?
It’s the same thing that did in the lonely hearts clubs. Swindlers came in to the rescue and take advantage of a lonely set of people. In this case people who are open and inviting and trusting of random strangers.
> This already assumes people are good and get along and are high trust.
It does assume most people are good, but that is something I believe deeply in my bones. (A simple logical argument is this: if people were on average harmful, we would all choose to be hermits. Since we don't, it implies that in aggregate our human interactions are a net benefit to us personally.)
It does assumes that people can choose whether or not to get along and that most people will choose to do that when placed in an interaction with strangers. I think that's a safe assumption for probably like 90% of groups of people.
It does not assume high trust. You only need to trust your dinner companions enough to not poison you or attack you, which is not a very high bar.
> It’s the same thing that did in the lonely hearts clubs. Swindlers came in to the rescue and take advantage of a lonely set of people.
I think the stakes a low enough to not make the situation much of a honeypot for bad actors. There's little to gain beyond a meal and my hypothetical "game" would require all participants to sometimes be the cooks.
That's certainly true. I wonder if there is a way to increase the number of people who are trustworthy and seen as trustworthy in a given social circle?
There's a weird fundamental flaw in social groups which is this:
1. Trusting trustworthy people increases efficiency. The less checking and verification you have to do, the less redundant work there is and the more easily things go.
2. As the number of trustworthy people in a group increases, the value of choosing to trust a random person increases. The odds get greater that they will be trustworthy, letting you reap the greater efficiency of trusting them.
3. As the number of trusting people in a group increases, the relative value of malice increases. The more likely a con artist is to be trusted, the more likely they are to be successful at their goal.
So there's this weird trust graph where as you approach 100% trustworthiness, you also approach 100% exploitability. The group gradually turns itself into a honeypot. So the stable equilibrium point is somewhere less of 100%.
Exactly. If you trust people you will often be rewarded by friendship and future help. If you trust cooportations they just exploit that to maximize shareholder profit with no value to me.
How does it work? I think trust is a huge factor with this sort of thing, so you have to be transparent about how you'd prevent, say, random asshats potentially putting people in real danger.
On the other hand, people trusted by other people are not necessarily trustworthy. If desperate or estranged they may sell out their friends/family for a little cash.
If there's a moderate reward for cheating and a high reward for cooperating, always trust wins out. In my eyes, that's the closest analogy to society. Generally, in the long term cooperation is more rewarding than mutiny.
Yes, clearly every social interaction is based on some level of trust. Your examples sort of state the obvious.
The point is, I will not drive on shitty tires if I have a reasonable option of good ones. I will not knowingly fly with a drunk pilot if a sober one is available.
Airbus - and nearly everyone I know - happily hand over ultimate control of their data trove to someone else, seemingly without any pressing grounds for doing so.
And yes, I know that is the way of the world these days, however much I may bemoan it. Witness the snide and micro-agression even here on HN whenever someone dares to differ.
Exactly. The other day I was carrying 2 relatively heavy boxes (furniture; I just moved into a new place) and suddenly a guy comes up to me and asks if he can help me. At first I was kind of flabbergasted, but after a second I was like 'he's just trying to be nice' and gave him one of the boxes. We carried it until we arrived at my apartment complex and had a nice chat along the way. When we arrived we exchanged numbers, since I learned he was new in the city and looking to meet new people and improve his language skills.
If my mum knew about this she'd probably think I'm crazy, being afraid of someone running off with her stuff. But in the end I think "trust-by-default" is a good way of going about life and meeting new people. Also, there's still gut-feeling. Maybe I'm an outlier there but I'm pretty quick in determining if someone is being sincere or just sweet-talking me to get what he/she wants.
Eh in many ways that is not how humans work. We tend to build close in groups with higher trust level, because not trusting everything any anyone is physically and mentally exhausting. If you met a person that behaved in this manner in real life most people would conclude they had a mental illness or were an abuse victim.
Problem is, you essentially can’t trust people. Not even in a personal “do I know this person” way. But fundamentally people are squishy. If you squish them too much, they’ll do things they never wanted to do. That unfortunately is why groups greater than 1 are a weak spot.
In your scenario, you’ll never know if the last person increments an ID somewhere or did some other activity that adds compromises the chain.
What if I’m in a crew am a nice talker and get to scope things out for my crew as we chit chat?
It’s the same thing that did in the lonely hearts clubs. Swindlers came in to the rescue and take advantage of a lonely set of people. In this case people who are open and inviting and trusting of random strangers.
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