on trust: a reminder to myself

[maradydd]

Trust is defined inductively. The base case is whether I trust you today; if that's not the case, there's nowhere to go from there. The inductive step is, if I'm able to trust you on some randomly chosen day, will I be able to trust you the following day?

"Inconsistency is the only thing in which men are consistent," said Horace Smith, but induction is all about patterns. The trick is inducing the correct pattern: making sure not to seize on a single phenomenon and call it evidence, whether it's a good instance or a bad one.

Puzzle for today: why is it so easy to seize on only the bad instances for certain people, or only the good ones for others, even in the face of actual evidence?

"Why don't you believe it when you've finally found the truth?
You've been drinking poisoned water from the fountain of youth.
Why don't you stop tearing up everyone you need the most?
You're so busy trying to get even, you never even try to get close."

Good question, Jim.

Comments

[tonif.livejournal.com]

I've had my trust battered way too many times, yet I keep trying again. Sometimes I think that makes me strong, other times I think I'm just being foolish.

[mraustin.livejournal.com]

i disagree entirely. your induction is missing variables even though you're looking right at them.

:-)

[shrike6.livejournal.com]

It depends. If you can't see the good in someone, something has occurred to cause that. In some cases, maybe you've been wronged in a way that's so personal that it overcomes all logic. In which case, it can be very, very difficult to get past this. Either both people need to batter away at it until they reach an understanding, or you need a "Camp David" moment, where one party or another offers some gesture of magnanimity (spelling?) that's really significant. Even then, that doesn't guarantee a change. The other party has to notice, understand, and recognize the act, or else there's no point.

As for the converse, I think people can fall into the trap of seeing others as they would like them to be, rather than as they are. If they already possess traits that are attractive and considered virtues by the observer, it can be especially easy.

Navigating between seeing people as they are and recognizing the parts of them that evoke empathy is hard. But I don't think people should stop trying.

[cristalia.livejournal.com]

Puzzle for today: why is it so easy to seize on only the bad instances for certain people, or only the good ones for others, even in the face of actual evidence?

Perhaps because nobody ever hunted down evidence to -disprove- their pet theory? I mean, we intrinsically want to trust or distrust certain people, so we will accept the evidence that falls in line with that inclination and discard that which disproves it as incidental.

Just a thought.

[medains.livejournal.com]

Emotional attachment is a key factor in the trust equation.

Person who has done a bad action in the past that you have a strong emotional attachment to, probably isn't going to gain your trust by recent trustworthy actions.

Likewise, a positive thing with a strong emotional attachment (which can be anything from and actual action such as helping you out when you were depressed, to a more abstract attachment such as physical attraction) will cause you to find the trustworthiness of that person almost unshakeable.

I've experienced both ends of this stick, and it's a hard thing to take a purely objective standpoint to judge trust on recent merits/demerits.

Odd eh?

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

OTOH, I've found it's also possible to form strong emotional attachments absent any evidence whatsoever, for example because someone superficially reminds me of someone I once knew. Forming that objective standpoint is just as difficult in these instances, too, and it's very frustrating.