on trust: a reminder to myself

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.