Wow, that's a pretty negative view of the world. I hope for your sake that you are referring to trust at the international level rather than trust at a personal level.
Do you think the Ukrainians fighting against Putin trust each other? I don't think anyone is forcing them to risk their lives.
I would come to the opposite conclusion. A system of trust that is based on coercion will ALWAYS fail eventually. In fact I would say that the statement is an oxymoron. Trust and coercion are mutually exclusive, the whole point of real trust is that it doesn't require the threat of force.
No one but a fool would trust Putin, so what we do agree on is that coercion or threats are required in some circumstances and that is why pacifism doesn't work. There have always been and probably always will be people who have no empathy for others and have psychopathic personality traits, but these people aren't that common. As Catalin mentioned in her post, the problem is that human leaderships contests often actively select for these traits!
I think you are both dating slightly different things. YouтАЩre both talking about things that are necessary for trust, but not sufficient.
What Richard is saying is that, without a state monopoly on violence, others can fulfill their desire through coercion instead of fair play.
What you are adding is that a monopoly of violence is not enough. You also need the government to use it in a fair, transparent, predictable way (which Putin doesnтАЩt do).
I believe Richard emphasizes the monopoly of violence because the other ingredient already exists in the EU.
On the fourteenth day of Christmas my truelove gave to me the best gift of all: her trust.
I doubted her during the long silence of the thirteenth day, but I found my way through the doubt and realised that she needed just one gift from me: my trust. She has returned that trust and now I know that she really is my true love.
I would assert that the whole concept of a monopoly of violence is theoretical and has very little relationship with reality. Reality is grey and the evidence of that is all around us.
I don't know about where you live, but within a 5 mile radius of where I live there is some degree of violence on a daily basis. No state monopoly that I can see, though the lack of guns means the violence is less damaging. The incidence of people trying to achieve their desires by coercion or threat is much higher. And I live in what is by all accounts one of the most peaceful places on the planet! I work every day on trying to making it more peaceful, but of course the issue with that is that I have very little control over the bigger violence and living in a country with a nuclear weapons increases the risk of them being detonated somewhere near me.
The problem is that some humans are programmed for conflict and we donтАЩt have enough awareness or understanding of that problem to allow us to do something about it. The solution is to raise awareness of the problem, understand it then to discuss the options for solving it.
The evidence from the human history of war suggests that we either donтАЩt think peace is a good thing or we are not good at learning the lessons from previous conflicts or both. So letтАЩs look at a couple of the suggested learning points so far from the current war:
1. We need more weapons
2. We need less trust.
Those donтАЩt seem very sensible learning points to me.
Well, it is "the weekend" (luckily I didn't specify which weekend!) so here are some more thoughts on the history and importance of trust:
Humans are vulnerable. We are vulnerable to predators as we are not the strongest or fastest creatures and we are vulnerable to microbes just like other animals. Over time we have greatly reduced that vulnerability by using our secret weapon: our brain. Our power comes from our brain, and social coordination is part of that power.
Love is the most basic form of attachment in starting social groups, but it isnтАЩt enough by itself. In the longer term and in bigger social groups, Trust is the bond that allows human society to develop, grow and thrive.
Human babies are extremely vulnerable and have no choice but to trust their parents. Even as adults we cannot be constantly on our guard. At the most basic level, we need sleep and that creates vulnerability. We either trust that we have found a safe place for that vulnerable time or that someone we trust will watch over us. Family and tribal groups developed strong bonds of kinship and trust in order to survive. The problem is that is that human personalities have varying levels of trust and loyalty, so strong penalties developed for anyone who betrayed the communal trust including physical or social retribution. We learned to feel social disapproval very keenly.
As human society adapted to settlement and domestication of plants and animals, being able to maintain possession of the best areas was essential. The new way of life could support larger groups of people, and more unified people=more power to deploy in conflict with nature and with other human groups. This created strong selective pressure for the development of social rules and then laws within larger groups where social connections and bonds of kinship became more tenuous. These unwritten or written rules helped maintain some degree of trust, backed up by a degree of threat if that trust was breached. The skill of learning when to trust others starts with facial and behavioural cues, but of course some people become skilled in the art of deception so familiarity with others behaviour over longer time frames helps build trust, as does understanding their motives. Reputation (the judgement of others) can be incorporated into our judgement, but isnтАЩt foolproof. There are degrees and greyness of trust of course and high levels are not necessary for some human interactions.
When groups of humans interacted with other groups they could fight, avoid each other or perhaps do something beneficial to both groups: trade goods or ideas. Trade with those you donтАЩt trust very much means taking risks, but can be replaced in part with trust in systems that protect the interests of both parties. Monetary systems developed to fill that need and became a trusted intermediary. Gold and silver became money because they best fulfilled the requirements of the system, but their disadvantages led to new systems (yes, I am going to get to posting about the history of money тАЬsoonтАЭ). Lending can benefit both parties but requires trust +/- threat and longer term investment requires trust in the stability of a society. If the trust and threat system is good enough then we can place our faith in it and not have to waste so much time and energy assessing every individual and every transaction for trustworthiness.
In modern society it is easy to forget about the importance of trust and take it for granted. It is easy not to pay attention to or value the many systems of trust that we have developed over thousands of years by trial and error. But trust only grows slowly and is much easier to destroy than to create (or to rebuild once it has been broken). The deeper the level of trust in something, the greater the consequence when that trust is broken or abused.
Our society is held together by trust in the structures developed to maintain it. This includes the legal system, the election system, education, the social safety net, government and its bureaucracy, and the financial system. There is also the intangible ethos of a society and its shared values. As the amount of information available in a complex society becomes too large to make sense of, it is more efficient to outsource trust. People become experts in a given field and we often have little choice but to trust their judgement. Peer review systems developed to harness the wisdom of crowds. Leaders have to trust their subordinates to some degree and vice versa. The advent of the internet required new trust systems to develop such as feedback sites, financial verification, Wikipedia and Dr Google as well as trust in the internet itself. We develop algorithms and trust the results they produce and we will need to decide our level of trust in AI at some point. Whenever wealth or power are involved there will always be attempts at corruption, so systems of trust are vulnerable and need constant maintenance.
On a more individual level we can have varying degrees of trust in ourselves and those around us. Effective feedback and learning require trust. We must choose how much faith to put in science, technology, human ingenuity, experts, economic theories, medicine and/or God. The cost of a lack of trust is insecurity and a feeling of vulnerability. Being on our guard for threats all the time takes energy and does not allow us to focus our attention on more useful areas. In the economic sense duplication and inefficiency are the result.
In this period of rapid change we are being forced to reexamine our trust in things we took for granted: the accuracy of information we receive, the role of experts, our leaders, energy supplies, the benefits of globalisation, supply chains, weather patterns and the credo of mutually assured destruction. Ultimately we have to be able to trust our model of reality if we are to plan for the future, so it is vital that we make it as accurate as possible.
Agreed. There are degrees of trust from absolute to none at all. I don't really think anyone would have said they trusted Putin before the invasion, but a lot of people trusted that he would make rational decisions ("he's a genius!").
I will write a bit more about trust when I have some time on the weekend because I think it is such a fundamental part of a society that works well. We need to understand and learn the right lessons from what has happened in the last couple of months
The key word in your reply is trust. All levels of social cohesion can only reach their full potential when he level of trust is high enough
And the only way to make that happen is to be in the same state or some other higher organization that has a monopoly on violence.
It's nice to think that humans should trust one another but as Putin has shown, a system of trust that ultimately isn't based on coercion will fail.
Wow, that's a pretty negative view of the world. I hope for your sake that you are referring to trust at the international level rather than trust at a personal level.
Do you think the Ukrainians fighting against Putin trust each other? I don't think anyone is forcing them to risk their lives.
I would come to the opposite conclusion. A system of trust that is based on coercion will ALWAYS fail eventually. In fact I would say that the statement is an oxymoron. Trust and coercion are mutually exclusive, the whole point of real trust is that it doesn't require the threat of force.
No one but a fool would trust Putin, so what we do agree on is that coercion or threats are required in some circumstances and that is why pacifism doesn't work. There have always been and probably always will be people who have no empathy for others and have psychopathic personality traits, but these people aren't that common. As Catalin mentioned in her post, the problem is that human leaderships contests often actively select for these traits!
I think you are both dating slightly different things. YouтАЩre both talking about things that are necessary for trust, but not sufficient.
What Richard is saying is that, without a state monopoly on violence, others can fulfill their desire through coercion instead of fair play.
What you are adding is that a monopoly of violence is not enough. You also need the government to use it in a fair, transparent, predictable way (which Putin doesnтАЩt do).
I believe Richard emphasizes the monopoly of violence because the other ingredient already exists in the EU.
On the fourteenth day of Christmas my truelove gave to me the best gift of all: her trust.
I doubted her during the long silence of the thirteenth day, but I found my way through the doubt and realised that she needed just one gift from me: my trust. She has returned that trust and now I know that she really is my true love.
I would assert that the whole concept of a monopoly of violence is theoretical and has very little relationship with reality. Reality is grey and the evidence of that is all around us.
I don't know about where you live, but within a 5 mile radius of where I live there is some degree of violence on a daily basis. No state monopoly that I can see, though the lack of guns means the violence is less damaging. The incidence of people trying to achieve their desires by coercion or threat is much higher. And I live in what is by all accounts one of the most peaceful places on the planet! I work every day on trying to making it more peaceful, but of course the issue with that is that I have very little control over the bigger violence and living in a country with a nuclear weapons increases the risk of them being detonated somewhere near me.
The problem is that some humans are programmed for conflict and we donтАЩt have enough awareness or understanding of that problem to allow us to do something about it. The solution is to raise awareness of the problem, understand it then to discuss the options for solving it.
The evidence from the human history of war suggests that we either donтАЩt think peace is a good thing or we are not good at learning the lessons from previous conflicts or both. So letтАЩs look at a couple of the suggested learning points so far from the current war:
1. We need more weapons
2. We need less trust.
Those donтАЩt seem very sensible learning points to me.
We need more trust, but trust can't be assumed.
Well, it is "the weekend" (luckily I didn't specify which weekend!) so here are some more thoughts on the history and importance of trust:
Humans are vulnerable. We are vulnerable to predators as we are not the strongest or fastest creatures and we are vulnerable to microbes just like other animals. Over time we have greatly reduced that vulnerability by using our secret weapon: our brain. Our power comes from our brain, and social coordination is part of that power.
Love is the most basic form of attachment in starting social groups, but it isnтАЩt enough by itself. In the longer term and in bigger social groups, Trust is the bond that allows human society to develop, grow and thrive.
Human babies are extremely vulnerable and have no choice but to trust their parents. Even as adults we cannot be constantly on our guard. At the most basic level, we need sleep and that creates vulnerability. We either trust that we have found a safe place for that vulnerable time or that someone we trust will watch over us. Family and tribal groups developed strong bonds of kinship and trust in order to survive. The problem is that is that human personalities have varying levels of trust and loyalty, so strong penalties developed for anyone who betrayed the communal trust including physical or social retribution. We learned to feel social disapproval very keenly.
As human society adapted to settlement and domestication of plants and animals, being able to maintain possession of the best areas was essential. The new way of life could support larger groups of people, and more unified people=more power to deploy in conflict with nature and with other human groups. This created strong selective pressure for the development of social rules and then laws within larger groups where social connections and bonds of kinship became more tenuous. These unwritten or written rules helped maintain some degree of trust, backed up by a degree of threat if that trust was breached. The skill of learning when to trust others starts with facial and behavioural cues, but of course some people become skilled in the art of deception so familiarity with others behaviour over longer time frames helps build trust, as does understanding their motives. Reputation (the judgement of others) can be incorporated into our judgement, but isnтАЩt foolproof. There are degrees and greyness of trust of course and high levels are not necessary for some human interactions.
When groups of humans interacted with other groups they could fight, avoid each other or perhaps do something beneficial to both groups: trade goods or ideas. Trade with those you donтАЩt trust very much means taking risks, but can be replaced in part with trust in systems that protect the interests of both parties. Monetary systems developed to fill that need and became a trusted intermediary. Gold and silver became money because they best fulfilled the requirements of the system, but their disadvantages led to new systems (yes, I am going to get to posting about the history of money тАЬsoonтАЭ). Lending can benefit both parties but requires trust +/- threat and longer term investment requires trust in the stability of a society. If the trust and threat system is good enough then we can place our faith in it and not have to waste so much time and energy assessing every individual and every transaction for trustworthiness.
In modern society it is easy to forget about the importance of trust and take it for granted. It is easy not to pay attention to or value the many systems of trust that we have developed over thousands of years by trial and error. But trust only grows slowly and is much easier to destroy than to create (or to rebuild once it has been broken). The deeper the level of trust in something, the greater the consequence when that trust is broken or abused.
Our society is held together by trust in the structures developed to maintain it. This includes the legal system, the election system, education, the social safety net, government and its bureaucracy, and the financial system. There is also the intangible ethos of a society and its shared values. As the amount of information available in a complex society becomes too large to make sense of, it is more efficient to outsource trust. People become experts in a given field and we often have little choice but to trust their judgement. Peer review systems developed to harness the wisdom of crowds. Leaders have to trust their subordinates to some degree and vice versa. The advent of the internet required new trust systems to develop such as feedback sites, financial verification, Wikipedia and Dr Google as well as trust in the internet itself. We develop algorithms and trust the results they produce and we will need to decide our level of trust in AI at some point. Whenever wealth or power are involved there will always be attempts at corruption, so systems of trust are vulnerable and need constant maintenance.
On a more individual level we can have varying degrees of trust in ourselves and those around us. Effective feedback and learning require trust. We must choose how much faith to put in science, technology, human ingenuity, experts, economic theories, medicine and/or God. The cost of a lack of trust is insecurity and a feeling of vulnerability. Being on our guard for threats all the time takes energy and does not allow us to focus our attention on more useful areas. In the economic sense duplication and inefficiency are the result.
In this period of rapid change we are being forced to reexamine our trust in things we took for granted: the accuracy of information we receive, the role of experts, our leaders, energy supplies, the benefits of globalisation, supply chains, weather patterns and the credo of mutually assured destruction. Ultimately we have to be able to trust our model of reality if we are to plan for the future, so it is vital that we make it as accurate as possible.
Agreed. There are degrees of trust from absolute to none at all. I don't really think anyone would have said they trusted Putin before the invasion, but a lot of people trusted that he would make rational decisions ("he's a genius!").
I will write a bit more about trust when I have some time on the weekend because I think it is such a fundamental part of a society that works well. We need to understand and learn the right lessons from what has happened in the last couple of months
Well said.