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0 pointscarbocation14y ago0 comments

Is there some empirical measure of "the degree to which someone should actually be trusted," and if so, are the racially diverse societies less trustful than they should be, or are the racially homogeneous societies moreso than they should be?

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5 comments · 2 top-level

known14y ago· 3 in thread

I believe Trust but verify is the best alternative.

billswift14y ago

I think a better way of putting it is "Trust, but protect yourself in case you are wrong". As I wrote elsewhere, I think saying that you "absolutely trust" someone (anyone) is one of the most arrogant things you can say; you are not only saying you trust that person, you are also saying you don't believe you could be mistaken. Believe me, there is always room for a person to make mistakes.

jodrellblank14y ago

I don't quite see how this is different from "say you trust, but act as if you don't", aka "don't trust, but lie about it".

known14y ago

Trust but verify = Make an informed decision

gjm1114y ago

It might be worth noting that there's another possibility besides those. Perhaps people actually are less trustworthy in more racially-diverse societies, in which case it needn't be the case either that the more diverse societies aren't trusting enough or that the less diverse societies are too trusting.

... How plausible is that? Dunno. In a racially-diverse society, especially a poorly integrated one, people of different races might well tend not to treat one another in ways worthy of trust. But it's complicated: they might also be more reliable towards others of the same race. In such a society, anyway, there'd be no such thing as "the degree to which someone should actually be trusted" because it would depend on who's considering trusting whom. Not to mention, e.g., that in such a society there could be a lot of divergence between how much you "should" trust someone else for your own sake (less) and how much you "should" trust them to help fix the messed-up state of society (more), etc., etc., etc.

Some things that aren't clear to me about Putnam's work, and that seem important: In racially diverse societies, is it only inter-race levels of trust that are lower? Putnam's work, IIUC, is concerned with the USA; are things different in places where there isn't a history of slavery? or where racial diversity on something like equal terms has been going on for longer? What actually happens over time in these less-trusting more-diverse places? Is it specifically highly-visible racial diversity (black, white, ...) that is associated with these differences in trust, or do you get the same thing with religious or cultural diversity that doesn't have quite such visible markers?

Oh, I can answer one of those. According to http://abstractnonsense.wordpress.com/2006/10/09/ethnic-dive... Putnam found that intraracial trust is less in more-diverse settings, as well as interracial trust. That's a shame.

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