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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   35889 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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To the extent these are reflective of any larger phenomenon it looks a lot what some commentators call the transition from a "high trust" society to a "low trust" one.

High trust meaning one where all members know and willingly follow "the rules" mainly out of some sense of social obligation rather than fear of punishment, where they honor their promises and cooperate at every opportunity.

vs. Low trust where members are constantly looking for a chance to defect for personal gain, and everyone KNOWS everyone else is looking to defect, and thus is on guard against that risk.

In high-trust societies you can sell vegetables with an honesty box for payment and expect most people will actually pay the right amount, despite there being effectively no chance of being caught if they don't.

Vs. A low trust society where stores put common household items behind glass due to how common shoplifting is. Just the other day I was buying a new phone and noticed all the displayed models were locked down so you couldn't interact with or examine them much. The salesman claims this was because too many people would snip the wire and steal the display phone. Frustrating.

High trust societies are theoretically better on the grounds that less effort and cost is expended on mechanisms for enforcing rules and thwarting defectors, and generally there is much less friction since you don't have to spend mental epicycles second-guessing your counterpart's motives.

In practice, no society runs fully on trust beyond a certain point, when the dollar amounts involved get high enough you can't expect a "handshake deal" to protect you, even with a friend.

Likewise, modern technology offers many options for enforcing rules that are cheap enough that you don't "need" trust in order to transact. Cryptocurrencies as a class attempt to solve this for currency and create the ability to engage in transactions with zero trust by either party. At least zero trust in each other.

But all-in-all, in a high trust society with iterated games, you would expect participants NOT to defect, cheat, or screw each other over in any scenario where they expected to have to deal each other on a repeated basis.

So we have some evidence here that formerly high-trust organizations that didn't implement fully robust anti-cheat mechanisms, relying on the good faith of their participants, are now having to grapple with the loss of trust and the now-apparent need to implement stricter enforcement mechanisms, to the detriment of all participants.

Is this actually a symptoms of a broader social trend where people are more prone to cheat than ever, or was this always occurring at similar rates its just now it is possible to detect and publicize these events more often?

I tend to suspect the latter but I've also observed many examples in my local community that make me concerned its the former, and we're in a slow, downward spiral where trusting societies are violated by repeated defections, which leads them to be less trusting, and inspires more people to act in ways that inspire less trust, since there is little/no gain for being honest when everyone else cheats.

I try very hard to locate and protect high-trust environments (for instance, my local gym sells water and protein shakes on the honor system) because I greatly prefer living in places where you can take other people at their word and don't have to constantly look over your shoulder. And the most distressing problem is that is usually only takes a bare handful of defectors to destroy said system for everyone.

So I would not be surprised if, on the margins, there are more people willing to cheat than even 20 years ago, and that leads us to a situation where trust has declined DESPITE most people still being fundamentally trustworthy.

I think you've nailed it -- and part of it has been an erosion in the social judgement against cheaters & defectors. I somewhat hate to yield to the 'blame the woke for everything' bias I apparently have, but I think they have definitely amped up the excusing & rationalizing. There was a big thing about various people should be allowed to cheat at school, it was just bogus and unfair to them anyway.

I think once you let people justify that cheating is okay, many indeed will.

And I find it really sad, because I think it makes the world a worse place for pretty much everyone.

That's partly why I get extra grumpy at scams that take advantage of people's better nature (money for gas, help for grandkid in a foreign country) -- it ruins things for everyone.

In high-trust societies you can sell vegetables with an honesty box for payment and expect most people will actually pay the right amount, despite there being effectively no chance of being caught if they don't.

Vs. A low trust society where stores put common household items behind glass due to how common shoplifting is. Just the other day I was buying a new phone and noticed all the displayed models were locked down so you couldn't interact with or examine them much. The salesman claims this was because too many people would snip the wire and steal the display phone. Frustrating.

What's absolutely wild is the extent to which these phenomena can co-exist in the same societies, even in the same neighborhoods at times. It turns out that no matter how many scumbags will steal razors from a convenient store, the same degenerates aren't really that into fresh vegetable heists.

Don’t speak too soon!

this is a tangent but your use of the word degenerate there gained my attention because it is usually used as a descriptor for people who engage in "hedonistic" behaviors, not those who violate property rights. so its a point of evidence for the claim that degenerate is often used as a slur against innocent people (say, strip club visitors).

Maybe part of that is that veggies are harder to stuff under a shirt.

It's patently clear, IMO, that China is one of the lowest-trust societies on the planet and probably the lowest-one by far among states with above 95 average IQ.

I like this measure: civic honesty. Dishonest people are untrustworthy, after all.

I think we have a word for that: «safety».

But in China it's achieved precisely by embracing low trust, by covering every angle with CCTVs and emphasising the inevitability of punishment.

Once again, I have to link to that old comment of mine, referencing even older ones.

And when it's impossible in a given domain to approximate the consequence of native Western levels of trust with such ham-fisted measures, you get Chinese science – and Steve Hsu in the US.

That seems very interesting. Shame it's paywalled; i'd like to know about which societies are found to be most honest, and where some with particular reputations stand. Though the sample size might be too small to really say much, I suppose.

Ah, apologies, forgot where I am. A small lesson in how low-trust peoples act in such a situation:

DOI: 10.1126/science.aau8712

https://www.sci-hub.ru

https://sci-hub.ru/10.1126/science.aau8712

Alternatively: https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1126/science.aau8712

(for some reason those mirrors yield different versions of the article).

Thanks!

Edit: Somewhat surprised by the findings. Poland especially. They're better than their reputation, it seems!

I'm surprised to see Japan as lower trust, given that they send little kids on errands and trust slightly older kids to navigate around.

What accounts for this unusual degree of independence? Not self-sufficiency, in fact, but “group reliance,” according to Dwayne Dixon, a cultural anthropologist who wrote his doctoral dissertation on Japanese youth. “[Japanese] kids learn early on that, ideally, any member of the community can be called on to serve or help others,” he says.

Maybe it depends on how the question of "Most people can be trusted" is translated into the language? In Japan maybe they hear the question "Most people (globally) can be trusted" and think of their geopolitical neighbors China, North Korea, and Russia and say, nah. And in China they hear the question "Most people (locally) can be trusted" and agree? "Share of people who trust others in their neighborhood" is at 74% in Japan at your link.

In practice, no society runs fully on trust beyond a certain point, when the dollar amounts involved get high enough you can't expect a "handshake deal" to protect you, even with a friend.

Oddly, pre-electronic Wall Street worked this way; you could trade millions on just a phone call.

And the most distressing problem is that is usually only takes a bare handful of defectors to destroy said system for everyone.

In most high trust systems there isn't zero enforcement. Someone takes the vegetables without paying, and another person (maybe an employee, but often another customer) will loudly tell them "hey, you need to pay for that". If they keep doing it they get thrown out. The reason a handful of defectors can destroy the system is when they're allowed to operate openly, some of the remainder feel like chumps, which causes them to start defecting as well.

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