I think that in an ideal world where you could review all priors to very minute details having as much time as needed, and where people were fully rational, then “trust” as a word would not be needed.
We don’t live in such a world though.
If someone says “trust me” then in my opinion it conveys two meanings on two different planes (usually both, sometimes only one):
Emotional. Most people base their choices on emotions and relations, not rational thought. Words like “trust me” or “you can trust me” convey an emotional message asking for an emotional connection or reconsideration, usually because of some contextual reason (like the other person being in a position that on an emotional level seems to be trustworthy, f.ex. a doctor).
Rational. Time for reconsideration. The person asks you to take more time to reconsider your position because she or he thinks you didn’t consider well enough why she or he is to be trusted in a given scope or that person just presented some new information (like “trust me, I’m an engineer”).
“I decided to trust her about …”—for me, it is a short colloquial term for “I took time to reconsider if things she says on the topic … are true and now I think that is more likely that they are”.
For many people, it also has emotional and bonding components.
Another thing is that people tend to trust or mistrust another person in general broad scope. They don’t go into detail and think separately on every topic or thing someone says and decide separately for each of them. That’s an easy heuristic that usually is good enough, so our minds are wired to operate like that. So people usually say that they trust a person generally, not trust that person within some subject/scope.
P.S. I’m from a different part of the world (central EU, Poland). We don’t use phrases like “accept trust” here—which is probably an interesting difference in how differences in language create different ways of thinking. For us here “trust” is not like a contract. It is more a one-way thing (but with some expectation of mutuality in most circumstances).
I think that in an ideal world where you could review all priors to very minute details having as much time as needed, and where people were fully rational, then “trust” as a word would not be needed.
We don’t live in such a world though.
If someone says “trust me” then in my opinion it conveys two meanings on two different planes (usually both, sometimes only one):
Emotional. Most people base their choices on emotions and relations, not rational thought. Words like “trust me” or “you can trust me” convey an emotional message asking for an emotional connection or reconsideration, usually because of some contextual reason (like the other person being in a position that on an emotional level seems to be trustworthy, f.ex. a doctor).
Rational. Time for reconsideration. The person asks you to take more time to reconsider your position because she or he thinks you didn’t consider well enough why she or he is to be trusted in a given scope or that person just presented some new information (like “trust me, I’m an engineer”).
“I decided to trust her about …”—for me, it is a short colloquial term for “I took time to reconsider if things she says on the topic … are true and now I think that is more likely that they are”.
For many people, it also has emotional and bonding components.
Another thing is that people tend to trust or mistrust another person in general broad scope. They don’t go into detail and think separately on every topic or thing someone says and decide separately for each of them. That’s an easy heuristic that usually is good enough, so our minds are wired to operate like that. So people usually say that they trust a person generally, not trust that person within some subject/scope.
P.S. I’m from a different part of the world (central EU, Poland). We don’t use phrases like “accept trust” here—which is probably an interesting difference in how differences in language create different ways of thinking. For us here “trust” is not like a contract. It is more a one-way thing (but with some expectation of mutuality in most circumstances).