Seems like “trust that scales” is an important social technology that most of us have lost. Perhaps the population got too large and disconnected, and the mechanism didn’t scale enough. (Two random medieval Islamic merchants probably had a friend in common. Two random people in New York City probably don’t.) But sometimes you can still use it, if you limit yourself to a small social group such as the Amish, or the upper class.
I already know from experience that trust is not transitive. There are people whom I trust, but I don’t trust their judgment about whom else they trust. Sometimes this seems correlated; some people seem too naive to lie, but also too naive to spot a liar. Sometimes they place too much trust in their group, but the group is a mixed bag of true believers (who probably are trustworthy, when it comes to helping their fellow believers) and opportunists (who are mostly there to exploit the true believers and their connections). Sadly, at least once I have introduced an untrustworthy person to my group of friends, because I failed to notice the red flags. Similarly, I got burned by trusting a person that multiple(!) trustworthy people have recommended to me. (I still trust the people who made the recommendation, and they regret the mistake they made.)
I think there is a great difference between N:N networks (the Amish; the Islamic merchants) and 1:N networks (Johnson and his contacts). The latter are relatively easier to build, but they will not survive you. I wonder whether a mixed model is possible, consisting of an N:N connected core, and a set of people who are individually connected to the core but not to each other. This seems like a possible intermediate step between a 1:N network and a N:N network; you gradually keep adding people to the core.
How did the Islamic merchants resolve situations where merchant X claimed that merchant Y violated the rules, but merchant Y claimed that merchant X violated the rules? The one with more friends / better verbal skills won? What if there was an external influence, like everyone thought there was 90% chance X was telling the truth and Y was the trust-breaker, but Y happened to be sultan’s cousin and you didn’t want sultan to hear that you were badmouthing his relative? (An analogy today could be that Y has lots of money and great lawyers, and is going to sue you for slander if you talk about things that happened between you two without witnesses.)
Compared to individuals, companies tend to be more deliberate about whom to trust. Successful companies spend large resources trying to predict how people will behave if they are included in the company trust network. Recruiters look at resumes, do tests, interviews, ask for referrals – in short, gather data points that help them model the future behavior of the person applying. Are they trustworthy? Will they give mutual aid to their colleagues? Are they skilled?
Yet, companies are famous for being moral mazes. The referrals are often limited to “yes, this person worked here, in this position”. Managers seem mostly unaware of which team members contribute most, or which help each other. So I’d say that companies wish to have information about whom to trust, but their actual mechanism to find this out is a cargo cult.
Trust often not being transitive is an important point that I had overlooked. Thanks a lot for that.
And I am fascinated with the pros and cons of N:N networks and 1:N networks at the moment. My model for thinking about them have been networks with a common border vs boundryless networks. (I say boundryless networks because 1:N networks will overlap with other 1:N networks creating a sort of diffuse bounryless whole). An upside of N:N is coordination. You can get a lot more done by forging a more definite community—say union, that negotiates on your behalf. But there is a lot of administrative overhead, and a higher risk that the network gets coopted by someone with a hunger for power. 1:N networks are more flexible, and it is easier to shed sociopaths even when large parts of N are fooled by them. And as long as trust is slightly transitive they might scale better, thanks to not having to deal with increasing coordination problems and consensus processes etc.
And yes, my description of companies is highly idealized (sort of based on Lazslo Bock’s descriptions of how they do recruiting at Google). I don’t think most companies fit the description. But compared to individuals, they at least has a mental framework for deliberately thinking about who to grant trust.
Seems like “trust that scales” is an important social technology that most of us have lost. Perhaps the population got too large and disconnected, and the mechanism didn’t scale enough. (Two random medieval Islamic merchants probably had a friend in common. Two random people in New York City probably don’t.) But sometimes you can still use it, if you limit yourself to a small social group such as the Amish, or the upper class.
I already know from experience that trust is not transitive. There are people whom I trust, but I don’t trust their judgment about whom else they trust. Sometimes this seems correlated; some people seem too naive to lie, but also too naive to spot a liar. Sometimes they place too much trust in their group, but the group is a mixed bag of true believers (who probably are trustworthy, when it comes to helping their fellow believers) and opportunists (who are mostly there to exploit the true believers and their connections). Sadly, at least once I have introduced an untrustworthy person to my group of friends, because I failed to notice the red flags. Similarly, I got burned by trusting a person that multiple(!) trustworthy people have recommended to me. (I still trust the people who made the recommendation, and they regret the mistake they made.)
I think there is a great difference between N:N networks (the Amish; the Islamic merchants) and 1:N networks (Johnson and his contacts). The latter are relatively easier to build, but they will not survive you. I wonder whether a mixed model is possible, consisting of an N:N connected core, and a set of people who are individually connected to the core but not to each other. This seems like a possible intermediate step between a 1:N network and a N:N network; you gradually keep adding people to the core.
How did the Islamic merchants resolve situations where merchant X claimed that merchant Y violated the rules, but merchant Y claimed that merchant X violated the rules? The one with more friends / better verbal skills won? What if there was an external influence, like everyone thought there was 90% chance X was telling the truth and Y was the trust-breaker, but Y happened to be sultan’s cousin and you didn’t want sultan to hear that you were badmouthing his relative? (An analogy today could be that Y has lots of money and great lawyers, and is going to sue you for slander if you talk about things that happened between you two without witnesses.)
Yet, companies are famous for being moral mazes. The referrals are often limited to “yes, this person worked here, in this position”. Managers seem mostly unaware of which team members contribute most, or which help each other. So I’d say that companies wish to have information about whom to trust, but their actual mechanism to find this out is a cargo cult.
Trust often not being transitive is an important point that I had overlooked. Thanks a lot for that.
And I am fascinated with the pros and cons of N:N networks and 1:N networks at the moment. My model for thinking about them have been networks with a common border vs boundryless networks. (I say boundryless networks because 1:N networks will overlap with other 1:N networks creating a sort of diffuse bounryless whole). An upside of N:N is coordination. You can get a lot more done by forging a more definite community—say union, that negotiates on your behalf. But there is a lot of administrative overhead, and a higher risk that the network gets coopted by someone with a hunger for power. 1:N networks are more flexible, and it is easier to shed sociopaths even when large parts of N are fooled by them. And as long as trust is slightly transitive they might scale better, thanks to not having to deal with increasing coordination problems and consensus processes etc.
And yes, my description of companies is highly idealized (sort of based on Lazslo Bock’s descriptions of how they do recruiting at Google). I don’t think most companies fit the description. But compared to individuals, they at least has a mental framework for deliberately thinking about who to grant trust.