Not Naïve Trust
(draft) We're not all trustworthy, but we're definitely not all bad actors.
In simpler times, when we lived in villages and didn't travel much from them, we grew up knowing whom to trust and not to trust. A few lucky people still live in villages like that, but for most humans, those times are long past, and as a result, we've had to figure out how to deal with strangers.
It turns out that over many, many years we — a complicated, collective, multi-layered we, crusty with history — started designing our institutions around the assumption that pretty much everyone might be a bad actor. As a result, we created systems that invite mistrust, disconnect us from responsibility and one another, and have been dragging civilization down.
Design from Trust is interesting and needed because it seems we-many took this opposite path. Not Naïve Trust is one of its core principles.
We all know there are bad actors. It's just that their numbers are smaller than most of us fear. But worse: When you design a system as if everyone's a bad actor, you
Design from Trust is not meant to imply that one should give blind trust to everyone, or that naïve trust is the way to go. Far from it.
Here's what I posted in 2016:
Not Naïve Trust pairs nicely with Be Undefended, Not Defenseless and Design from Trust Requires Thoughtful Design, and Trust Is Cheaper Than Control.
This article is cross-posted on Substack here, Medium here and LinkedIn here. It's also here in my Brain.