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Design from Trust

(draft) A hopeful path out of our current polycrisis.

Alas, for years we've been designing our systems and institutions from a basis of mistrust of the average human. This has led to a bunch of systems we take for granted that are coercive and not very effective. My favorite example is the compulsory education system.

Outcomes would be so much better if we started with an assumption that most people — not all people — have good intent. And that if we optimize the systems we design for the people with good intent and worry about the bad actors later, we can provide terrific solutions to a whole series of problems that have been dogging us for decades.

If you've been watching the news of late, this is clearly a long shot. At least at the global scale.

But at the small, local scale, it's been happening all over the place in tiny increments.

Here are some places to start understanding Design from Trust:

I'm writing a NeoBook about Design from Trust . It's nowhere near done, but you are in it now.

This article is cross-posted on Substack here, Medium here and LinkedIn here. It's also here in my Brain.

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