Credit: befresh
The Gift of Trust
Trust is one of the greatest inherited gifts of humankind. It is a glue of sorts; it makes society, and, therefore, civilization, possible.
In our prehistoric past, we trusted our fellow villagers enough that we could coexist in proximity without killing each other - or, at least, without killing each other to such a degree that would’ve made such cohabitation impossible or impractical. Perhaps we were inclined to do so because these others, mostly our kin, looked a lot like us. Or, maybe we were simply more biologically predisposed to trust, because communities with trust outcompeted communities without it.
You might argue, to the contrary, that trust derives primarily from logic. Sometimes, the incentives line up with how we would like others to act. People tend not to murder each other, for example, because they don’t want to be punished by society. As a result, most people walk calmly down the street, instead of run from one location to the other for fear of being killed. Or take the philosophy of mutually assured destruction, which has kept us safe from nuclear annihilation - so far. Nations do not nuke each other - that is, other nuclear-armed nations - because they understand that the response would likely be to retaliate in kind; and there are no winners in nuclear winter.
Whatever the reason, trust is something we tend to do.
Yes, there are many contexts in which we tend not to trust others, especially if we don’t know someone or if they hold no position of authority or influence. Yet, in our modern lives, trust is indispensable. All the important interpersonal relationships we have involve trust: our parents, our children, our friends, and our romantic partners. Not all of us trust our romantic partners. There are, for instance, a plethora of dating apps and opportunities in the real world to potentially fight against. And we can’t be with our significant other 24/7 - nor would we want to. It wouldn’t take too long to cheat either. So, what do we do? Well, we either learn to trust our partners, or we leave. Tragically, some do neither. That’s a choice, too. To trust someone is to be vulnerable because our trust may prove unfounded. There is beauty in that vulnerability. It is easy to see why we often trust the ones we love; they have the metaphorical key to our hearts. And when they validate our trust, by being faithful and loving back, it’s like a reaffirmation of our love for them.
Further, when we lose our trust in others, we tend to move away from them, from society. The glue degrades. Ted Kaczinski comes to mind. It’s not that we necessarily become dangerous. But we become less useful to society. I’m pro-society. Collectively we solve problems better than individually. And, biologically at least, most, if not all, of us need each other.
The Problem of Trust
We trust because we have no better alternative. It’s almost synonymous with faith; we can’t know everything, so we trust. I’m not advocating for the elimination of trust. As stated, it is terribly useful. I do believe, however, that there are some circumstances in which the reduction of the need for trust, where it would be possible and practical, would help to create more efficient systems.
Jan 6, 2021, is a good example of the problem since government is the most powerful institution we implicitly trust. Most of us had trusted in the electoral system, that the other side would accept the results, in the integrity of democracy. We survived, yes. But the problem of Trump was obvious - to me and to many others. I understand some have found him to be charismatic. People like confident people, especially if they’re rich and famous. Social media played a key role, too. Tristan Harris, former design ethicist at Google, blames social media algorithms for making people more susceptible to believe in the Big Lie in the first place and for greater polarization. Trump had said, clearly, that he wouldn’t accept the election results if they didn’t proclaim him victor. Before the election, Trump was trying to stop mail-in ballots from happening by rigging the post office, knowing that mail-ins lean Democrat). He had been building the case for years, in fact, in the way an insecure person, knowing he would lose, would do. We should have all seen it coming. And yet many of us, including the Capitol Police, were taken by surprise on Jan. 6. Trump and his sycophants came terrifyingly close to fucking up this democracy thing. I don’t know what would’ve happened if the rioters had gotten their hands on Mike Pence, who they said they wanted to hang, or Nancy Pelosi.
And what saved us? It seems our democracy was kept intact by a relatively small number of people. What would’ve happened, for example, if the man who shot Ashli Babbitt had been an avid Trump supporter instead? What if there were more cops on Trump’s side that day? What if the Georgia officials Trump had tried to coerce had given Trump what he wanted? What if Mike Pence had done what Trump had asked and refused to certify the election results? It’s not clear how many more people Trump would have had to fire or replace or coerce to get what he wanted, but it’s not absurd to think he could’ve done it with just a bit more effort. He certainly tried. And now we have in front of us, for future wannabe dictators, the blueprint: How to Destroy Democracy.
One thing seems clear: leaving democracy up to the character of people who we vote for based on a popularity contest isn’t ideal. Put another way, the necessity of trust in individuals who govern us, in place of something better, is the problem. The President can say he has no desire to destroy democracy; it would be better if such a thing were not possible, or as unlikely and impractical as possible.
Toward a Solution
In considering a solution to this intractable problem, I draw my inspiration from two key sources, both from computer science: zero trust architecture and Bitcoin.
Zero trust architecture (ZTA) is based on the principle of “trust but verify” (also: “Never trust, always verify”). It’s a cybersecurity approach that seeks to eliminate the need for trust and instead seeks out to validate all interactions. The problem ZTA identifies is that organizations’ networks have tended to assume that everything inside its corporate walls should be implicitly trusted, making it easy for malicious actors to move freely and access sensitive materials once they’re on the inside. Because many organizations today don’t have a clearly defined perimeter, due to the advent of the cloud, mobile devices, and IoT, ZTA seeks to protect a corporation’s network from anywhere and at any time.
Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator of Bitcoin, was largely motivated by the problem of trust, too - in his case, within financial transactions. He wrote: “While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust-based model. ... What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.” How does Bitcoin resolve the problem of the trusted third party? Instead of “the fate of the entire money system” depending on who runs the mint, with “every transaction having to go through them, just like a bank. ... transactions must be publicly announced [with] . . . a system for participants to agree on a single history of the order in which they were received”; so, the payee gets proof of “the time of each transaction . . . [when] the majority of nodes . . . [agree] it was the first received.” It is resolved through transparency, through community, and through math. (More on this below.)
These two key developments demonstrate the difficulty and complexity of the issue at hand – bad trust – and, therefore, the need to be comprehensive in a solution.
Firstly, ZTA suggests an obvious utility in ensuring election integrity and efficiency, making it practically impossible for people to say they won when they didn’t. I do not see any substantial reason why we couldn’t vote digitally. Companies have endeavored to ensure you are who you say you are for decades and have many useful and still evolving techniques, such as two-factor authentication. ZTA would further help us identify critical components of the network and develop strong methods for user authentication. For example, this approach becomes stronger with more users. This means more verification, which means a safer network, which means less trust is needed in individuals, though, ironically, more trust will be gained in the process, which is vital; trust is the currency of democracy. This idea is not new; ZTA is already being advocated for use in this way.
Secondly, when possible, decreasing the size and scope of government is generally a good thing. Just like Bitcoin addresses the problem of the middleman by getting rid of him; whenever possible and practical, removing the need to trust in government officials is imperative. Obviously, many of them lie. It’s also clear that we are not trying to create oligarchs. We’re trying to live happy, meaningful lives. Bureaucracy is slow and inefficient. While there may always be a need for cops or judges, there might not always be a need for a large body of usually aloof individuals who get rich from their insider knowledge and donors, and, therefore, do not have a strong incentive to represent their constituents’ needs.
Direct democracy, having people vote for the laws they want, is one more direct path. If implemented at scale, it should encourage greater awareness and participation from the public, instead of trust in charismatic leaders. And with our modern technology, it isn’t particularly difficult to do. It should eliminate the problem of gridlock in Congress. And with ranked-choice voting, we can better make sure each vote matters, that the best option is chosen. In turn, we’d need less red tape: fewer political bodies to count votes and implement elections, generally. Obviously, such an approach would take time and some convincing. We should be talking about this. Perhaps some laws make more sense than others to vote on directly. Even so, we would be moving in the right direction: away from a bloated, slow, inefficient, and generally untrustworthy government.
Finally, one futuristic idea is to replace government, the middleman, altogether with some sort of super algorithm, an artificial intelligence (AI). Again, let’s look at Bitcoin. Algorithms enable Bitcoin transactions from one person to another without either needing a third party, or to reveal their identities, while, at the same time, enabling both parties involved to trust in the system because the double spending problem is nearly impossible to occur; in other words, they don’t need to trust each other.
AI is certainly a work in progress. But progress involves our greatest minds, community, math, and science. AI, like our children, inherits our values; we just must be careful about what our values are. Tristan Harris has brilliantly shown us, time and again, the innate problems in having powerful algorithms spurred by seemingly innocuous incentives, such as profit seeking. He writes of one powerful example, “YouTube’s recommendation algorithms, which determine 70% of daily watch time for billions of people, “suggest” what are meant to be similar videos but actually drive viewers to more extreme, more negative, or more conspiratorial content because that’s what keeps them on their screens longer.”
We must be careful. We could get this wrong. We should take our time. Bitcoin is inherently open source. It is built by community. The best ideas win. It is a good metaphor for a more hopeful future. With all our problems, we often look at technology or government to save us. These things are tools. We need tools. But we won’t get everything right. If we can be as transparent as possible, however, and increase trust in the governing system overall, by decreasing the need to trust, where possible and practical, then we can move humanity in a better direction.
No man is an island, said Donne. We rely on each other. We trust each other. And that’s a beautiful and necessary thing. It’s nice to feel you can leave your door open because you believe that nothing bad will happen. It would be better, though, if you knew, as much as it is possible to know, that nothing could.