Transcript for the Two Talks About Trust discussion.
Please note that transcript has only been spell-checked, the grammar has not been edited. Also the transcript may only be for part of the discussion.
I agree with what she said about trustworthy. We don’t need to waste time on building trust, if you spend that time, it wastes a lot of energy. You should spend time on determining trustworthiness. Once you’ve got in the group, you can show your vulnerability and then create the relationships
—in Taiwan the banking system, every time I have to log in my bank account, it’s so frustrating. Id, password, that stupid identification code, to wire money to people, I have to do it again. Why do I have to go through he same f—g gate again.
Tell me why?
—security?
—but I already did that?
—is it they worry that you’ve been replaced at the computer by a bad guy in the process.
—but this doesn’t happen with Chase bank in the US. I find it so frustrating?
—why do we have to build these systems to block the trustworthy people?
—like airport security
—I can see why people change behavior because people break the law, there’s no way back, but there’s a lot of duplication and not really logical.
—I’m just wondering, your process is about security?
—yes, but it’s about that you enter it once, and then you’re in
—but isn’t it more secure if you add more passwords/
—more secure or more burden
—so for you it’s 2 times secure, 3 times, more secure 4 times very secure.
—I know it’s a convenience issue, but why does it bother you so much? Is it because it’s a burden? Or
—but it’s about protection.
—is it really more protective, to have so many gates? I just want to wire money, it should be more simple
—the bank needs to take the risk for the customer, not the customer proves themselves to the bank.
—so the purpose is to lower their risk, not really security
—so Taiwanese banks are more willing to irritate their customers in pursuit of lower risk, than US banks.
—I think banks are just trying to protect themselves. They don’t not trust you, but they have to lower their risk. If you want to wire money, they ask you why
—it’s intrusive.
—but in some way they try to protect you too, because some old people got scammed, and just wrongly wired money to sib else, and can’t get the money
I feel like, “don’t discriminate” isn’t the right thing to say. It’s more like “use better criteria for discriminate”
Differentiated trust
Aspects of behavior that’s trusted
Judging trustworthiness
Competence reliability honesty
Trustworthy is the measure, trust is the response.
Systems of accountability, do they work?
Trust is given, not built
You give them the basis for giving you trust
Evidence of trustworthiness
—make yourself vulnerable to the other party = you have confidence in what you’re claiming
—
How do you give adequate useful and simple evidence that you’re trustworthy.
Video 2
—Do you trust old people more than young people
—are they more trustworthy?
—well it’s a predjudice?
—and also she’s wearing makeup, it makes her look more artificial and less real to me
Tech creates mechanisms of trust?
Trust in institutions is collapsing?
Trust leap
Definition of trust: risk assessment: how likely will things go right?
How it empowers us to connect with other people
“a confident relationships to the unknown”
Cope with uncertainty, place faith in strangers, keep moving forward
Trust stack: 1. Trust the idea 2. Have confidence in the platform 3. Decide whether the other person is trustworthy.
Trust enables change and communication?
Local
Institutional
Distributed
Local —tight knit personal relationships, personal accountability-based
Institutional = black box systems of authority. Legal regulation, insurance.
Commission-based
Trust in corporations is declining?
News Corp, Catholic Church, Panama Papers, Uber
Institutional trust not designed for digital age?
Towels: hotels v airbnb
Accountability?
The way trust flows thru society is changing?
11:43 opaque vs. transparent
Blockchain
“chain of being sure about things”
Spreadsheets filled with assets, stocks, rights to a song etc.
Whenever sthg moves to somewhere else, it’s publicly recorded on the blockchain.
No need for 3rd party intermediary to facilitate the exchange. Direct verification. Don’t have to trust the other person like before?
Trust shifts happens, and then it’s not easily reversible
Customers say they just need a name, photo and rating, they feel safer.
“inclusive, transparent, and accountable”
I pretty much agree with her opinion, of future trust system, the new system is not working perfectly, the example is people to people uber, airbnb, the way it goes is to trust the stranger. After that you have to review each other.
—it’s the accountability.
—same thing with Uber, I use it a lot in Taiwan US and London. I like to chat with them, I feel safer. But I take taxi, I will keep silent. You won’t know their name, their opinion
—you feel less safe in the taxi because you don’t feel you can chat with them—kind of yeah.
—do you thin it’s a class divide, because the uber drivers are more likely to be middle class? They’re rich enough to own a car.
—yeah maybe. I took an uber, she talked the whole time, I felt so joyful in the ride.
—taxis are accountable through the government systems
—uber is accountable through the internal ratings system.
—you swipe it and it’s done.
—easier to use systems will be used more.
Institutional Trust
Opaque = you don’t what the criteria is
Closed = there’s no input
Centralized = better than distributed?
Licensed = certification = accountability
Top-down = authority
Distributed Trust
Transparent
Inclusive = randoms have input (limited input)
Decentralized/Distributed = better or not than centralized?
Accountable = internal review systems for users and service providers, but not necessarily for the system as a whole
Bottom-up = grassroots
What conditions make these better than others?
Institutional is better for Credit system. Because you need them to be private. Only big corporations should have access to your data.
Also they need to be centralized so that regardless of what country, your history is accessible and accountable
But for social media, maybe distributed trust is better for people to see who you are.
We as humans are complicated. We treat some people nice and other people bad. And there’s no score
Well, until china rolls out that program.
I think this question comes back down to the definition of trust.
Would you be willing to take a blablacar with stranger
So it’s not really about trust. It’s actually about price.
—people are willing to trust for the bargain
—they’re willing to take the risk to save the money.
—so does that mean the economic situation all over the world is getting worse?
—yes I think so
—I think it’s about age
—average age, 31
—so they’re young people, willing to take a risk, and no money
—but not only young people will do airbnb, middle aged people too
—seniors most likely to be hosts, and visitors more likely to be young
Ideally I agree we only have to trust people who are trustworthy, but that's too simple and not practical in the real world. Do you have the experience to have relationship with people you don’t trust? So maybe you have to do business with people you don’t trust, or be colleagues with people you don’t trust, or you have relative relationship, you don’t trust them, but you still get together with them. So do you have difficulty of dealing with people that you don’t trust?
—I trust people, but trust them to do what? Be friends with someone, but maybe don’t do business with them
—ok, but a more difficult question is being forced to do business with people you don’t trust
—what’s your question
—how do you deal with this situation? In your situation, you have the choice to not do business with them?
—all businesses are in this situation, who do they trust more to delay payment, they have to do the deposit first
—there’s a lot of mechanisms built to get around this
—lots of businesses, you can’t trust them, about payment
—you can trust them to do the service, but not pay you
—so this one company they made a huge spreadsheet, and categorized their clients into different categories. A is delayed payment, b is check, c is cash only
—everyone has to find their level, bottom feeder, quality relationship
Well I think, it’s really hard to see that you can trust more with people that you know, or you can trust less the people that you don’t know at this time. Because we have so many new technologies, and we can see that people trust strangers more. But on the other hand, kids got hurt from family members more often than from strangers. So it’s really hard to determine, who we can trust more. And I think we are living in a more advanced society now, but on the financial transaction, we build more and more regulations, or security gates, to make things “secure” to make your money more secure, but somehow I think we missed our good old days, when financial transactions is more, is easier to do.
—because it’s in person?
—yeah. Now, even though you do your banking thing in person, they still don’t trust you as much
—yeah I agree
—but what I want to say in the end is, the criteria we judge the person by, if they are trustworthy, it’s still similar. We trust them on their behavior what they do, but not with what they say.
—do you think we judge the gap between what they say and what they do?
—we trust the person based on what they do, not based on what they say.
I think that these two videos are a good pick, because it made me think about the trust system, especially passing those hardship times in the financial crisis, lots of people were cheated by mr. madoff, enron.. When the institution is a big liar, who can you trust. It crashed the confidence of the people toward big corps and gvt as well.
—I feel like they didn’t
—I know they make more rules, so that’s why trump came up, because he was like, fuck the regulations. But the truth is, from this perspective, how can we trust the people who built the trust system? If the people are corrupt? So maybe we need the new person-to-person trust system to come up? Maybe the good reviews become your credit, and that credit becomes your fortune, so your ability to borrow money is about those reviews
Right now, if you’re in the in group, you have the golden parachute, if you’re one of the golden boys.
—decentralized, you can be easily blackmailed by bullies
—centralized, you can be easily by the people in charge
—so where’s the happy medium? No one has solved this yet.
—you honk -1, so now nobody in shanghai honks, it’s so nice
—so the public benefit, but
—but it creates a horror feeling
—I’m interested seeing how it goes
—yeah but I’m looking at it through my fingers tho
So isn’t trust basically a reason to take a risk? You don’t decide to do something because you have trust. Choosing the risk creates the feeling of trust.
But with like, these sharing economy things, maybe it’s just, like, worth the risk, to save the money. So it’s easy enough to take the risk because it’s cheaper, and because it’s cheaper you keep using it, and then get used to the paradigm?
It’s a bullshit rationalization for a way to price people out.
—but actually uber is not really cheaper than taxis anymore.
But for me, even before I watched these two videos, I held the belief that trust is about accountability, that accountability is what creates trustworthiness, and neither of these videos changed my mind about that.
So maybe institutional trust is eroding, not because we have some better model, but because our institutions don’t feel accountable enough to us?
Accoutnabil8ity is more important the bigger the risk is.
Does trustworthiness mean accountability?
We have a veneer of accountability, we can rate the services, but we can’t tell the company they’re doing it wrong. They’re just as unaccountable as any other institution.
Individuals don’t have leverage over institutions and that’s part of what makes us not trust them.
