The Evolution of Trust

Sorry, I truly forget whether I have posted about this, but a friend sent it to me again. I remember going through the entire game and finding it very interesting, and also a good explanation for trust. All sorts of people talk about how empathy was necessary to build tribe cohesion, etc. so that people could trust each other to stop killing each other and cooperate, but I wonder. Try the game out and let me know what you think.

Also, don't forget I'm in Oregon in May and Hawaii in June, if anyone wants to meet up.

Here is the game: http://ncase.me/trust/

For some background on game theory, including perhaps the most popular, the Prisoner's Dilemma:

Trust as Explained by Game Theory

This was an interesting page/exercise sent to me via Twitter applying the concepts of game theory to the generation and maintenance of trust.

People no longer trust each other. Why? And how can we fix it? An interactive guide to the game theory of trust: http://ncase.me/trust/

It takes like 20-30 minutes to complete. At first I was turned off a little by the arbitrary constraints of the game, but they end up dealing with that issue later on -- so patience pays off! I've seen these models before, but it was interesting to apply it more directly to trust. Also, I hadn't seen the addition of mistakes/misunderstandings into the model before too. That has already changed the way I view others and the world. For instance (this might not make sense until you do the exercise), a friend of mine recently had an Amazon package fail to be delivered. She assumed that it was some shady neighbors stealing the package and was going to stop having any packages delivered, even though she has had like 20 successful package deliveries so far. I encouraged her to keep trying until she has another package go missing, just in case there was a mistake or other one off occurrence that shouldn't necessarily change her game playing strategy. It's a risky strategy maybe, but in her case she has no other convenient alternative for package delivery.

Without really remembering, I had applied essentially the "Diamond Rule" to this game. I think this worked ok (and probably works better with actual people than bots?), but it is true that in a situation in which there is a mistake, it can also compound a mistake into a global loss.

There's that phrase "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me". But this game suggests a more optimal rule, when mistakes are factored in: "Fool me once, ok, I take it on the chin. Fool me twice, shame on you with punishment."

How to Manipulate People

This was a good Lifehacker article on how to manipulate people (quick read, worth reading in its entirety). The following are the headings from the article along with my thoughts on each suggestion:

• Emotion vs. Logic: Appealing to emotion rather than logic in manipulation is a little bit of a no brainer. Not only do most people respond better to emotion than logic, irrational people often best (only?) respond to fear. 

• Master Your Own Emotions: Mastering your emotions means essentially two things -- being able to divorce your emotions from what is happening externally (look at this article for helpful suggestions of how) and being able to project the right emotions in the right circumstances to create the desired illusions. 

• Be Charming and Flirt Often: I love to flirt. I flirt with everyone. I used to flirt only with people that I could see myself wanting to seduce, but then the person who first called me a sociopath famously told me that she flirts with everyone, gay or straight because everyone likes positive attention everyone wants to be seduced.

• Overcome Trust Issues and Heal Doubt: Building trust with your target is often critical, see number 2 here (does Lifehacker read this blog? or have a sociopath on staff cluing them in?)

• Conceal Evil in Altruism: This step means pretty much what it says and is super popular with celebrities, billionaires and politicians.

• What to Do If You're Discovered: In addition to backpedaling and creating doubt in your target's mind as to whether you were actually manipulating them, I also suggest starting a counter insurgency campaign against them where you are spinning the message to favor you and disfavor them (Oliver North is a good example of this) if they're an enemy, or possibly proposing some sort of alliance if they're a friend or loved one (think Skyler White in Breaking Bad). Of course the best course of action is to prophylactically insure against this by building an actual, legitimate reputation for good (at least in certain areas) for people to cross-reference. 

Also, beware the anti-seducer, for they cannot be manipulated.

Substituting you for me

A pilot friend of mine was describing to a dilettante friend of ours the process of obtaining a pilot's license. He talked about what it means to "fly blind," or fly relying solely on the instruments, not being able to see anything out the windows of the cockpit, or at least not looking. Obviously you wouldn't want to fly blindly if you had the option to also see outside, but the point is that sometimes you don't have that option, or sometimes what you are seeing with your naked eye can be deceptive.

While he was describing the sort of psychological self-mastery it takes to ignore everything that you think you know about your situation and instead put all of your trust in fallible tinker toys of gauges (which you may not even understand how they operate), I couldn't help but think of the way I struggle to ignore meaningless but strong impulses or emotional hallucinations.

I have talked before about relying on a prosthetic moral compass to compensate for my lack of conscience. I have also talked about my understanding of the utility of trust. By that I mean, substituting someone else's judgment for my own -- particularly principled people I know who have managed to achieve a stable sort of success and happiness.

A small example of an exercise of trust involves a relative of mine. He is a lover of technology, a proud first adopter. I have never really been a gearhead of any sort, so I always have him choose my set-ups. He is not my advisor for buying/adopting tech type stuff, he actually makes decisions for me. I was talking with a work colleague the other day about it. I told him I admired his laptop, to which he replied I should just buy my own. I explained to him that my technologically more sophisticated relative hadn't told me I should/could, and that he makes all my tech decisions for me. When my colleague suggested that I just do it anyway, I realized he misunderstood the nature of me "trusting" someone else to make decisions for me. If I just bought whatever I wanted when I wanted, then he would no longer be making decisions for me, he would be making suggestions to which I could either follow or not follow, or at best he would be making demands that I could veto. That would defeat the whole point of me putting him in charge of that aspect of my life.

To the extent I believe that there is value in things like "faith" or "trust," it is that you ignore your own ideas about what you think you know and rely on something, not because it is infallible, but because it is a different sort of fallible than you. That's why I don't understand people who say they have faith in something, a religion perhaps, but only when it's convenient or it happens to coincide with how they would have chosen anyway. Maybe this is a downside to my personality, the ability and willingness to just follow blindly. I don't think it is always a good thing, and it certainly has its downsides (as does deciding yourself). But to the extent it is useful at all, I believe it is only in this way.

Trust

I've been meaning to write about trust for a while now, but thought I would just share a short note I once wrote to a loved one about it:

We were talking about trust last night and I was thinking about it after I left and more this morning. I used to be terrible at trust. I didn't even understand it. Growing up there wasn't really anything around to trust, so it didn't even enter my worldview until adulthood. But I eventually learned about trust and now I really rely on it. I have such a flexible personality, and am so easily entreated for good and bad, but I have a very strong desire to always do the right thing. So I try to surround myself with people I trust, and people whose opinions I trust. Because I am so easily influenced, I try to be very discriminating about what influences I surround myself with. I need people I trust, not just to keep their word, but to help me be my best self. I need people whom I trust will have my best interest at heart and whose judgment I trust, because one day I may substitute their judgment for my own -- and that takes a lot of trust. It's like being blind and having someone lead you. It's like knowing you're prone to hallucinations and trusting others to let you know what's real and what's not. It takes a lot for me to trust people, but I trust you. I trust you with my life.

Married to a murderer

This was an interesting article from a woman who was married to a known murderer (supposedly reformed), that apparently suffered from other "demons" that caused him to rape and almost kill two women one month into their marriage. It's an interesting tale if you have ever wondered how women could possibly be with someone who is so horrible but still not be aware of his true nature:

The Jason who'd been presented to me was not a man I'd ever met. He wasn't even the 18-year-old I'd tried to envision so many times and whom I'd come to accept as the correctional system's "best guy", someone who would never again pose a threat of violence. He was now a rapist.

He was now a rapist? I mean, you read her description and don't really think she's an idiot. But then she says something like this and you wonder, does she really think that he just suddenly became a different person? That this man is something that her own husband was not?