Friday, May 25, 2012

Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive

Posted by SecureTech

January 21, 2012

We don’t demand a background check on the plumber who shows up to fix the leaky sink. We don’t do a chemical analysis on food we eat. In the absence of personal relationships, we have no choice but to substitute confidence for trust, compliance for trustworthiness. This progression has enabled society to scale to unprecedented complexity, but has also permitted massive global failures. At the same time, too much cooperation is bad. Without some level of rule-breaking, innovation and social progr