Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Ive always truly believed that gullibility was one of humanity’s biggest, most exploitable weaknesses, if not the biggest. You can fake your way into almost anything with confidence and basic acting. I’m reminded of the folk wisdom about simply holding a clipboard and acting like you belong can get you into private areas of 90% of companies. All the fraud people fall for, all the scams, obvious phishing, you’d think we’d start educating people to be more skeptical/cynical but it keeps happening.

When I was much, much younger back in the 90s and obsessed with video games, I faked my way into one of the major industry gatherings which I won’t name, simply by pretending to be a “games journalist” and acting the part. A pack of fun looking business cards, a fake web site, and a cheap silk shirt was all it took. It’s incedible what people believe if you don’t break the air of sincerity. This was a harmless prank, but I can see how tempting it is to use this power for evil, and it’s evidenced by the fact that so much fraud continues to be successful.

How, besides education, do we turn off this trust-by-default gene? It’s really an evolutionary dead end.

Trust-by-default is pretty much the definition of social capital, which is thought to be incredibly important for a functioning society. Basically, it's more efficient to trust people and be exploited once in a while, than to never trust anyone, which would lead to high transaction costs for any social interaction. Short intro by Robert Putnam, the big cheese in the field: http://robertdputnam.com/bowling-alone/social-capital-primer...

Exactly. The other day I was carrying 2 relatively heavy boxes (furniture; I just moved into a new place) and suddenly a guy comes up to me and asks if he can help me. At first I was kind of flabbergasted, but after a second I was like 'he's just trying to be nice' and gave him one of the boxes. We carried it until we arrived at my apartment complex and had a nice chat along the way. When we arrived we exchanged numbers, since I learned he was new in the city and looking to meet new people and improve his language skills.

If my mum knew about this she'd probably think I'm crazy, being afraid of someone running off with her stuff. But in the end I think "trust-by-default" is a good way of going about life and meeting new people. Also, there's still gut-feeling. Maybe I'm an outlier there but I'm pretty quick in determining if someone is being sincere or just sweet-talking me to get what he/she wants.

> Maybe I'm an outlier there but I'm pretty quick in determining if someone is being sincere or just sweet-talking me to get what he/she wants.

Personally, I feel the same way. But it's illogical. What data do you have that you're good at ferreting the genuine from the not?

Millions and millions of interactions accumulating into a well-oiled intuition.

Mostly likely that he has not been completely duped yet. That has the effect of quickly realigning your trust meter.

That may realign it, but it doesn't mean you're good at it. Maybe Joe-Z fails in the other direction, writes off tons of people as untrustworthy (incorrectly) for no reason, and hasn't realized it.

>writing off tons of people as untrustwothy...

I think that‘s what most people do. I‘m actually waiting for me to be „completely duped“ one time and deliberately exposing myself to this risk. However, my experience so far has lead me to believe: Most people are really nice and the few that aren‘t shouldn‘t really be tainting your interactions with others that you just happen to not know yet.

I of course don‘t have data to back this up. But, I think, a lot of it comes down to how you approach these sorts of situations. According to my experience, how open you are - and stay - in kind-of-sketchy situations will get you a long way in dealing with people that others might have just written off as „someone trying to scam me“.

That actually reminded me of a really cool poscast episode I listened to this week:

https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/long-distance

(A guy trying to get to the bottom of an indian call-center scam, leading to all sorts of pleasant interactions along the way)

The second part of that episode is in no way pleasant - in particular when they met the two scammers at the bar. Their flippancy could have very easily led to a much worse ending than it did.

https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/103-long-distance-part...

I know, I know... I wasn‘t referring to this part as being pleasant :)

This is an interesting point, and is basically the premise of online dating apps/websites - it's better to trust that things have a chance of working out rather than not trying.

And honestly, what's the damage of the exploit in these cases? Someone who doesn't belong gets to be vaguely "part of things" for an event; that price, compared to the price of locking someone who does belong out, seems low.

> Trust-by-default is pretty much the definition of social capital, which is thought to be incredibly important for a functioning society.

Not all societies are the same. Trust by default is a luxury in many parts of the world. Typically the rule of law is just non-existent in these places.

Which why the parent qualified "for a functioning society".

You can have a low trust society that still functions. They have existed for thousands of years. They exist today.

"Functioning" implies some quality criteria beyond mere existence...

We don't look at a law of the jungle society and say "this is a functioning society" (even if technically it might be true: it does perform some functions).

I'm not going to categorize a war torn country that's in chaos as functioning. You can have a low trust society and still have a good economy as well as production

Which places, and is this personal experience?

Every place around the world I've been to has been incredibly hospitable -- and the more besieged by war, or poverty, the more hospitable places tend to be. More so than your average street in the USA.

As a foreigner, the types of interactions you have may not be reflective of interactions that require high trust. Such as selling/purchasing land, dealing with police and crimes, paying for large amounts of labor such as in construction or ordering large amounts of supplies.

It's much easier to do business in the US/Europe, you can just put your credit card number in and stuff shows up at your door step, even if it's in the tens of thousands or more in value. Obviously, you can get taken in the modernized countries too, but much less and if you do there are legal avenues.

In poorer countries, you have to be a lot more careful who you deal with and need a lot of references because people have experiences getting burned too often. Any place that openly gives bribes to cops (I know tons, usually they are in poverty) also illustrate low trust. Hospitality doesn't display the deep trust that makes doing business in places like the US/Europe easier.

Yes.

For personal reasons, I'm not going to be specific. I'm just going to say many parts of Asia; just not Japan. It's not perfect and there are probably better measures, but this map gives you an idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index

As lotsofpulp has already mentioned, your experience will be drastically different if you're just visiting and if you're not a native. I lived in Asia and I'm also native. My family is still there, and I visit from time to time. If you haven't conducted business or dealt with law enforcement, it's hard to have a full picture; especially if you're just passing by.

There's a lot more depth to your insight than you may know. My favorite book of all time is "The Evolution of Cooperation." The book basically takes a biology question, and uses basic game theory and simulations to explore the idea of cooperation between species. The remarkable thing is that given certain evolutionary parameters, the "cooperate/trust first, and just retaliate if you've been cheated on" strategy is incredibly robust.

I'd argue that what you call "trust-by-default" is an aspect of social intelligence that also enables a lot of very productive relationships. It has its downsides, of course, but I think you'd find that by removing that part of our psychology you'd end up with a miserable excuse for a society.

Agreed; Grice's Maxims/The Cooperative Principle suggest that communication would not even be possible without these kinds of generous assumptions. And I don't think it's getting too quacky to extend that premise to society in general. Since it's so expensive to verify true intentions, when it's even possible at all (which, generally at least, in language, it's not), we have to sort of get by hoping that most of the time most people are being mostly honest in order to successfully communicate.

Of course, we all flout these maxims daily, to varying degrees, from white lies to outright perjury. But viewed as a Tragedy of the Commons, there are people who will advance themselves by deliberately and consistently flouting them, to their own calculated advantage.

Trust-by-default is a consequence of the fact that enough people don't exploit norms, don't lie. We're in no need of turning off the gene (assuming it's nature, not nurture, which I'm not so sure about), since if society found itself in a lie-dominant state (as opposed to truth-dominant), we wouldn't be as trusting anymore. (It's self-correcting already, without any need for manual override.)

It'd also argue that it's a lot harder for the majority of people to convincingly act and lie than you think (especially when they don't feel desperate or have grown up in a safe environment that doesn't force them to learn how to behave contrary to their natural instincts).

I don't trust your anecdote; I think you just made it up, since you have not presented any proof.

I think you are trying to prove a point by making up stories.

Therefore I distrust your conclusions and arguments, not only because I disagree with them, but because I distrust you.

(I'm testing out turning off my trust-by-default gene ;)

Good meta point! When you think about it, there is no really good reason to believe anything posted to a forum such as this, from anonymous people you don’t know. Yet we often do. Touché!

Do we "often" believe things stated by anonymous people with no evidence?

I'd suggest that I neither believe nor disbelieve things that are unconfirmed. Instead, I consider that an anonymous person said such things and later correlate it with other observations.

It's not necessary to prematurely declare something (even to yourself) to be true or false.

It's interesting that this went _beyond_ a prank. Almost the definition of "fake it until you make it."

I mean is it even faking it at that point? Or just pointing out how silly the whole thing is?

> you’d think we’d start educating people to be more skeptical/cynical but it keeps happening

I don't know... yes, these things happen all the time, but as an individual, 99.9% of your interactions are going to be mostly honest, and there IS a cost to being skeptical about every interaction (anger other people who you doubt, takes time, can lead you to miss opportunities, etc)

Are you so sure that the extra protection you get from being skeptical is worth all those little costs that add up?

Slightly OT, but House Of Games by David Mamet is a fantastic film that revolves around people playing confidence tricks on each other, and the film manages to play some pretty good confidence tricks on the viewer too. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093223/

I spent most of my 20s doing all kinds of things, from installing security cameras, to running cable, to on-site IT work - a lot of it in and around law enforcement (jails, police stations) - and I was often amazed at the kind of access you could get in some places just by showing up with some crimpers and a box of cat5 and telling the person up front that you're here for [whatever].

Like you said, in many situations if you just act like you know what you're doing no one will question you.

> do we turn off this trust-by-default gene? It’s really an evolutionary dead end.

Why is trust by default the dead end, and not people lying? Is being unarmed an evolutionary dead end as well, because one armed person can take advantage of an unarmed one?

Wouldn't the ideal world be one where you could trust everyone, rather than one where nobody trusts anyone? Why on earth would the latter be preferable?

The number of weaknesses we have are huge. Anyone you see at the top of any hierarchy has usually mastered taking advantage of some of them.

Here is just one collection - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

I think you are wrong in your assertion that this could be fixed by making people more cynical. I think this could be fixed by making the cost of verifying information very very low.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com