What does it mean to "trust someone"
Dec. 17th, 2013 11:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackIf you say you trust someone what does that mean? That you trust their integrity, not to deliberately take advantage of you? Or that you trust their competence? Or that you trust their self-knowledge of their own level of competence?
It seems a common sitcom moment that people take "trust" to mean, "if someone is important in your life, you must automatically believe everything that comes out of their mouth, however ridiculous". Which seems obviously a bad idea.
But I think I'm also worse-than-average at inferring whether or not I _should_ take something on trust, that someone hasn't explicitly stated.
It's like, suppose someone offers to post an important letter for you. I think it's reasonable to assume they wouldn't take it as far as the postbox, then choose to crumple it up and throw it away instead of posting it. But is it reasonable to assume they'll REMEMBER to post it? If they SAY they'll remember, is it reasonable to assume they're right? Do you have the same idea of how important it is that it's posted TODAY? For some people, it goes without saying that DO know how, and doubting that is insulting their competence. But it's also true that basically everyone THINKS they can post a letter, but many of us also assume "oh, I forgot and did it tomorrow" or "yes, but I spilled some beer on it" are equally good. So, I always want to clarify, "do you actually have good evidence for the level of certainty I wanted, or did you just assume that you could do it 'well enough'"? But that always comes across as "don't trust you", because we assume that we SHOULD be competent enough, and someone doubting us is assuming (a) we're untrustworthy or (b) we're so stupid we don't know whether we can perform a common day-to-day action or not :(
It seems a common sitcom moment that people take "trust" to mean, "if someone is important in your life, you must automatically believe everything that comes out of their mouth, however ridiculous". Which seems obviously a bad idea.
But I think I'm also worse-than-average at inferring whether or not I _should_ take something on trust, that someone hasn't explicitly stated.
It's like, suppose someone offers to post an important letter for you. I think it's reasonable to assume they wouldn't take it as far as the postbox, then choose to crumple it up and throw it away instead of posting it. But is it reasonable to assume they'll REMEMBER to post it? If they SAY they'll remember, is it reasonable to assume they're right? Do you have the same idea of how important it is that it's posted TODAY? For some people, it goes without saying that DO know how, and doubting that is insulting their competence. But it's also true that basically everyone THINKS they can post a letter, but many of us also assume "oh, I forgot and did it tomorrow" or "yes, but I spilled some beer on it" are equally good. So, I always want to clarify, "do you actually have good evidence for the level of certainty I wanted, or did you just assume that you could do it 'well enough'"? But that always comes across as "don't trust you", because we assume that we SHOULD be competent enough, and someone doubting us is assuming (a) we're untrustworthy or (b) we're so stupid we don't know whether we can perform a common day-to-day action or not :(
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Date: 2013-12-19 05:44 pm (UTC)Being trusted to not immediately commit all sorts of antisocial acts is pretty much a requirement for getting along in society; an institution that is observed to refuse to trust people on the basis of various categories may find themselves the recipient of some very interesting lawsuits. So on that level I think there is a right to be trusted.
However I'm very wary of people talking about "a right to ____" where the consequences of taking it seriously on an individual level could be pretty dodgy. As a person who has passed the age of viability, I have a right to life, and nobody gets to up and stab me because that would violate my right to life. That works out pretty well on the individual level -- society in general isn't allowed to deprive me of my life, and any random person isn't allowed to up and do that either. (Granted I live in a country with the death penalty, so my society would be allowed to do that IFF I'd been established in court to have done something sufficiently heinous. Misgivings about said legal system aside.) Trust only works if individuals are allowed to make a call like "This thing would affect my life badly if the person turned out to be not trustworthy; I have nothing solid but I have a bad feeling." There has to be a lot of second-guessing when that individual is making a decision that will be binding for an institution, but stuff like the right to not have your university make racist fuckhead policies already exists, and is much more concrete than a "right to be trusted".