Confidences are an interesting thing. Trust seems to be of paramount importance in a lot of contexts - business partnerships, romantic relationships, privileged relationships (i.e. client-lawyer), etc. But there also seems to be an inherent flaw in whether trust should exist in those contexts. People tend to be selfish, and unless the relationship is a truly symbiotic win-win situation for both parties, individuals will choose themselves at the expense of their relations. A parent's relationship with his or her child is probably the most frequent exception to the general rule, but even that one hardly sports a perfect batting average.
How we as a species deal with this problem of trust is interesting - the most "rational" methods seem to be independent research, historical statistics, and maybe third-party opinions. To illustrate,
A 70-year old billionaire is considering marrying Anna Nicole Smith without a prenup. He's convinced she's genuinely in love with him. His family, who at least should care more about his interests, tells him he's being foolish. What do billionaires tend to do? Look Anna in the eye, ask her if she loves him, and side with his gut.
Billionaire asks his lawyer for his advice - lawyer has a duty to tell him to get the damn prenup. But lawyers thinks about what he would get paid for writing a standard-form prenup, versus the possibilities of fees in a messy divorce (forgetting for the purpose of the analogy, the malpractice suit he should be hit with for doing this). How is billionaire supposed to trust his counsel?
With all the stress of the situation, billionaire goes to his psychiatrist for help and asks him for his best course of action. He's prescribed a veritable army of pills from prozac, to celexa, to zoloft. All of course, written by the doctor with a Zoloft pen on a Zoloft notepad. How do you trust your source if they have a personal stake in your course of action?
This reminded me of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle from high school physics (chemistry?) Best I can remember, it's the idea that you can never know exactly where an electron is, because you have to see it to be able to know its location, but even shining the light necessary to see the electron changes its position. As a teenager, the elegance of this theory was lost on me.
By even asking people questions, we change them just a little bit, and give away knowledge about our own positions. Even though we know this intuitively, why do we continue to rely on asking a source that is inherently unreliable for important information?
My best guess is that despite all of the historical and sensory information we have available to us, we're primarily visual and emotional creatures. We rely on what we see more than anything else we sense, and we rely on what we feel rather than what we know.
Certainly not advocating cynicism, paranoia, or conspiracy theories, but it's one more thing to think about. Like Omar said, echoing Socrates, "The more you know, the more you don't know."
Monday, May 19, 2008
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2 comments:
Very Great thought but you seem to be very disappointed by people... maybe you don't meet people that correspond to your expectation... like those who you don't need to speak to be understand???
i've more recently felt that trust in the classical sense doesn't really exist. mostly from trust as it relates to romantic relationships. saying that you trust someone connotes an omnipotent knowledge of future events, which we cannot have. my answer to "do you trust me?" is "no, but in the current state of things, do i have a choice but to go along with what you say?" being able to trust someone is often described as a rewarding feeling; i personally think it's more rewarding to be comfortable with, and accepting of, the prospect that you might be let down.
~pilarbeque
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