Thanks for this post, it was insightful and perfectly timed; I’ve been intermittently returning to the problem of trust for a while now and it was on my mind this morning when I found your post.
I think shared reality isn’t just a ‘warm fuzzies’ thing, it’s a vital component of cooperation.
I think it’s connected with the trust problem; your ability to trust someone is dependent to some degree on a shared reality.
I think that these problems have been severely exacerbated by our current technologies and the social landscape they’ve shaped, but I’m also highly intrigued by the possibility that we can throw this in reverse—that there is an achievable engineering solution to this problem; that this is something we can not only ‘fix’ with the right technologies, but also empower far beyond ‘baseline’.
I’m interested in talking with anyone who’s exploring the trust problem in some way. I think even a 20% effective solution to this problem would be world changing; the trust problem is at (or near) the root of many of the dysfunctional aspects of our civilization.
I’m especially interested in anyone who strongly disagrees with me—about either the importance of the problem or the feasibility of finding a solution.
I agree about the cooperation thing. One addendum I’d add to my post is that shared reality seems like a common precursor to doing/thinking together.
If I want to achieve something or figure something out, I can often do better if I have a few more people working/thinking with me, and often the first step is to ‘get everyone on the same page’. I think lots of times this first step is just trying to shove everyone into shared reality. Partially because that’s a common pattern of behavior, and partially because if it did work, it would be super effective.
But because of the bad news where people actually have different experiences, cracks often form in the foundation of this coordinated effort. But I think if the team has common knowledge about the nature of shared reality and the non-terrible/coercive/violent way of achieving it (sharing understanding), this can lead to better cooperation (happier team members, less reality-masking, better map-sharing).
I’m also not sure what you mean about the trust problem, maybe you mean the polls which claim that trust in government and other stuff has been on the decline?
Thanks for this post, it was insightful and perfectly timed; I’ve been intermittently returning to the problem of trust for a while now and it was on my mind this morning when I found your post.
I think shared reality isn’t just a ‘warm fuzzies’ thing, it’s a vital component of cooperation.
I think it’s connected with the trust problem; your ability to trust someone is dependent to some degree on a shared reality.
I think that these problems have been severely exacerbated by our current technologies and the social landscape they’ve shaped, but I’m also highly intrigued by the possibility that we can throw this in reverse—that there is an achievable engineering solution to this problem; that this is something we can not only ‘fix’ with the right technologies, but also empower far beyond ‘baseline’.
I’m interested in talking with anyone who’s exploring the trust problem in some way. I think even a 20% effective solution to this problem would be world changing; the trust problem is at (or near) the root of many of the dysfunctional aspects of our civilization.
I’m especially interested in anyone who strongly disagrees with me—about either the importance of the problem or the feasibility of finding a solution.
I agree about the cooperation thing. One addendum I’d add to my post is that shared reality seems like a common precursor to doing/thinking together.
If I want to achieve something or figure something out, I can often do better if I have a few more people working/thinking with me, and often the first step is to ‘get everyone on the same page’. I think lots of times this first step is just trying to shove everyone into shared reality. Partially because that’s a common pattern of behavior, and partially because if it did work, it would be super effective.
But because of the bad news where people actually have different experiences, cracks often form in the foundation of this coordinated effort. But I think if the team has common knowledge about the nature of shared reality and the non-terrible/coercive/violent way of achieving it (sharing understanding), this can lead to better cooperation (happier team members, less reality-masking, better map-sharing).
I’m also not sure what you mean about the trust problem, maybe you mean the polls which claim that trust in government and other stuff has been on the decline?
What exactly is the trust problem you’re referring to?
Is it you think that people are not as trusting as you think they should be, in general?