Talking About Trust.

This is an automatically translated post by LLM. The original post is in Chinese. If you find any translation errors, please leave a comment to help me improve the translation. Thanks!

It has to be said that trust is something extremely precious and rare. The reason for its preciousness and rarity is simple - doubt is easy.

This article defines trust in a simple and intuitive way: for any two individuals A and B, A trusts that B will/will not do something. For the sake of simplicity in the following discussion, we will analyze the scenario of "A trusts that B will not do something," with other scenarios being similar.

In addition, we make the following assumptions:

1. B doing something will have a significant negative impact on A.
2. A finds it difficult to directly confirm whether B has done something.
3. A cannot determine whether B's statements to A are factual.
4. A cannot obtain sufficient information to judge whether B has the motivation to do something.

These three assumptions may seem difficult to meet, but in reality, there are too many similar situations that satisfy these conditions (e.g., infidelity, betrayal, leaks, PUA, misleading opinions, etc.).

Under the above conditions, we can draw the following conclusions:

If B has done the event:

• A will suffer objective harm.
• If A trusts B, there will be no subjective harm to trust; if A suspects B and ultimately believes that B has done something, there will be subjective harm to trust.
• If A suspects B and questions B, then B:
  • Admitting to having done something will lead to a breakdown or precariousness of the trust relationship.
  • Not admitting to having done something, A's trust in B will ultimately depend on A's subjective inference.

If B has not done the event:

• A will not suffer objective harm.
• If A trusts B, there will be no subjective harm to trust; if A suspects B and ultimately believes that B has done something, there will be subjective harm to trust.
• If A suspects B and questions B, then B:
  • Not admitting to having done something, A's trust in B will ultimately depend on A's subjective inference.

From the above conclusions, regardless of whether B has done something, except for B admitting it to A, in all other cases, A's trust in B mainly depends on A's final subjective inference. This can be summed up in two common sayings:

• Trust those who are trustworthy, distrust those who are suspicious.
• Judge actions, not intentions; no one is perfect.

Nevertheless, sustainable unconditional trust still exists in the world. If you have such trust, cherish it and maintain it. However, even if you don't have it, it's normal and there's no need to worry, because it's okay to deal with most people in life without trust. So, to hell with trust!