Blind trust in authority can be culpable stupidity rather than virtue

Evidence

Conclusions 1, 2, and 3 together imply that if anything will do by itself it will have to be non-egoistic micro-motivation. This will presumably have to be something like ‘thick trust’ - reliance on and between a group of persons in terms of their known dispositions, personal relations, and so on. It is not easy to see how this could be extended beyond a very small society. The only apparent way of taking it beyond that is to identify a particular set of people, a government or elite group, in whom thick trust is invested, and whose activities, example, or regulation serve to sustain cooperative activities throughout the society; but if this is conceivable at all, I find it impossible to see how such a structure could be the basis of our arrangements without an arrant degree of traditionalist or charismatic mystification. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 219 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Justified distrust can be a moral act and so trust is not inherently moral; Thick trust cannot extend beyond small groups except via mystified elite authority — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 219; Authority is a constructed, analyzable mechanism rather than a natural given (+3 more)

Related

• Thick trust cannot extend beyond small groups except via mystified elite authority (similarity 0.93)
• Beyond a certain social scale, societies must rely on egoistic rather than thick-trust motivations (similarity 0.86)
• Broad social trust arises only in aristocracies, which then undermine it. (similarity 0.84)
• Virtue-based motives alone cannot sustain trust without explicit impersonal beliefs supporting them. (similarity 0.82)
• Treating trust as central to politics does not require naive credulity (similarity 0.82)
• Socially extensive and enduring trust is inherently difficult to create (similarity 0.81)
• Anarchism’s defining weakness is its capricious account of trust’s incidence (similarity 0.81)
• Socially extensive trust requires an aristocracy to create it, which then undermines it (similarity 0.81)
• Extended interpersonal trust cannot reinforce itself without external mechanisms (similarity 0.80)
• Trusting is only knowledge; acting on trust is what carries risk (similarity 0.80)
• Reasons for trusting virtue are themselves fragile enough that trust in trust is unjustified. (similarity 0.80)
• Established trust systems are remarkably robust despite widespread fraud (similarity 0.80)
• Individual trust is not rational even where group-wide trust would benefit all (similarity 0.80)
• Thick trust requires face-to-face mutual knowledge, impossible at modern scales (similarity 0.80)
• Honourable motives alone cannot sustain reliable trust (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Justified distrust can be a moral act and so trust is not inherently moral #corroborates (0.85)
• Thick trust cannot extend beyond small groups except via mystified elite authority #corroborates (0.75) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 219