Generalized distrust is more rational than generalized trust.

Evidence

Two important ways in which there are likely to be asymmetries between trust and distrust are discussed in later chapters. First, trust and distrust of government and its agents may be asymmetric because we have knowledge and theory to distrust them when it would be hard to have knowledge or theory to trust them (see chapter 7). Second, fairly generalized distrust might make sense in a way that generalized trust does not (see chapter 8). — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 441

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the reader’s Hobbesian reading of Blindness: institutional distrust is epistemically justified, matching the doctor’s wife’s sustained vigilance.