System trust stays latent and beyond open discussion

Evidence

True seen-through trust has one serious disadvantage in comparison with spontaneous trust. It demands more caution, more consideration from the truster. He does not trust the other person directly, but rather trusts the grounds on which trust ‘still works’. He is thereby continually conscious of other possibilities. What this means can be made clear with regard to the function of trust in reducing complexity. Seen-through trust fulfils this function less well than spontaneous trust. It places a greater burden of complexity on the actor and is thus psychologically more difficult. One would therefore be able to expect it only as a peak performance under particularly secure and continually sustained circumstances – for example, as the kind of behaviour associated with a higher educated class of society, or the upper levels of a bureaucracy, or with particular milieu, like political or economic spheres, where the effects on other areas of life can be relatively well controlled. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 256 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Stevens embodies Giddens’s faceless commitments, but Luhmann shows system trust enables ethical abdication; System trust is easier to acquire but harder to control than personal trust; Modern trust takes the form of trust in specialized information processing (+5 more)

Related

• Seen-through trust reduces complexity less efficiently than spontaneous trust (similarity 0.88)
• System trust rests on expectations that most won’t test the system (similarity 0.88)
• System trust is so inevitable it escapes conscious reflection and debate. (similarity 0.88)
• Openly negotiated interdependence undermines trust that existing systems breed silently (similarity 0.87)
• System trust resists individual disappointments, unlike personal trust. (similarity 0.86)
• Personal trust becomes system trust under civilized conditions (similarity 0.86)
• System trust reduces complexity through explicit human decision processes, not naive familiarity (similarity 0.86)
• System trust produces a compulsion to trust a system one cannot correct (similarity 0.85)
• In Luhmann’s framework, systemic trust is the general belief that societal systems function reliably, functioning as a mechanism that reduces complexity and enables smooth social interaction, and… (similarity 0.85)
• Controlling system trust becomes the exclusive work of experts (similarity 0.84)
• System trust operates independently of individuals’ personal readiness to trust (similarity 0.84)
• Social complexity forces the shift from personal to impersonal, system-governed trust. (similarity 0.84)
• Trust reduces complexity by substituting inner certainty for external certainty (similarity 0.84)
• System trust conditions people to accept that everything could be otherwise (similarity 0.84)
• External trust depends on learning and system cover, not internal structural reasons. (similarity 0.84)

Broader Connections

• Openly negotiated interdependence undermines trust that existing systems breed silently #contradicts (0.75)
• System trust rests on expectations that most won’t test the system #qualifies (0.60)
• Seen-through trust reduces complexity less efficiently than spontaneous trust #expands (0.60) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 256