Trust cannot be secured by evidence because fidelity is unprovable

Evidence

However, if evidence could solve the problem of trust, then trust would not be a problem at all. It is not only that the gathering and exchange of information may be costly, difficult, or even impossible to achieve. Nor is it just that past evidence does not fully eliminate the risk of future deviance. The point is that trust itself affects the evidence we are looking for. While it is never that difficult to find evidence of untrustworthy behaviour, it is virtually impossible to prove its positive mirror image (Luhmann 1979). … Doubt is far more insidious than certainty, and distrust may become the source of its own evidence. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2858

Categorization

• XREF: This is the precise mechanism for why Othello-inspired ‘ocular proof’ framing matters: trust operates on absence of contrary evidence, not positive verification — directly relevant to the Luhmann ‘familiarity’ baseline the reader is synthesizing.
• DEFINE: Defines trust’s epistemic asymmetry: evidence can confirm distrust but never confirm trust.
• SEED: The Othello proof problem — you cannot ask for direct evidence of fidelity because the only ocular proof is a dead body — is a sharp essay angle on trust, verification, and epistemic asymmetry.