Trust expands a system’s complexity potential and buys it time

Evidence

From this general analysis, it appears that, as far as the particular problem of trust is concerned, a change of mode will occur on the way to greater and more consciously articulated complexity. In anticipation of the following chapter, what follows from this suggestion may now be outlined. On the basis of familiarity with the everyday world, trust is principally interpersonal trust (and is therefore limited). It serves to overcome an element of uncertainty in the behaviour of other people which is experienced as the unpredictability of change in an object. In so far as the need for complexity grows, and in so far as the other person enters the picture both as alter ego and as fellow-author of this complexity and of its reduction, trust has to be extended, and the original unquestionable familiarity of the world pushed back, although it cannot be eliminated completely. It becomes as a result a new form of system trust, which implies renouncing as a conscious risk some possible further information and implies as well a wary indifference to and a continuous control of results. System trust is not only applicable to social systems but also to other people as personal systems. This change, if one looks closely at the assumptions which lie within the mode of trusting, corresponds to a change from bases of trust which are defined in primarily emotional terms, to those which are primarily performance based. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 143 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Trust reduces the truster’s complexity while transferring that burden onto the trusted — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 245; Growing complexity forces trust to shift from interpersonal to performance-based system trust — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 143; Growing social complexity increases the need for trust in the present (+4 more)

Related

• Growing social complexity increases the need for trust in the present (similarity 0.94)
• Trust and law evolved from a common root into differentiated mechanisms (similarity 0.93)
• Differentiated societies need more trust to reduce their greater complexity (similarity 0.93)
• Social complexity forces the shift from personal to impersonal, system-governed trust. (similarity 0.93)
• System trust reduces complexity through explicit human decision processes, not naive familiarity (similarity 0.91)
• System trust operates independently of individuals’ personal readiness to trust (similarity 0.91)
• Trust reduces future complexity where instrumental mastery cannot (similarity 0.89)
• Trust reduces social complexity by replacing missing information with guaranteed security (similarity 0.89)
• Trust functions by pruning the over-complex future to fit the present (similarity 0.89)
• Modern trust takes the form of trust in specialized information processing (similarity 0.89)
• Trust expands the complexity a social system can sustain. (similarity 0.89)
• Trust reduces the truster’s complexity while transferring that burden onto the trusted (similarity 0.89)
• Growing complexity forces trust to shift from interpersonal to performance-based system trust (similarity 0.89)
• Luhmann reframed trust as social, not merely psychological (similarity 0.88)
• Trust increases experiential possibilities by reducing system complexity (similarity 0.88)

Broader Connections

• Growing complexity forces trust to shift from interpersonal to performance-based system trust #expands (0.70) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 143
• Trust reduces future complexity where instrumental mastery cannot #corroborates (0.65)
• Growing social complexity increases the need for trust in the present #corroborates (0.60)