Trust gets replaced by calculated probability as system environments stabilize

Evidence

It is precisely this differentiation of the approaches to trust and distrust which is, from the point of view of the system, rational. For it assists it in preserving the higher level of inner order in comparison to its environment, or, in other words, in stabilizing, in an extremely complex environment, a simpler, less complex system-order which is suited to human capacities for action, and in reducing the complexity gap between system and environment. In the repertoire of system strategies and latent functions which serve such system maintenance, trust naturally plays only a limited role, both internally and externally. The more effectively the environment of a system is protected by more encompassing systems from too intense, unpredictable fluctuations, the more effectively the system can move over to directing its actions by internally rationalized decision-making techniques, and replace trust with calculations of probability. Whether, and under what conditions, such a process of substitution is itself rational can likewise only be judged within the framework of our comprehensive idea of rationality, whereby trust, which has apparently come about ‘irrationally’, may appear rational if and in so far as it performs the functions which serve the maintenance of the system. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 318

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Giddens’s faceless commitments — confidence in expert systems replacing interpersonal trust; also to Stevens’s substitution of institutional procedure for personal trust.
• QUESTION: Luhmann says substitution of probability-calculation for trust may itself be rational if it serves system maintenance — but what if the system’s moral grounding is itself corrupt (Darlington’s appeasement)? Worth chasing for the reader’s thesis.