Trust increases experiential possibilities by reducing system complexity

Evidence

Where there is trust there are increased possibilities for experience and action, there is an increase in the complexity of the social system and also in the number of possibilities which can be reconciled with its structure, because trust constitutes a more effective form of complexity reduction. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 106

Categorization

• XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s thesis: this is the mechanism by which Stevens’s system trust in the Darlington household reduces social complexity for him, prefiguring Giddens’s ‘faceless commitments’ to expert systems.
• DEFINE: Defines the precise functional role of trust — as complexity reduction that extends the range of possible action — that the reader will map onto Ishiguro.