Trust operations depend on interpreting signals, not on others’ actual truthfulness

Evidence

But there is another important class of cases where trust, in the sense that I wish to use the term, comes into play. This is when others know something about themselves or the world which I do not, and when - what I ought to do depends on the extent of my ignorance of these matters. An agreement between myself and such other people may call upon them to disclose their information. But can I trust them to be truthful; that is, can I trust them to send me the correct signals, those they would send if they were truly trustworthy? (They do not actually have to be truthful for me to rely on them. As long as I always know how to interpret their messages correctly I can trust them. Thus the ancient Cretan was as informative as a knowledgeable saint.) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 795

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Sharpens the definition of trust: it is about correct signal interpretation, not truthful disposition — a legible reading matters more than honesty.
• XREF: Connects to the sighted wife’s legibility problem in Blindness: the blind can trust her only if her signals remain interpretable; and to Luhmann’s ‘familiarity’ as the substrate for legible signals.

Related

• Trust in signal-disclosure cases hinges on interpretability, not truthfulness (similarity 0.93)
• Trust requires credible promises grounded in knowledge of the other’s dispositions and options. (similarity 0.84)
• Defining trust requires grounding it in mutual dependency relations (similarity 0.83)
• Trust requires knowing the other’s incentives to honor it (similarity 0.83)
• Trust covers both unobservable actions and undisclosed knowledge others hold (similarity 0.83)
• Trust can be deliberately simulated and codified far beyond its natural sources (similarity 0.82)
• Trust is a kind of knowledge grounded in trustworthy evidence (similarity 0.82)
• Trust, faith, and confidence differ in required sensory evidence (similarity 0.82)
• Trust is defined as correct expectations about others’ actions that must precede monitoring. (similarity 0.82)
• Trust is a matter of knowledge and belief, not of choice or action. (similarity 0.82)
• Trust reduces to knowledge while trustworthiness is motivational (similarity 0.82)
• Understanding trustworthiness must precede understanding trust itself (similarity 0.82)
• Trusting is only knowledge; acting on trust is what carries risk (similarity 0.81)
• Trust always rests on a wager with incomplete information, never certainty (similarity 0.81)
• Trust is an over-flexible concept that demands precise definition. (similarity 0.81)