Trust without trustworthiness can lead to destruction rather than complexity reduction

Evidence

Luhmann does not confuse trust and trustworthiness conceptually, because it is genuinely his interest to explain trust, which he supposes is the individual’s device for dealing with complexity—although, of course, the device can work only if others are trustworthy. My own trustworthiness does not directly help me deal with complexity, although it might do so indirectly by begetting trust. On this account, trustworthiness is, in a sense, prior. Hence there is reason to suppose that it is the rise of trustworthiness that allows for the development of complexity, which actually results from successful trust. Trustworthiness not only enables us to handle complexity when we have it, but it also therefore enables us to develop complexity. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 683 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Luhmann’s complexity reduction actually depends on trustworthiness, not trust; Trustworthiness precedes and enables societal complexity — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 683; A cheater’s success depends on parasitizing a trustworthy system

Related

• Luhmann’s complexity reduction actually depends on trustworthiness, not trust (similarity 0.98)
• Trustworthiness precedes and enables societal complexity (similarity 0.95)
• Trust without demonstrable trustworthiness offers no complexity reduction (similarity 0.91)
• Trust alone can leave one a victim of complexity rather than its manager (similarity 0.90)
• A cheater’s success depends on parasitizing a trustworthy system (similarity 0.89)
• Trust does not solve complexity but merely reshapes it as risk (similarity 0.86)
• Luhmann reframed trust as social, not merely psychological (similarity 0.85)
• Trust reduces social complexity by replacing missing information with guaranteed security (similarity 0.85)
• Luhmann frames trust as an individual’s mechanism for reducing complexity. (similarity 0.85)
• Trust expands a system’s complexity potential and buys it time (similarity 0.84)
• Trust reduces the truster’s complexity while transferring that burden onto the trusted (similarity 0.84)
• Trust reduces the complexity created by other people’s freedom (similarity 0.84)
• Trust reduces complexity by substituting inner certainty for external certainty (similarity 0.84)
• Trust reduces to knowledge while trustworthiness is motivational (similarity 0.84)
• Differentiated societies need more trust to reduce their greater complexity (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Trustworthiness precedes and enables societal complexity #qualifies (0.80) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 683