Truth, not just money or power, reduces intersubjective complexity and enables trust

Evidence

The medium of truth is related to the experience of meaning, and encompasses all meaning which can be regarded as able to be transmitted intersubjectively. When confronted with true meaning, everyone must acknowledge it and accept the reduction which is accomplished thereby – or lose his role as a human subject involved with others in constitutive activities, as a fellow participant in the world, and with it his social identity. Truth is the medium which acts as carrier for the reduction of intersubjective complexity. Trust is only possible where truth is possible, where people can reach agreement about any given entity which is binding upon a third party. Truth facilitates this understanding, and thus the reduction of complexity, by the assumption that the third party would also consider their view as correct. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 215

Categorization

• XREF: This third-party-binding structure of truth parallels Giddens’s expert systems: both rest on the assumption a neutral third party would validate the same claim. Relevant to Stevens’s deference to the institution’s framework of truth.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: if truth neutralizes the need for trust, what happens to someone like Stevens when his institution’s claimed truth is revealed as unfounded? Does that collapse into radical distrust?