Free Essays on The Origin of Trust and Its Impact on Technology

On by Steve Abrams The essential feature underlying all psyops and perception management operations is trust. Gaining a victim's confidence, establishing credibility with the victim, or even creating an environment conducive to the willing suspension of disbelief on the part of the victim are all forms of developing a trust relationship between the victim (defensive actor) and perpetrator (offensive actor). Developing a trust relationship is also the first step in various techniques of hacking, phreaking, and social engineering in which the defensive actors are computers, telephone switches, and people, respectively. Why do we trust so readily? For that matter, what is trust? What are its biological or evolutionary origins? How does it impact our technology? At first glance, trust seems to be a social construction in that it involves two or more self-aware individuals. Solitary individuals have no need of trust, though they may need the same pattern recognition skills necessary to develop a sense of trust. For example, they may learn to trust certain aspects of Nature, such as the Sun rising in the east, because the pattern repeats itself consistently, but the trust is in one direction only, without reciprocity. "Trust is earned" is a familiar theme in our culture that suggests a certain experiential aspect to the nature of trust. Trust seems conceptually conflated with cooperation, another social construct of two or more individuals. After all, where is the incentive for cooperation between parties when there is no trust (that both parties will benefit from the cooperation) between parties? Trust in a human context, then, might be considered to be a faith in the consistency of a pattern of observed beneficial results from cooperation. But how could such cooperation develop in the first place, given that natural selection is a rather selfish process (i.e... Free Essays on The Origin of Trust and Its Impact on Technology Free Essays on The Origin of Trust and Its Impact on Technology On by Steve Abrams The essential feature underlying all psyops and perception management operations is trust. Gaining a victim's confidence, establishing credibility with the victim, or even creating an environment conducive to the willing suspension of disbelief on the part of the victim are all forms of developing a trust relationship between the victim (defensive actor) and perpetrator (offensive actor). Developing a trust relationship is also the first step in various techniques of hacking, phreaking, and social engineering in which the defensive actors are computers, telephone switches, and people, respectively. Why do we trust so readily? For that matter, what is trust? What are its biological or evolutionary origins? How does it impact our technology? At first glance, trust seems to be a social construction in that it involves two or more self-aware individuals. Solitary individuals have no need of trust, though they may need the same pattern recognition skills necessary to develop a sense of trust. For example, they may learn to trust certain aspects of Nature, such as the Sun rising in the east, because the pattern repeats itself consistently, but the trust is in one direction only, without reciprocity. "Trust is earned" is a familiar theme in our culture that suggests a certain experiential aspect to the nature of trust. Trust seems conceptually conflated with cooperation, another social construct of two or more individuals. After all, where is the incentive for cooperation between parties when there is no trust (that both parties will benefit from the cooperation) between parties? Trust in a human context, then, might be considered to be a faith in the consistency of a pattern of observed beneficial results from cooperation. But how could such cooperation develop in the first place, given that natural selection is a rather selfish process (i.e...