This was a section of an early draft of my NNTD post:
Trust and distrust are real. They simply exist.
Some things about the world are objective: they stay the same no matter how U look at them. A stone is a stone is a stone.
Some things about human psychology are reflexive: they change depending on how U look at them. Depending on how U look at someone, for example, U can see them as a hero or a villain, a mentor or a fool, an ordinary person or a unique brilliant gift from God.
Trust and distrust are objective. U can’t change them simply by deciding to.
U can decide to act as though U trust, but that doesn’t yet constitute real, earned trust. Distrust is not arbitrary—it comes from past experiences and lessons. It is perspectival—it depends on your perspective, your experiences.
This was a footnote I had for this section:
Michael Smith adds: “There’s a pairing of objective (it stays the same no matter how you look at it) versus reflexive (it changes depending on how you look at it). One way to say NNTD is ‘Trust and distrust are objective.’ NNTD violations look like attempts to treat them as reflexive, the way (say) confidence is reflexive. [For example,] ‘you can do it!’ can make that claim true. ‘You can trust me!’ can’t.”
This comment and footnote sparked a longer conversation in the Google Docs, that I want to preserve for posterity:
Andrew: This feels plausible in a limited sense (you saying “trust me” doesn’t magically change my experience), but I wonder if this blurs:
– “this organism currently experiences distrust X” is objective (a fact)
– e.g. “people like you are untrustworthy” can be massively miscalibrated (content)
another angle: this honors distrust, the felt sense, but doesn’t really explore epistemic justification, miscalibration, prejudice, or deliberate manipulation of distrust signals
Malcolm: Trust and distrust are 100% subjective and 0% *arbitrary*. (These are often treated as contradictions, but are not.) So I/NNTD would just reject this sentence of Tasshin’s altogether as wrong and misleading.
The reflexive-vs-objective thing is relevant, and trust is… well, it’s not exactly reflexive, although that’s complex and gets into faith. But it’s not objective either—it’s deeply personal. It’s a matter of perspective.
Some tweets on the subject:
– https://x.com/Malcolm_Ocean/status/1912964446437474651
– https://x.com/Malcolm_Ocean/status/1910057295851229439
– https://x.com/Morphenius/status/1882915301635063877
And a very long essay articulating how something can be entirely a matter of perspective and also entirely a matter of fact:
Here in gdoc form for those who love to leave inline comments:
Tasshin: FTR I believe I was quoting Michael here, although I can’t remember where—perhaps our private correspondence or conversations
Michael: Yeah, I find myself in the hilarious position of disagreeing with Malcolm about NNTD. 😀 But not about structure; I think it’s mostly a word choice thing. I stand by the claim that trust and distrust are objective, the way that food allergies are objective. Whether something is a food allergy absolutely depends on FOR WHOM, but once you specify whom you’re talking about it’s (nearly) an objective question whether they’ll have to go to the hospital if they eat it.
Another way to say this is, something that’s 0% arbitrary and is not multistable is definitely objective. It’s possible for subjective stuff to be objective. (E.g. mnemonic techniques like the Method of Loci objectively work despite being purely subjective tools.)
I totally believe trust and distrust are subjective. But the WHOLE POINT of paying attention to NNTD (IMO) is to notice that trust and distrust are objective. You can’t “just trust”, just like you can’t “just not have an anaphylactic reaction to this food you’re deathly allergic to”.
My guess is that what Malcolm is pointing at, when he says that trust & distrust aren’t objective even when contrasted with their being potentially reflexive, is that details of framing can affect whether you trust or distrust something. So e.g. whether you trust a given bridge to support you is ill-defined because it depends on the context by which you encounter the bridge.
I think this points at Andrew’s comment too. It’s possible to be wrong about how you’re viewing a situation, and thereby have distrust (or trust) where a more clear-minded view of the situation would have you trusting (or distrusting) it instead.
The point about calling trust and distrust “objective” here is, there’s an objectively correct answer to the question of whether and how a reframe will cause a person’s trust system to shift. And neither the person in question nor those around them can “just” change that answer directly. It necessarily must change via trust-dancing.
Malcolm: Ah okay if something can be subjective and objective both then I don’t disagree there! So I think we’re on the same page. And your articulations here are good, especially the anallergy.
tl;dr: trust is both subjective and objective, it’s 0% arbitrary, it’s not purely reflexive, it’s perspectival, it’s not multistable