The following is an excerpt from Chapter 6: Prioritizing Trustworthiness in the book Holy War for True Democracy.
Therefore, trust is both crucial and, in many cases, error-prone; however, there are countless examples in modern life where we are able to trust others with a very high probability that the trusted person or organization will deliver the results we expect:
- Gallup polling shows that we trust nurses, pharmacists and medical doctors
- We trust engineers to design safe bridges, roads and airplanes
- We trust our judges, juries and court workers to follow court procedures properly
- We trust our fire services, police, and EMTs to help us in emergencies (exception: in America, the Black Lives Matter [4] movement shows that not everyone trusts the police)
- We trust religious leaders to honor their faith and religious vows
- Generals trust that their soldiers will follow all orders to the best of their abilities
- In many countries, we trust special financial services professionals, called fiduciaries, to always act honestly with only the client’s best interests in mind
- We trust notary publics to faithfully witness signatures on documents
The commonality with all of the above:
- They are highly trained in their job
- They have been indoctrinated about their duty and/or have taken oaths
- They have a lot to lose both professionally and personally if they deviate from their duty/trustworthiness
Note that our trust for nurses, firemen, fiduciaries, etc. only applies to specific areas and not to everything in life. For example, we trust doctors with our medical needs, and we trust firemen to put out fires, but we wouldn’t trust either to design a passenger airplane. Therefore:
- Trust applies only to particular areas of expertise and particular situations