# Why and how we trust

We're all [certain](understanding-certainty.md) about many things, but to varying degrees.

- Most things aren't entirely trustworthy.
- However, some of those things stay consistent over time.
- When we trust enough, those things we trust permeate throughout much of our [understanding](understanding.md) and [perception](image.md).

We place inherent trust in things when a specific mechanism arises:

1. We make [habits](habits.md) revolving around something.
2. The habits become automatic [decisions](people-decisions.md) that take [risks](safety.md).
3. We could potentially have made [reasonable](logic.md) decisions to avoid those risks, but we resist [changing](people-changes.md) to the new information.

Trust of any sort directs itself toward an object of trust, and we feel peace and empowered when we trust something that proves itself to work.

- Often, the evidence is through a [conflict](people-conflicts.md) resolution or a general [feeling](mind-feelings.md) of [empowerment](power.md).

## Illusion

Even while [reality](reality.md) isn't relative, our [understanding](understanding.md) of it has many relative components. What we imagine as "reality" is a generally accurate *copy* in our minds:

- The things we touch and experience from our senses
- The people we encounter, as well as what they do and say
- the idea of [cause-and-effect](science.md)
- Any [expectations](imagination.md) that the future will be anything like the present

We may *think* we see something obvious and *know* it exists, but our minds play a trick on us:

1. Our sense organs take send many small electrical signals to the brain.
2. Our brain converts those signals into a composite sensation that appears to be a complete sense, though it ignores some aspects of [time](datetime.md) to accomplish this.
3. The brain dissects that composite sensation into forms and [abstractions](symbols.md).
4. Through associations to things stored in memory, the brain pulls from a network of [information](information.md), frequently adding more and more information along the way from [memory](mind-memory.md).
5. For whatever [purpose](purpose.md) the brain was tasked to, it draws up all potentially useful or relevant stored information.
6. [Habits](habits.md), [intuition](understanding.md), and [decisions](people-decisions.md) dictate the next action or thought.
7. Barring some form of mental illness, the final thought on the matter will land on some sort of [conclusion](logic.md), which we consciously identify as "perception".

Everything we can use to build out our understanding of reality is only somewhat reliable:

1. Perceptions that come from the world around us, captured in moment-by-moment snapshots and combined into a [story](stories.md)
2. Things we derive from those perceptions, ranging from [feelings](mind-feelings.md) to legitimate [understanding](understanding.md)
3. Whatever our environment tells us, including things we infer and [other people](people-conversation.md)
4. Broad-reaching things made by or for [many people](groups-member.md)

While each person's methods vary, we only feel "certain" when we attain enough information to fulfill several criteria at once:

- Enough information to satisfy our sense of [curiosity](purpose.md)
- Enough information to get a mental [image](image.md) of the relationship between things
- Evidence to [verify](understanding-certainty.md) our likely best [decision](people-decisions.md)

## Near-certain

To reconcile between reality and our copy, we have a few sources that validate what we understand:

1. Trust our original sensations were accurate
2. Trust our [feelings](mind-feelings.md) to the degree we believe we can [understand](understanding.md) those sensations with intuition
3. Trust our [analytical ability](logic.md) to the degree we believe we can [understand](understanding.md) sensations with a mental framework
4. Trust [others and our environment](groups-member.md) to the degree we believe they're [safe](safety.md) to trust over our sensations

Even when we're 99.99999% certain of things, we still must [contend](conflicts-inner.md) with an unlikely 0.00001%. Much of our [identity](identity.md) comes from a few ways we handle that highly unlikely chance we're wrong, and we are forced to resolve that tiny bit of [uncertainty](unknown.md) if we ever wish to use that information for anything.

APPLICATION: Even when we act with [certainty](understanding-certainty.md), we're always taking a type of [risk](safety.md).

This isn't an isolated experience in one's mind, however. Other people may not [see](understanding.md) the way we do, and our [culture](people-culture.md) tells us how we're supposed to [think](understanding.md) and [believe](understanding-certainty.md). We will agree with them proportionally to how much our [personality](personality.md) is willing to consent to others' values over our own.

This entire process of declaring certainty happens rapidly and dictates almost all our [decisions](people-decisions.md) and [needs](safety.md). The only way we're usually aware it even happens is because we're actively *trying* to slow down to gain a specific scope of [awareness](awareness.md). Most people find no reason to revisit  their judgments, so they persist in their [habituated](habits.md) without being aware of what they trust.

APPLICATION: Since we must trust things constantly, we must *never* declare anything as 100% certain unless we'd unflinchingly give our lives for that premise.

## Trust issues

Not everyone trusts easily. Our [first Erikson stage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erikson%27s_stages_of_psychosocial_development) asks how much we should trust reality itself, and most of the future stages are trusting ideals that come afterward:

1. [Willpower](humanity.md)
2. [Purpose](purpose.md)
3. [Competence](results.md)
4. [Identity](identity.md)
5. [Love](people-love.md)
6. [Meaning](meaning.md)
7. [Legacy](legacy.md)

Nobody is ever fully trust-free, and we have very little [control](results.md) over most things we perceive. And, no amount of [justification](logic.md) can remove some of our trust-based needs:

- We still must trust [our pain is real](mind-feelings-fear.md), and that our [decisions](people-decisions.md) mean anything.
- Even if we think we trust nothing else, we are trusting our [perceptions](image.md) and [understanding](understanding.md).

Our entire *framework* of thinking relies on trusting indirectly connected elements, even when we don't perceive [their connections](https://gainedin.site/networks/):

- [Fear](mind-feelings-fear.md) of sharks will lead to trusting things that can stop sharks.
- Fear of what a [leader](groups-small.md) may do often requires trusting a *different* leader (especially in [large groups](groups-large.md) and [politics](politics-conservativeliberal.md)).
- [Logic](logic.md) requires trusting a conclusion derived off a premise, whether from [certainty](understanding-certainty.md) or through fear of an alternative premise being true.
- Agnosticism, the least trusting [religion](religion.md), gives zero guidance about [what to do with ourselves](purpose.md), making it relatively useless.
- The statement "I don't trust them" is effectively saying "I trust something that doesn't trust them".
- The statement "I trust nothing" is asserting that non-trust is more trustworthy than trust.

Further, any [purpose](purpose.md) we strive for comes with endless [risks](safety.md). The most stable, [predictable](imagination.md) task still requires trusting a [memory](imagination.md) that's reliable enough to repeat a habit.

We can trust some things [with more certainty](understanding-certainty.md), but must balance a certain "minimum trust" necessary to attain any [purposes](purpose.md) whatsoever. We tend to automatically trust ourselves, others around us, and [authority figures](groups-large.md) for most things we need, but we tend to [train ourselves](habits.md) to shift the trust toward [idols and substances](addiction-substances.md) if we don't [devote it to God](https://theologos.site/devotion-chaos/).

To understand how bound to trust we are, try to prove with absolute certainty that insane ideas are *completely* impossible:

- Prove that we're not living in a shared computer simulation.
- Demonstrate that the words you're reading *aren't* reading your mind and stealing your life force.
- Verify that [death](mind-feelings-fear.md) *really* happens, and that people don't teleport away at that moment and replace themselves with a sack of realistic-looking meat.
- The very *essence* of [speculative](imagination.md) [fiction](stories.md) is to play with the things we often trust, so try to prove that each one of them is either impossible or [will be](imagination.md) impossible.

Frequently, people with trust issues will attempt to tear down *all* forms of trust. It's the same obsession whether they're trying to manage their [understanding](understanding.md) of [science](science.md) or [religion](religion.md). They're powering their decisions by [past trauma](hardship-ptsd.md) and don't want to accept that their need for [certainty](understanding-certainty.md) has been unmet.

APPLICATION: Be careful when dealing with people in occupations that require trust issues (e.g., [cybersecurity](computers-cysec.md), quality control, [law enforcement](legal-safety.md)), as well as people with [pastimes](purpose.md) revolving around [survival](hardship-disaster.md). They're all finding useful [purposes](purpose.md) for [past trauma](hardship-ptsd.md), so they may misuse it.

The journey to find something "trustworthy" is fruitless. Post-modern philosophers speculate with many ideas on how to do it, but never get it right because trust glues *all* our [understanding](understanding.md) together. At its core, we can't verify where or what our subconscious thoughts are.

Further, the quest to clarify certainty isn't very reliable. For every question we answer, we're faced with more questions proportional to our [curiosity](meaning.md) or [fear](mind-feelings-fear.md). We literally believe we understand to the degree that we don't [desire](purpose.md) to know about something anymore.

APPLICATION: Some of the most brilliant minds on the planet are [miserable](mind-feelings-happiness.md) because they can't trust [basic realities](reality.md), but [over-trusting the wrong things](image-distortion.md) can *also* lead to utter destruction.

## Downsides

When we trust things, we often have trouble seeing adverse consequences of it, for several reasons:

- We feel [comfortable](mind-feelings.md) in what we [know](understanding.md).
- We [calculate](math.md) the thing as most likely thing to gamble on.
- We often, for other reasons, [want](purpose.md) to believe that thing.
- Sometimes we are just plain [conceited](morality-evil.md) and believe our trust makes a difference in the outcome.

Counter-intuitively, when we're *not* [certain](understanding-certainty.md) of something but trust it anyway, we're often *more* susceptible to overlooking its downsides because we don't want to lose our [investment](results.md) of time or thought.

APPLICATION: Often, people with trust issues will try to overcompensate with [action](results.md). Passionate zealots are often *less* trusting of their beliefs than the declared "moderates" of an ideal, though the [storytellers](stories-storytellers.md) will obscure this fact.

To the degree we trust something, we don't observe the costs of believing it. Most notably, we lose the [power](power-types.md) to move our opinions around about that trusted element without a major [inner conflict](conflicts-inner.md).

APPLICATION: Whether you choose to change your mind about something or not, intimately understand *what* you are trusting and why.

One of the largest indicators of over-trust arises when we see something that doesn't conform to our view of the world. When we're [immature](maturity.md) or suffering [past trauma](hardship-ptsd.md), we'll try to "[fix](results.md)" that thing to make it conform, but we're usually [misunderstanding](understanding.md) [reality](reality.md) and often creating problems for ourselves.

[Large organizations](groups-large.md) are vastly aware of our discomfort with uncertainty and try to give more uncertainty toward things they [want us to not do](morality-taboo.md). Further, they may attempt to mishandle our trust subversively:

- Free trials that require [opting *out* of](people-contracts.md).
- [Government benefits](groups-large.md) that require [taxes](rules-methods.md) to fund.
- Offering [safety](safety.md) in exchange for [civil liberties](people-decisions.md).
- Giving a [contract](people-contracts.md), but adding things in the fine print like termination clauses and non-compete requirements.

APPLICATION: To attain "[the good life](goodlife.md)", we must balance our trust through [decisions](people-decisions.md) and [actions](results.md) toward the correct people and things.