Whom We Trust and Why

Artificial Intelligence will not save us but neither will your gut

“Trust can be very expensive, especially if it’s invested in the wrong person.” Author unknown

Since the rise of Trump, I’ve been thinking a lot about in whom we put our trust and why. Where we place our trust is not necessarily a rational process and is shot through with personal biases. When people make the decisions that affect our lives and those of future generations, our individually-skewed barometers of trustworthiness have outsized repercussions.

Think, for example, about the blind trust Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee gave to Pete Hegseth to be able to act appropriately as Secretary of Defense, despite his well-recorded history of bad behavior and tanking organizations. Or the willingness to not only ignore that Elon Musk, Trump’s single biggest individual campaign contributor, lacks credentials for understanding the practices of good, fair auditing but also has ample conflicts of interest that should have precluded him from creating his own initiative cutting out “waste, fraud and abuse,” which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of federal workers being fired or pressured into retiring without evidence of wrongdoing.

Or take, for that matter, Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a physician, who voted to confirm Robert Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services Secretary despite his supposed misgivings about Kennedy’s long history of spreading mis- and disinformation about vaccinations and undermining the value of modern medical practices and interventions that have saved millions of lives. Now, this was interesting because Cassidy expressed those concerns about Kennedy’s background in spreading conspiracy theories that threaten public health (Republican Senator Susan Collins could have given him some lessons in concerned handwringing) but that was clearly just perfunctory. He folded like a well-lubricated lawn chair. Cassidy alone couldn’t have thwarted Kennedy’s confirmation – if he hadn’t, it still would have been 51 votes in favor, enough to confirm – but he would rather fall in line and trust the guy with the impressive last name without a background in science. Kennedy has a long, easily researched track record in crackpot notions that should have ruled him out for running an agency that is so vital to our healthcare but here we are. We have seen how that has played out quite quickly. (Thanks, Bill! I’d give you a high-five but leprosy made my good hand fall off.)

It’s the protective bubble of the bro code (or the cock bloc as a friend of mine called it) that legitimizes these dudes in whatever their pursuits, but it’s not just men conferred this benefit of the doubt. Our glaring blindspots also uphold figures like Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security, despite her affinity for stunt cosplaying over actual integrity. Basically, if you play by the rules of white supremacy and bow down to a certain spray-tanned orange overlord, that’s all the true believers need to see to not ask questions.

It’s not just about self-serving partisanship that allows this fostering of undeserved trust, though there is that as well. Who we hold up as deserving our suspension of disbelief says a lot about our own biases toward reinforcing the established order. This isn’t about whom you trust to bring the right snacks to the Little League game, you all. This is about who you trust to make important decisions that have both personal and widespread outcomes.

---

This stubborn oversight reinforces my understanding that empathic responses are a flawed internal mechanism for interpreting crucial ethical matters, not simply because it is irrational but because our empathy is bestowed most upon those who look like us, who seem like us, with whom we can most relate. [I highly recommend Paul Bloom’s excellent book, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, to deepen your understanding of this misunderstood human trait.] Truly unpacking empathy – what it really is and what we just attach to it – requires an unblinkered perspective and a willingness to put aside casual preferences and entrenched assumptions, including that empathy is synonymous with compassion. It is not. Empathy is not another word for kindness. Emotional empathy means we vicariously sense the experience of another within our own bodies, or at least we believe we do, and it just so happens that we are wired to be most empathic to those who are most like us.

As an example, if we were tasked with untangling a dispute between two people, someone who is the same race and perhaps shares other aspects of relatedness – like they are from the same socio-economic background, same age group, gender expression, etc. – and someone who is quite different in multiple ways, we would be more likely to have persuasive biases that pull us toward more empathy for the one who is most similar to us. This biological fact may not be our fault if we are designed for a self-centered interpretation of the world but, knowing this, we are obligated to at least factor in the flawed filters of our moral compasses to arrive at more fair and rational conclusions.

The reason why I am thinking of this now is I cannot help but notice the pretzels and contortions people will twist themselves into to avoid seeing what is clear as day depending on the source. Seeing true believers accept people on their word who are established liars and conmen, like Donald Trump, is one thing, but it also extends to other people as well, like wellness scammers, who happen to have fair skin, blue eyes and a very farfetched but compelling story of medical malaise and recovery that you are supposed to accept on face value. You just need to give them your money and unquestioning faith to commit to the relationship.

---

Why does this matter? It matters because we often treat our confidence in people as if it is fool-proof and not deserving of scrutiny, when it is in fact rife with irrational holes and often self-serving prejudices. This flawed internal measuring stick influences how we vote, whom we elevate, whom we trust, where we donate, what matters to us and a million other decisions, both small and large. Using the same faulty filter of discernment, our strong but unexamined hunches for whom we trust and distrust will also predict who falls outside it, as well as our circle of care and compassion. This influences who is hired and who is fired, who ascends and who is ignored, who is absolved and who is convicted. I hope I don’t have to detail the real-world consequences of this.

I don’t know the answers, but I think that admitting we don’t have a singular, unerring ability to decipher who deserves our confidence may be the first step toward a better practice. The second step may be to notice when we are being irrationally self-centering in our judgments. A third step could be to keep removing ourselves and our predispositions from the equation until we reach something close to unbiased balance.

As I explore the concept of re-humaning here, I have to acknowledge that we are flawed vessels, like all species. This is great! It means we’re not robots. Turning us into ChatGPT addicted sloppers or virtual reality drop-outs is not a better alternative — far from it — but understanding and factoring in our flaws and limitations as arbiters of who deserves our trust and who does not is crucial. (Don’t forget, AI is definitely rife with shortcomings as well, and not just because white supremacists build it.) We have to get over our hubristic overconfidence in our abilities to discern who does and does not deserve our trust in order to make allowances for better, more fair and principled conclusions.