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themafia 6 hours ago

I've never understood the "high-strust/low-trust" social dichotomy. I've never processed "society" as a single entity, but a large system with many independent aspects, and my levels of trust vary wildly across them and over time.

I'd also offer that there's no difference between "truly creative work" and "truly creative and profitable work" but we often see the two as separate because we only have convenient access to one or the other.

kjksf 6 hours ago | parent [-]

It's not that complicated: statistics matter.

5% of people create 90% of the crime. Double 5% to 10% and you double the crime. Make it 50% and and you 10x the crime.

You still have 50% of non-criminals but society with 50% criminals has way more crime than society with 5% criminals.

You might say high-crime society is much worse than low-crime society even though they both have individuals that are criminals and non-criminals.

Replace "crime" with "trust" and you understand high-trust vs. low-trust society. They both have individuals with various levels of trust, but emergent behavior driven by statistics creates a very different society.

> there's no difference between "truly creative work" and "truly creative and profitable work"

To state the obvious, the difference is "profit".

Also I don't see you're bringing the "true scottsman" judgement here. What's the difference between "creative" and "truly creative" work. Who gets to decide what is "truly creative" vs. merely "creative".

themafia 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> Replace "crime" with "trust" and you understand high-trust vs. low-trust society.

We already have "high-crime society" and "low-crime society." What this has to do with overall levels of trust in different parts of the system, say, education, is not immediately clear to me. Do all high crime societies have untrustworthy education systems as well?

> To state the obvious, the difference is "profit".

To make my intention clear, the other difference is "popularity," which exemplifies the precise confusion I was reacting to.

> What's the difference between "creative" and "truly creative" work.

I didn't invoke it. The GP did. I'm willing to admit to whatever their subjective judgement is. I wonder if their connection between trust and "true creativity" is valid regardless of any possible definition. My gambit above was to openly suppose a good faith reason for the difference in my point of view.