Jim Bell sentenced to 10 years in prison

[Jim Choate]

On Wed, 29 Aug 2001, Faustine wrote:

> Maybe this is off on a tangent, but why "trust" anyone unless you have 
> something substantial to gain by it? I don't give anyone my trust or ask to 
> be trusted in return unless I have a damn good reason. In fact, it's 
> significant if I even consent to open an e-mail from someone, much less 
> answer it.
> 
> How many times has someone "overtly proven themselves trustworthy" and then 
> turned around and stabbed you in the back for no good reason at all? How 
> many times have people here had law enforcement sicced on them over some 
> two-bit petty quibble? Is spilling your guts to people in the interest of 
> ego-enhancing camaraderie really worth the risk you put yourself in by 
> giving them the power of your information to hold over you? No thanks, I'll 
> pass. Don't trust me and I'll be happy to return the favor.

There was an interesting show on last night about this, I caught it
unexpectedly so I don't know channel or title (sorry). It was pretty
interesting in that it demonstrated pretty conclusively that 'friendship'
and 'trust' are figments of human psychology to cover up reality.

The protocol was to have two friends volunteer in a study. They were
grouped with two strangers. A set of three of them would then provide
hints from a list of 10 items related to the word they were trying to get
the fourth person to select. Clearly one of the three must be a 'friend'
of the fourth receiving hints. The test was rigged so that the first
person did poorly irrespective of the hints (the list of allowable hints
was rigged). When the two friends switched the person who did poorly
intentionaly picked harder hints from the list. When asked about it
afterward they advised they didn't want their friend to do better than
them.

Etu Brute?


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