> Gone are the days of just trying to assume people mean the best

I think people have been bitten in the back enough time by assuming the best that people have switched to thinking this way. When you try to be nice and keep getting taken advantage of then it's hard to stay nice.

People meaning the best isn't good enough in a world where people are dying from polluted water in Flint... It doesn't mean much when racial hate groups are growing in membership as much as inflation... People meaning the best also doesn't mean much when government grants PPP loans to companies that abuse it.

We're living in a scam economy... My best policy is to not really extend trust as much as extending "tiered courtesy" and carefully observing the results to determine how much more to give... I primarily work hardest on my own trustworthiness, because I know very well how easily any of us can become corrupted by bad times.

Even some of the strongest marriages and families are being torn apart right now because of broken trust.. In my experience, trust is never a permanent state, although I wish it could be. One thing's for certain, there's not a single corporation I trust right now at all, they've been pretty merciless towards everyone except for their Investors and vested leadership.

Isn’t assuming no faul play a more peaceful personal Position? Why worry all the time if you can just worry when something actually happens

> Why worry all the time if you can just worry when something actually happens

At least in the USA, one small mistake in trust or lack of safety in certain things ("something happening") could cause you to be on the street within months, even for people like those here on HN who generally have good jobs and such. I think it's getting a bit primal due to that here. We're acting like animals because we've been treated as such for decades and generations and we're finally sick of it. That's my opinion, not really backed up by anything.

There's a prisoner's dilemma thing going on: if you meet someone who assumes good intentions, you can scam them at least once for free. Normally the incidence of this is low, but it has been rising. Politics has always had a flexible relationship with the truth, but now the dishonesty and bait-and-switch is getting to a point where people feel they have been scammed.

Conversely if you do have good intentions and you meet a person who has just been ripped off, do not expect them to take your "trust me bro" at face value.

There is however an odd effect where people take a breach of trust as a reason to give themselves over to an even less trustworthy institution. 2008 financial crisis means you can't trust banks? Why not invest in a Singapore-based defi organisation promising much higher interest rates? MSM trust lost after Iraq war? Why not get your news from the Russian state propaganda channel instead?

judging people by the consequences their actions have in the world is fine. Supervillains tend to be in short supply so generally even most heinous acts committed usually are done with, in the mind of the perpetrator, good intent.

If someone affects you negatively you'd be smart to care about your own skin before you care about their intentions, that's not a recent invention and not an unreasonable way to navigate the world, it also has very little to do with emotions. On the contrary, trying to assume someone else's intent seems like a pretty emotional way to operate if anything.

> judging people by the consequences their actions have in the world is fine.

It depends very much on the consequences and their evaluation.

If, exaggerating a bit for illustrative purposes, I say "Hello" to a colleague and that colleague is angry, disappointed, upset that I did not use a more formal "Good morning," which in their mind is reserved for more distinguished colleagues, it becomes a "monkey in the circus" problem.

That is, I have to change my behavior because I am being manipulated as the more astute and cynical colleague wants: my intentions might be good, but the result is that they are angry and ready to talk to HR.

One might read this and think, "This is an absurd case," it will never happen, of course HR, colleagues and all the people in the world will see clearly what is happening.

But it does happen, and something similar has happened to me, when we believe that whatever way people react in their minds should be "honored."

> If someone affects you negatively you'd be smart to care about your own skin before you care about their intentions,

THAT IS TRUTH... You cannot save a drowning person if you first can't swim.... You're both likely to drown... Try to maybe throw them a life vest or rope if you're on the boat, but only sacrifice yourself if you can't live without them. Trustworthiness is of infinite value, but most never learn where that gold is buried.

It's interesting what you say about supervillains being in short supply.

I generally don't think of people as evil, as others have pointed out, it seems more of a societal/group miasma that envelops us. Lots of people are misinformed, and this misinformation hurts. Lots of people are trying to protect their own interests because they have their own believes on how the world should be and they generate and spread misinformation. Is that evil? I would say it's rather irresponsible.

We can't ignore that actually there are people out there purposefully creating and spreading misinformation, none of them are supervillains. But together? This sort of bad-faith acting compounds quickly and harms society a great deal.

And then as you go up the chain of power, what starts happening when powerful people put their interests and world view above everything? Would you say when Bill Gates actively campaigned against laws in Africa to lower AIDS medicines prices (through the abolition of intellectual property for these) that he was being "evil". What kind of world view will put the lives of thousands below intellectual property rights protections? This behaviour was repeated with the COVID vaccine. What about politicians that spread misinformation through social media or tv-shows such as Fox News? Would we consider these people to be "supervillains"? Maybe not... but again... together?

I think the world is full of bad-faith and it's eating itself. But to me the real evil comes from individuals acting in their own self-interest without respecting others. Everyone is contributing a little bit, some contribute a lot more. But this situation is much more dangerous, in my opinion, than having a super-villain because evil seems to be hiding in everyone's best intentions.

Intimate talk to leaders may often reveal narcissistic traits bordering on psychopathy: The delight in feasting on others misery, and getting away with it!

Most people support this unknowingly, thus supporting scaffolding of psychopathic systems. Even though 98% are not psychopathic, most people will support adversarial and self-destructive systems.

It reminds me of the time when my Director asked me what the main strengths of my colleagues were. The Director was not, I write this euphemistically, a genius.

When asked about one of my peers, I said, "They are extraordinary at [this]"? The Director followed up with, "So you wanna say they are not good at [that]"?

When bad intentions are assumed, there is always a firm grip on the climb to total idiocy. And that Director was in clear view of the summit.

That is because the benefit of doubt was applied asymmetrically (some people got infinite amount of it, others almost none) and was abused by bad actors quite a lot.

Also, ignoring impact meant that you could actively damage people you did not cared about while pretending ignorance again and again.

> Also, ignoring impact meant that you could actively damage people you did not cared about while pretending ignorance again and again.

I definitely agree with that. I don't think either should be ignored, but weighed against each other. That's pretty close to how our legal system works for a lot of crimes.

I'd also argue a person pretending innocence does -not- have good intentions, regardless of what they say.

We've had an expression for it since before social media: "just asking questions".

Agreed, even posting online is extremely frustrating now as there is no real connection/association with real faces and posts. I understand the isolation and stress that people feel, as I feel it too, however it doesn't license people to take their frustration and anger out on others. We need to start dealing with online aggression, and the other negative behaviors exhibited with more seriousness than simply banning or ratioing users... We also need to hold sites and communities accountable for equal access and presentation of users.

People should be permitted to be wrong without getting banned or ratioed... That's what is not being allowed to play out properly... That experience only grows people who become moderators, and even politicians, that inflict the same hostile disregard and aggression towards others... "Hurt people hurt people".

We always should thoroughly address and protect each other online from conversational misconduct and of course verbal or physical abuse, but it seems that Twitter alone encourages it as a means of gaining popularity on the platform... They should be called out for that.