A Seamless Web of Deserved Trust
Honesty, reliability and stewardship, compounded over decades.
The What
It is valuable to think through what type of social interactions you’d like to have. This is my version.
Of course, it all should start with a quote from Charlie:
The highest form which civilization can reach is a seamless web of deserved trust. Not much procedure, just totally reliable people correctly trusting one another.
Well, this pretty much sums up what interactions I want to have. I want to build a seamless web of deserved trust with aligned people, cultivating decades-long friendships and doing important projects together in the meantime. Not more, not less.
Aligned person is someone who roughly shares my life goals, and ideally some of the operating principles.
If they do, what matters next is that they agree on what to optimize for in social interactions: trustworthiness and long-term.
As I see it, trustworthiness has 3 parts (with consistency multiplying all*):
Honesty ‒ devotion to pursuit and transmission of truth.
Reliability ‒ doing what you said you’re going to do.
Stewardship ‒ optimizing both for your own goals, and the goals of others.
Long-term is simple to say but hard to do, it is about playing “infinite” repeating games. Long-term is better because it allows compounding, compounding of trust, quality of friendships, and quality of projects. And if you want to play for the long-term, trustworthiness is the critical trait that makes such compounding possible.
The How
So, how do we build such seamless web of trust? (I think getting clarity that this is what you want is the hardest part. But let’s talk execution.) Fundamentally, this is a culture problem: you want a group of people to follow some principles/ habits.
First, I think you need to precisely define what you want, and then be explicit about it. Be very vocal that you’re optimizing for trust and long-term. Say it online, say it in person, and repeat it all the time. Not only this will attract people with similar interests, what’s more important: it will repel those who want something different.
Once you find those who are also interested in trust and long-term, you just need consistency. Decade-long consistency is hard. I think to make it work you need to set standards, and constantly keep in check (first and foremost) yourself and others who opt-in. Acting trustworthy is a habit, it is something you have to prove day-in and day-out.
If you’re on the same page that you want to build trust over decades, then both parties could call each other out when they are deviating from the 3 principles of honesty, reliability and stewardship.
Suppose you agreed to meet at 5 with your friend, yet you come at 5:30 without rescheduling the second you know you’ll be late. Your friend must call you out that this is unreliable and below the agreed standards, and this decreases the trust you’re trying to build. This is what I’d call a healthy culture.
Bossing people around about them being late when they never agreed to build “a seamless web of trust” is just nasty. Also it is unhealthy if only you can call out mistakes of your friends, but they don’t call out yours.
So if I were to sum up: You need to define what you want. Then you need to be vocal about it. Then once you find those who are also interested in trust and long-term you need explicit agreements to opt-in and hold each to such standards. And then you need to adhere to these standards for the planned “long-term”, which mainly comes down to calling each other out when you fall below the line.
And of course, if someone first was interested, but then decided it is not for them, they should be free to opt-out.
Well, this is the social interactions I’d like to have: Aligned people consistently earning each others trust, cultivating decade-long friendships and doing important projects together in the meantime.
If you’re interested in this too, come along! (This is literally why I wrote this essay!)
ps:
I want to thank Charlie Munger and Sam Hinkie for clarifying my thoughts on the topic. I didn’t have direct conversations with them, but they were vocal about this being a better way to interact with others, and this was enough.