ASARIAN'S BLOG
I don't see this working any other way.
Saturday, March 18, 2006 2:01 AM
Just read an interesting thread on trust. Was gonna post in there; but its purpose, I think, was really for people to express their experiences with betrayal of trust. So, short of hijacking the thread, and be all contrary, I will say something about it here.
I good few years back, a highly gifted math friend of mine once told me of this interesting computer experiment they had running at the university. The idea was to write the best software to detect and anticipate false information and lies. Several brilliant engineers entered the contest (a virtual world of trading); and a great many advanced pieces of software were written.
The "easiest" solution, of course, was to tell the computer to trust nobody. But then you cannot win anything, either. So, the contestants had to find some sort of middle ground: trust to a degree, and be careful elsewhere. The field of statistics; probabilities and such; all extremely complex; and all way over my head.
And you know which program won? You guessed correctly: a very simply program that... always trusts! :) Which is to say, unlike the other participants, the programmers of this box had specifically taught it NOT to learn from its "mistakes"; should it burn its fingers, so to speak, it would, in a similar situation, take the exact same route, and trust like it had never been betrayed before. In the end, this astoundingly simple premise won out to all math in the 'verse! Like Simon said: "I don't care what you've done. I don't know what you're planning on doing, but I'm trusting you. I think you should do the same, cause I don't see this working any other way."
I dunno; I've always felt the story has some cosmic significance. You be the judge.
COMMENTS: 4