The Battle for Trust : A Brief History and its Effect on Extreme Politics, Artificial Intelligence, and Nuclear Threat

I Applaud The Work You Are Doing On the Vital Subject of Trust--The Thread That Holds Everything Together. -SCOTT PELLEY, 60 MINUTES REPORTER, CBS

Trust is an entity worth much more than money, oil, or gold. Winning its battles determines the purchasing decisions of millions, the choices in voting and the determination of political power.

That there is always a battle for trust is undeniable.

• It’s there because of the “bully pulpit” dynamics of power-driven politicians.
• It’s there when we rely on our loved ones to be there in times of trouble—as when couples fear alleged affairs.
• It’s there when we struggle to understand what is happening to our planet—when our homes are devastated by calamitous weather—while others claim that climate change is a hoax.
• It’s there when our need to trust is so great that we end up believing untrustworthy sources—like seductive messages from social media.

The battles for trust are pervasive and A Brief History of Trust brings it all to life, providing an historical overview of the major trust issues that engage us today, willingly or not, via the headlines of our daily news media.

It offers the understanding of the history of trust brought to light by the stories of human interaction through the ages—from the neuroscience of trust to the printing press to the slow strangulation of political trust, from the research on “narcissistic” monkeys explaining the evolution of conspiracy theories to the conspiratorial trust between political leaders to the convoluted challenges of the Chatbot Revolution.

Trust—or its loss—affects the thinking and decision-making of masses through all media, and more recently as generated by artificial intelligence. At this critical point in our culture, we face a crisis of restoring trust, with life itself and global civilization held hostage by misinformation and false beliefs.