[Suzuran]

In a lot of ways he is, despite witnessing a lot of how the sausage is made directly. Honestly, I think at at least half of it is wanting to convince himself that the world still functions in ways that make sense to him rather than admit that it's mostly grifters grifting all the way down.

[direwolf20]

The Gervais Principle framework calls this type of person a Clueless. They sit in middle management as a buffer between the Sociopaths who run the world, and the Losers who know the world sucks but would just like to get their paycheck and go home. I'm surprised to hear this actually play out — the Gervais Principle doesn't seem very empirical.

[nathanaldensr]

The high-trust Boomer brain cannot comprehend the actual low-trust society of grifters in which we live.

[pluralmonad]

I don't agree with this blanket statement. The internet is low trust for lots of reasons, but regular (read small, proximal/spatiotemporally constrained) communities still exist and are not grifters all the way down. Acknowledging that distant strangers are not trustworthy in the traditional sense seems reasonable, but is categorically different than addressing natural social groups (small and local).