Faith in People
I feel like a lot of people I know tend to have very little faith in People, or Humanity in general, but are pretty willing to give the benefit of the doubt to individual humans they meet. Maybe I'm wrong, and most of my friends are really the other way around? Or neither? I'm curious whether this is something I can get at in a poll, and have been meaning to try for ages now.
When I say faith in Humanity as a whole, I mean things like "people are basically good", "yes we will get a human on Mars some day", "in a few hundred years, most of today's problems will be long gone and hard to explain", "everything will pretty much be okay because humanity will work stuff out". That kind of thing. This is about people as a group.
Faith in individuals is how much do you trust specific people, maybe especially people you don't know much about -- how much are you emotionally or intellectually able to say "this random person is more likely than not to do the right thing, or to be nice to me, or be my friend", or "unless I have some specific reason to doubt them personally, I would trust this person with XYZ". The same applies to friends where you have limited actual knowledge about what they will do in a given situation. This also applies to specific people even if they are anonymous.
[EDIT: faerieboots came up with an example that very neatly captures the distinction I had in mind: It's the difference between asking whether people are safe drivers in general, and whether you treat that car right there as if it were a safe driver. Not just as a matter of precaution or defensive driving, but at a sort of gut level.]
Note that this is about balance -- you can be a total cynic who thinks everyone is evil and should die, or you can love everyone, and still come out pretty balanced on this metric. Imagine scales, not a graph with one or two axes. I think trying to measure each axis separately would be much harder.
There are a couple of things I suspect these tendencies might correlate with, but I'll refrain from speculate wildly until after the poll:
Yes, I expect you to quibble with the poll question. This is the Internet -- you're practically obligated to quibble.
Poll
I expect lots of people will pick option 4. This is a purely subjective, "how do you see yourself" poll. Answer the way you think you actually are, not how you think other people would answer or how you think you should be. I have no idea whether any of the options is the "sane" one, so I won't judge you.
Personally, I'm ordinarily very optimistic about humanity, but I tend not to trust individuals much.
Speculation: Does this have any predictive value for political stances? E.g., "sure, a market economy can work out its kinks on its own" or "all politicians and government employees are presumptively corrupt and should be expected to use every shred of power you give them to oppress the disempowered."
What is the relationship with attributing moral subjectivity to people? Does that have to do with how much you have faith in their basic goodness or trustworthiness? E.g. are you capable of getting mad at random people who do things that inconvenience you, and can you say "that thing they did was morally or ethically wrong", or do you treat all strangers and/or friends like trees? Personally, I'm a socially inept introvert who covers it up with lots of coping techniques, and I tend to fall more on the "treating people like trees" side of the line.
I mean, in terms of moral subjectivity. If you are looking for me to treat you like a tree in some other way, you will have to, er, dress up like a dryad or something.
When I say faith in Humanity as a whole, I mean things like "people are basically good", "yes we will get a human on Mars some day", "in a few hundred years, most of today's problems will be long gone and hard to explain", "everything will pretty much be okay because humanity will work stuff out". That kind of thing. This is about people as a group.
Faith in individuals is how much do you trust specific people, maybe especially people you don't know much about -- how much are you emotionally or intellectually able to say "this random person is more likely than not to do the right thing, or to be nice to me, or be my friend", or "unless I have some specific reason to doubt them personally, I would trust this person with XYZ". The same applies to friends where you have limited actual knowledge about what they will do in a given situation. This also applies to specific people even if they are anonymous.
[EDIT: faerieboots came up with an example that very neatly captures the distinction I had in mind: It's the difference between asking whether people are safe drivers in general, and whether you treat that car right there as if it were a safe driver. Not just as a matter of precaution or defensive driving, but at a sort of gut level.]
Note that this is about balance -- you can be a total cynic who thinks everyone is evil and should die, or you can love everyone, and still come out pretty balanced on this metric. Imagine scales, not a graph with one or two axes. I think trying to measure each axis separately would be much harder.
There are a couple of things I suspect these tendencies might correlate with, but I'll refrain from speculate wildly until after the poll:
Yes, I expect you to quibble with the poll question. This is the Internet -- you're practically obligated to quibble.
Poll
I expect lots of people will pick option 4. This is a purely subjective, "how do you see yourself" poll. Answer the way you think you actually are, not how you think other people would answer or how you think you should be. I have no idea whether any of the options is the "sane" one, so I won't judge you.
Personally, I'm ordinarily very optimistic about humanity, but I tend not to trust individuals much.
Speculation: Does this have any predictive value for political stances? E.g., "sure, a market economy can work out its kinks on its own" or "all politicians and government employees are presumptively corrupt and should be expected to use every shred of power you give them to oppress the disempowered."
What is the relationship with attributing moral subjectivity to people? Does that have to do with how much you have faith in their basic goodness or trustworthiness? E.g. are you capable of getting mad at random people who do things that inconvenience you, and can you say "that thing they did was morally or ethically wrong", or do you treat all strangers and/or friends like trees? Personally, I'm a socially inept introvert who covers it up with lots of coping techniques, and I tend to fall more on the "treating people like trees" side of the line.
I mean, in terms of moral subjectivity. If you are looking for me to treat you like a tree in some other way, you will have to, er, dress up like a dryad or something.