Trust—The New Nautilus Issue

[December 7, 2017 Chapter One: Legacy]( [READ ISSUE]( Dear Nautilus Reader, Why save a drowning stranger? That’s the question biologist Rob Trivers asked at the beginning of his classic 1971 paper, “The evolution of reciprocal altruism.” The answer, he argued, is that it becomes worth it if you can have the expectation of being saved in the future. The population that selects for altruism and against cheating benefits and outcompetes, and trust gets encoded in its genes. But trust also appears to be in decline. Trust in government around the world is on the ebb, and is at historic lows in the United States. We’re awash in stories of abuse of trust by leaders from all walks of life, especially against women. Younger adults are less trusting than older ones of judges, neighbors, and even in-laws. It turns out that trust is less of a static currency and more of a battleground. The temptation to cheat is persistent. The rules for calculating the benefits of trusting against its costs are constantly shifting. The costs to the cheater can vary as well—as Trivers put it, “we deceive ourselves the better to deceive others.” Maybe that’s why the institution of science has a special role to play in the trust wars, and has maintained the public’s trust while other institutions have not. Feynman told us, after all, that “science is a way of not trying to fool yourself.” Welcome to “Trust.” Best, Michael Segal Editor in Chief info@nautil.us [Why Garbage Science Gets Published Predatory journals keep the pseudoscience flowing. By Adam Marcus & Ivan Oransky]( In December 2014, the publisher Scientific Research issued a retraction notice for a paper that had appeared in its journal Health with the anodyne title “Basic Principles Underlying Human Physiology.” [The Resulting Fallacy Is Ruining Your Decisions Are you judging your decisions on their outcomes? By Stuart Firestein]( Most poker players didn’t go to graduate school for cognitive linguistics. Then again, most poker players aren’t Annie Duke. [Paid Advertisement Photographing Species to Help Save Them]( National Geographic’s Photo Ark has documented more than 7,000 species–toward its goal of 12,000–to sound the alarm about species at-risk and give people opportunities to help save them before its too late. Make an impact with us at natgeo.org. [Parents Shouldn’t Spy on Their Kids Apps that make it easy to invade kids’ privacy are a recipe for arrested development. By Kirsten Weir]( For the past two years, Mandie Snyder, an accountant near Spokane, Washington, has been “monitoring” her daughter. [READ ISSUE]( NautilusThink, Inc. 233 Broadway Suite 720New York, NY 10279 [Add us to your address book](//nautil.us6.list-manage.com/vcard?u=e299ad34aa80671ada72a819a&id=dc96ec7a9d) Copyright © 2017 NautilusThink, Inc., All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in at our website. [unsubscribe from this list](   [update subscription preferences](