Comment by darkwater
2 days ago
(I'm going philosophical here)
> Yes. Transparency is the only foundation of trust.
If there is transparency there is no need to trust. You can verify yourself and if you are verifying yourself, you are not trusting. Trust means believing the output someone told you without following all the trails.
Now, transparency, openness and trails to follow are GOOD, and they should always be there. Because if you don't trust, you can check everything yourself. Or because if you forgot something, or start from scratch, you can go back in time and learn what happened and why and who did what, and have a picture in your mind pretty close to actual reality.
Now, we can argue that after a few iterations where you did check someone/something's output completely due to its transparency, you build trust on it and you will not check it in depth anymore. But you could also trust someone just based on the outcome and not the internal procedure. If the outcome was aligned with the promises and its good enough for you, you end up trusting that person anyway.
Transparency pairs with a regulatory environment(*). I can trust a company because they gave to have their ingredients tested, and aren't allowed to include poisons under UK regulations -- I doubt have to verify (I'm not a biologist of any sort, U couldn't) as the company can be held to account through their transparency I can assume (!) they are not being evil.
Now, it depends what is on the line, even an open-hardware device could have had a routine built into a chip that seeks to set the battery on fire. Do you decap and check the silicon? Dunno all the firmware and indirect every routine?
For almost anything it's impossible to make a thorough check by yourself.
Transparency means the provider enables such actions though. That builds trust.
* regulatory environment includes the possibility that you can find a person and enact violence on them.