freedom in life.

For example, let's say I'm really good at finding fruit and bad at making fires,

but you happen to be really good at making fires and bad at finding fruit.

And because I wanna sleep near a fire and you wanna eat some fruit, we partner up.

I give you fruit, and you give me fire.

And so we end up having more freedom together than we would have on our own.

But if you pick the wrong partner, whether it's in work, politics, an institution you

use, love, friendship, or anything else, they'll ruin your life.

And they'll ruin your life by taking advantage of your labour.

For example, your boss might ask you to take on more and more responsibilities without

compensating you for the the increased workload.

Or an authoritarian government might throw you into a labour camp.

Or a business partner might make you do the majority of the work while still reaping the

benefits.

The wrong partner takes advantage of our labour and turns us into a slave.

So there's a positive-side and a negative-side to partnership, and it all depends on which

partner you choose.

So how do you decide who to partner up with?

While there are many different traits that good partners /could/ have, there is one trait

that every good partner /must/ have: trustworthiness.

You can think of trustworthiness as running on a scale from 0 to 100.

0 means absolutely untrustworthy: this person will always take advantage of your labour

if given the chance.

100 means absolutely trustworthy: this person will never take advantage of your labour,

even if it would benefit them immensely to do so.

And you can think of everyone having a score somewhere along this scale.

And you may be wondering, what would it mean to have a score of say 50 or 80?

Let's say you give a stranger $10 to hold while you tie your shoe.

To some people, $10 might be enough to take advantage of you and run away, while to others

it might not be.

But to those who didn't take advantage of you, they might not take advantage of you

for $10, but if you handed them $100, then they might start to seriously consider it.

So different people have different thresholds at which they might choose to take advantage

of your labour.

And the person who'll never take advantage of your labour is absolutely trustworthy.

So how do you identify if someone's trustworthy?

Is there a marker that can signal someone's trustworthiness?

I think the closest thing is this: they have long-term relationships with partners that

have voluntarily chosen to be in that relationship.

Why is this a good signal?

Because it's hard to fake.

If someone's untrustworthy, other people are unlikely to voluntarily choose to be in

a long-term relationship with them.

And the word voluntary is critical.

If you're in a long-term relationship with me because you have no other choices, that's

not a signal of my trustworthiness.

It's only when you have other choices, but still choose me, that our relationship becomes

a sign of my trustworthiness.

But if you're trying to identify someone as trustworthy, you're trying to make a

prediction, and there's an underlying problem with prediction.

Predictions are based on and derived from the past, and the future may not always resemble

the past.

For example, someone may have appeared trustworthy their whole life, but in the last few days

before they pass, they may pull a scam on everyone who trusted them, a plan they'd

carefully constructed and worked on over the course of their life, the ultimate heist.

Or vice-versa, someone may have been a thief their whole life, but after they have an internal

revolution, they may become the most trustable person you know.

So when we make predictions, we always run the risk of being wrong.

The future doesn't always resemble the past.

And the best way to lessen our risk might be something like insurance.

But there's also a way to decrease our probability of being wrong.

See, your predictions are based on your knowledge, and your knowledge is based on your experiences.

So if you have limited experiences, you have limited knowledge, and if you have limited

knowledge, then your predictions are not very accurate.

But if you expand your life experience through experimentation with new things, you expand

your knowledge, and if you expand your knowledge, you make better predictions.

And experimentation solves a different problem.

How do you deal with people who have no past for you to base your prediction on?

How do you tell how valuable a new graduate will be to your company when they have no

past experience for you to base your prediction on?

How do you tell how good of a friend or a lover someone will be if they've never had

the chance to be one in the past?

If you experiment with the new, you might find something better than what you had, while

simultaneously improving your ability to predict.

But of course, experimentation comes with risk, and that's when insurance comes back

into play, but that's a topic for another video.

So we can't live life without partners, and the right partners can increase the freedom

we experience in life.

And the right partner is trustworthy, and a good signal of trustworthiness is whether

or not someone has long-term relationships with partners that have voluntarily chosen

to be in that relationship.

But this signal is just a way to predict someone's trustworthiness, and all predictions run the

risk of being wrong.

We can improve our ability to predict through experimentation with new and untested ideas,

and we can minimize the risk we face by being wrong with insurance.

As always, this is just my opinion and understanding of partnership, trust, and cooperation, not

advice.

And if you have a different take on these ideas, I'd love to

hear your perspective in the

comments below.