A video showing beans being poured into a cup sitting atop of a scale, atop of another scale. Both scales measure the beans concurrently.
A video showing beans being poured into a cup sitting atop of a scale, atop of another scale. Both scales measure the beans concurrently.
I’ve always hated the phrase “trust but verify.”
It’s a nonsensical oxymoron. It’s like saying “I trust my wife not to cheat on me, but I verify it by having her followed.” Then you don’t trust your wife dude
I’ll get off my soapbox now.
It’s a risk management strategy where you only do checks afterwards.
“Trust” means that you don’t make processes wait on passing checks before proceeding, because that would be expensive and/or slow.
“Verify” means that you have a separate process that comes through and runs checks afterwards, maybe on only some of the things you trusted, to catch issues.
It’s ideal when you have high-volume and/or low-latency processes where failures are low stakes but you still want to catch systemic issues eventually.
It’s related to the idea that “the optimal amount of fraud is non-zero”.
In my work it refers moreso to how you speak with the client, while still needing to verify their claims.
That’s why in Germany we instead say: Trust is good, but verification is better
It resolves if you realize that “trust” can refer to an action taken which will only turn out okay if the thing trusted is indeed trustworthy.
For example, a field agent reports that there’s a forbidden shipment of firearms passing through X port on such a such date.
“Trust but verify” in this situation means:
That’s my take on it at least. You take whatever action would be warranted if the intel is correct. But you also work to verify the intel (you just don’t wait for the confirmation to take action).
This is exactly it. The OPs analogy of his wife cheating needs a bit of a tweak because the assumption his wife is predicated on the fact that she was unfaithful at some point.
A lighter example might be trust your wife started the dishwasher. You verify that she did by checking the dish detergent door.
I think you understand it correctly. 😂
Itsironic.webm
I think this is an offhanded comment, but if you’re actually confused about the saying:
There’s varying levels of trust, if someone on the street tells you something bizarre, you’d probably be skeptical of it and not believe the information they told you.
But if your wife who you’ve been married to for 20 years and is generally a factually correct individual, tells you that bizzare information, you’d probably trust it a bit more and believe it, but its still a weird thing they’re talking about, so you’d probably want to verify by trying to find a news article or google the subject matter to make sure what they’re saying is true. Doesn’t mean you don’t trust your wife, just that the information they told you doesn’t sound feasibly correct, and you want to verify to make sure.
If someone with a PH.D in the subject matter tells you that weird piece of information, you’d probably trust it on the spot, but you also should probably verify with a peer reviewed journal article, just to verify.
Example in the context of your example:
a random person on the street stops you and says your wife is cheating on you. “Wtf? What do they know about me or my wife, I dont even know this person, they’re crazy…”
A good friend tells you that you’re wife is cheating on you. “Oh shit… Could she really be cheating on me? I should confront her and find out the truth…”
The guy your wife is cheating on you with, tells you your wife us cheating on you. “Fuck… This can’t be can it?? Fuck! I should confront her and find out the truth…”
Trust, but verify.
I trust that you know what you are doing, however rules say I must verify your work to ensure no errors (or ensure fairness.)
How about: “I have no reason to doubt, but I’m gonna verify just to be sure”?