Marshall's worked case is the 18-year-old Benjamin Franklin in 1724. Governor Keith of Pennsylvania promises the young printer letters of credit and introduction to set him up in London, and Franklin sails on the strength of them. The letters never existed; Keith "never had any to give." Franklin lands in London penniless, "thoroughly lied-to." The lesson Marshall draws is deliberately plain: "people are not necessarily reliable." But he sharpens it with a perspective shift. Did young Franklin do anything wrong? From the 18-year-old runaway's view, no — "how could you have known?" From the 65-year-old Franklin's view, yes — "there would have been many ways to verify that Keith was unreliable." Taking a powerful man at his word felt safe; verifying would have cost little. The error is treating another person's stated intention as a fact rather than a claim to be checked. The reliability of a source is itself an empirical question — testable in advance — and the cost of testing is almost always less than the cost of being wrong. Trust, in causal mode, is something you verify, not something you assume from someone's status or good manners. --- *Source: [[Book Inventory/Progression|Progression]] (Sebastian Marshall, 2016) — Uncommon Virtues #4 — Causal / Empirical*