I'm glad I found your post amongst the thousands of others in the sea of Steemit. I have to say, you are one of the most insightful writers I've read on steemit thus far.
We are social creatures and by our instinct nature, we tend to trust people easily, especially if we perceive them to have higher authority than us (ie. qualifications, diplomas, experience, etc.) However, our trust can be easily swayed and abused if our perceptions of our authority figures do not match the reality. While it's important to question our beliefs, but not all of us have the luxury of time to engage in such a time-consuming process.
I'd like to highlight that blockchain technology helps to bridge the trust gap so we can trust the system without trusting the people. I wonder if the technology can go even further to help us reduce our inherent herd mentality thinking.
Well blockchain only makes it so that the data is tamper-proof, not that it is accurate infromation, or that a contract will be honored. It's trustless in that you don't need a third party to verify or notarize things, as the blockchain does it.
Indeed, the inherent position is to trust by default, to a certain extent, and the degree greatly increases on perceived images that convey more trust in some areas as you mention. Thanks for the great feedback.