Book 3 Workbook: The Economics of Trust

The end-to-end Practicum route for The Economics of Trust (Book 3 in the When Intelligence Became Cheap series). Version: 2026-07. This route through the contents asks whom to trust when content, voices, and reputations are cheap to fake, and how to become someone people can trust without excessive checking.

Verifiability is the axis of this route. Do not rely on a verbal claim. Arrange your work so that important facts about you can be confirmed without your help. For the professional route, use the Volume 1 Workbook. For the business route, use the Volume 2 Workbook.

Trust has two sides in this volume. The first is protection: avoid a fake call, email, or review, without paying the cost of checking everything. The second is creation: build a verifiable trail so that people and even AI search can choose you with less doubt. The workbook covers both sides.

Did you arrive from a specific chapter? The Practicum uses three "homes," not one page per chapter. The chapter index gives each chapter one row and links straight to its material.

Minimum trust package

If you do not have time for the whole volume, complete these five worksheets in one evening:

Family trust protocol: agree on a check phrase, talk with parents and children, print a note, and decide what to do first after a scam. Think of it as a seat belt. Set it up before anything happens.
Personal trust perimeter: cover the work side with a second channel for costly instructions, a saved trail of work, and protection if someone makes an accusation.
The first 24 hours with an important file: preserve the original, action log, independent trace, and context before any of them disappear.
Trust footprint map: check what other people can already verify about you without your help and where the gaps are. Then choose one move for the next month.
Honest AI policy: give clients one page that says where AI works, where a human is guaranteed, and who owns an error.

These five worksheets cover the main route through the volume. You have basic protection, the important file remains intact, and other people can verify and choose you more easily.

My trust protocol on one page

Complete this page after the minimum package, or start here if you need one result instead of ten notes. Do not search for absolute authenticity. Decide in advance what level of checking is enough for the cost of this error.

Write this down	Home	Work and business
Costly situation	Who may ask for money, access, or an urgent decision?	Which instruction, payment, access request, or reputation risk must never be accepted from one message?
Second channel	Which saved number or personal channel will you use to check the request?	Who confirms the instruction outside the channel controlled by the sender?
Independent support	Who else can confirm the person or fact?	Where is the original, log, agreement, version, or other independent trace?
What I show	How do people close to you know how to check that it is really you?	How can a client or coworker see the decision owner, the limits on AI, and the work history?
Human owner	Who has the right to stop the payment or conversation?	Who owns the decision and repairs an error?

If you made the mistake. Write one sentence for the first few hours, one fact you will show a week later, and one process change. Do not promise "it will never happen again." Say what will be checked differently. The trust repair protocol gives the full route.

One move for the next 30 days:

Next review date:

For a fillable version that you can export, open the browser-based Trust Compass. See a deliberately imperfect first pass by a composite family and independent professional.

Review prompt. "Here is my trust protocol. Find one situation with a high cost of error where I still have not named a second channel or independent support. Do not suggest services or judge whether a voice or file is authentic. Help me define one practical move for the next 30 days and a review date."

The volume's three homes

Home 1: Protection (Chapters 1 to 5). Avoid traps without paying to check everything

The diagnosis is simple: convincing no longer means authentic. Voices, faces, reviews, and resumes can all be faked. You do not need to check everything. Check the cases where an error is costly.

Family trust protocol for home: a check phrase, a conversation with parents and children, common schemes, limits for your own agents, a note by the phone, and the first hours after a scam.
Personal trust perimeter for work and money: a second channel for costly instructions, a work trail created before an accusation, protection during an accusation or a review attack, and your personal "distrust tax" account.
Live page, for readers in Russia: protections available there, including voluntary credit bans, the "second hand" rule, cooling-off periods, and the rule that a bank does not write through messengers. These measures are free and take minutes to enable.

Home 2: Verifiability and creation (Chapters 6 to 12). Keep a trail and become easier to verify

Procedure connects protection and trust. Preserve an important file and build your own trail over time. When fakes are cheap, verifiable human work becomes more valuable.

Chain of custody: the first 24 hours explains what to do with an important file before an expert review or dispute: preserve the original, a log, a checksum, and an independent trace.
Evidence package before a dispute gives you a template for money, work, a deal, or reputation: what happened, where the original is, what the context was, and who can confirm it independently. It also asks how much checking is enough for a video, a hire, and a payment.
Live page: trust and regulation covers who accepts a digital file, how to check the origin of someone else's file, and who owns an agent's error.
Trust footprint map is the flagship worksheet. It puts three anchors, a verifiable history, live references, and a signed channel, across four channels: social media or Telegram, talks or conferences, books or publications, and community. Its main question is: which parts are expensive to fake?
Honest AI policy treats trust as part of the product. It asks you to state how AI is used and make clear who your offer is not for.
Trust inside a team covers work controls: a register of bots that speak in your name and a hiring protocol for a world where an on-screen candidate is cheap to fake.
Trust repair protocol covers the other side of a verifiable trail: what to do when you made the mistake. First decide whether competence or honesty failed, then use the right process for that failure.
Live and reusable: the AI search visibility kit helps neural systems find and cite you. Its trust layer asks not only whether you are visible, but what those systems say about you.

Home 3: Compass (Chapter 13). Choose the depth and check both sides

The final chapter turns the material into a decision route. It relies on boring protocols that still work when you are tired, not heroic vigilance.

Trust Compass has one cost-of-error arrow, three levels of depth, two territories (Home and Work and business), two sides (how I check and what I show), and four norms.
Family trust protocol is a standalone route for a broad audience. It covers family members, parents, children, your own agents, and the first hours after a scam.
Live page: the regulatory tracker covers AI labeling, provenance, and laws. It changes quickly.

The volume is framed by three trust questions: "Who is speaking? What do they answer for? Who can confirm it independently?" It also uses one rule: check what is costly, not what looks strange. The book explains the questions, and the Trust Compass turns them into levels of review.

How this section is built. Work on the Volume 3 Practicum began before the chapters, and it is now synchronized after each author acceptance. Each worksheet stands on its own. Material that changes quickly, including schemes, laws, and tools, lives in the Live section with review dates. See the Volume 3 sources.