Aristotle, “On Trolling” | Hacker News Reader

Aristotle, “On Trolling”

journals.cambridge.org

180 pointsdiodorus84 comments

for there is no art in what they do.

I couldn't disagree more. There is common trolling and there is sublime trolling. The ability to sow the perfect amount of strife to create real change is a thing of beauty. This goes beyond the tactics of information warfare -- for which trolling has its uses -- and reveals truth to those in ignorance. For most true knowledge cannot be learned by the advice of elders alone, but must be learned through the long and winding path. Many of life's truths are best revealed through fiction.

This essay reads like it fears trolls and their threats to social order. But the way of discord and strife is also true. Did Eris not troll Olympus most excellently with her golden apple? Did she not reveal that divine folly was no less than mortal folly? This is the awesome power that is trolling in a skilled hand.

Your comment relies on a misunderstanding of what Aristotle - or his proxie here - means by the term "art". In modern usage, something that has no art to it is base, simple, and requires no effort to achieve. However, art meant something more nuanced to Aristotle (that nuance is why people still make a living arguing over the implications of what he said). For Aristotle, an art was something that pointed to the Good. Politics was the art of governing men, Ethics was the art of ruling oneself. These things involved skill - the skill you allude to the troll possessing, the power to weave webs of words and manipulate people - but also involved something more - an understanding that the purpose of the art was to further a good in some way. When "Aristotle" says there's not art in the troll's activities, he means they do not point to the good, and they will in fact do harm.

PS apologies if this isn't well reasoned, I just got off a plane and am a bit jet lagged.

Rest assured, the jet lag appears not to have blunted the art of your reasoning ;)

Regardless of what definition of "art" you follow, I feel like trolling as described by labster can certainly be used for good.

Labster himself describes the use of trolling in tricking the reluctant apprentice into learning, or using it to sow strife to further policy making and bring about social change. "Good" is in the eye of the beholder, but I could certainly consider some of those things to be good some of the time.

There is a difference in abusing other people online for entertainment - "common trolling" as labster describes it - and the "sublime trolling" in which he sees art.

The only problem is that "sublime trolling" is something he made up. Tricking apprentices to learn, come on.

He's just playing devil's advocate in a not very convincing way.

From the essay:

> but what trolling is, and how many its species are, and whether there is an excellence of the troll, is unclear.

I happen to agree with Labster's point that trolling, in rare but excellent cases, can be a thing of art, and can be used with purpose.

http://thecodelesscode.com/

almost all of these koans are masters trolling students

Hah! This was my first thought too. The whole purpose of a koan is to, one way or another, subvert (i.e. troll) your normal thought process so some important truth can be learned.

> Regardless of what definition of "art" you follow, I feel like trolling as described by labster can certainly be used for good.

Or at least for effect.

EXAMPLE; BANKSY.

IF THERE IS NO ART IN BANKSY, THEN WHY DO PEOPLE PAY MILLIONS FOR HIS ART? HAHAHAHAHAH..........

metatrolling in this comment by dual useage of the word 'art' fully intended.

but what banksy does seriously is not easy. and if you don't believe me, please watch 'exit through the gift shop', a truly sublime documentary, itself fake , but SO TRUE, totally worth watching twice.

Please don't use all caps in comments here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

In general, "art" had a different meaning in past times compared to today.

It was the subject of this very interesting excerpt by Knuth, recently posted by pg.

http://www.paulgraham.com/knuth.html

Would you consider, as I would, the Yes Men's activities as both trolling and more or less good? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiWlvBro9eI

As to the quote, you've either misread, or are actually amusingly trolling yourself ;) Given that the whole sentence that the quote comes from actually explains how to detect non-trolls:

"And none of these is the troll, or perhaps some are of a mixed type; for there is no art in what they do."

and as a follow-up, close to the end the essay says:

"And since the one [a troll] who does this on every occasion must act with knowledge, and on the basis of practice and care, he has a kind of art"

With that out of the way, the gist of your comment is totally very interesting and thought provoking, thanks!

edit: or did I just perfectly fall for the troll here? :) still not really sure...

The ability to sow the perfect amount of strife to create real change is a thing of beauty

But if the goal is to effect change, then it is (arguably) not a troll:

And the community has some good in common, and this the troll must know, and what things promote and destroy it: for he seeks to destroy

"Science does not remove the terror of the gods"

> And this is how the troll generates strife. For what he indicates is known to be false or harmful or ignorant; but he does not say that thing, but rather something close.

Haha, that is naive, or perhaps incomplete. Actually the "worst" trolls simply tell some uncomfortable truth (which isn't false or ignorant, and he who respects truth wouldn't dare call it harmful).

That is to say, sometimes trolls disrupt communities that are formed around "group think", consisting of members who get together just to be around others who think the same way and avoid those who disagree with the shared ideas.

If you surround yourself with others who confirm your opinions, then anyone who busts in with a dose of reality is a "troll".

There are many forms of disruption, with many motivations, that all get lumped into the "troll" category.

> Actually the "worst" trolls simply tell some uncomfortable truth (which isn't false or ignorant, and he who respects truth wouldn't dare call it harmful).

Did you get to the part about Socrates?

Well played!

That said, as the article points out the classic troll succeeds, not by appearing as an outside attacker to unite the community, but by posting in such a way that gets the community fighting among itself in response to the troll.

One need not even tell a truth to troll - one can merely ask a question that has no good answer.

These are my best trolls: "what are the underlying principles that lead you to believe X?" "what evidence - if any - would cause you to hold a different belief?"

It's the best troll, because when folks come up with no answer they usually resort to ad-hominem attacks. That's usually how you know you've raised a very good point.

Why would you call that a troll, rather than simple rational enquiry?

Mainly because it invites downvotes, ad hominem attacks and general hostility from other parties. For example, this thread from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11654161

I don't think that rational inquiry and trolling are necessarily disjoint sets.

For that matter, someone, say, championing racial equality in some Neo-Nazi online forum (with rational arguments and all) would be considered a troll.

Or a better analogy would be someone asking what principle is used to justify white supremacy might be considered a troll.

Then again, they might not. I've done exactly this (albeit with white supremacist NRX types) and was merely given rational arguments. It was actually quite interesting - I could explicitly pinpoint the place where I disagreed with them [1].

[1] They appealed to "lifeboat ethics", while I believe Singapore and similar multi-ethnic non-democracies provide perfect Moldbuggian counterexample to claims we are in a "lifeboat".

I would be interested in a link to that discussion if you have it.

Also, is a white supremacist NRX type the type that refuses to politely ignore the research on intelligence levels, the heredity thereof, and the observed differences between various races in order to maintain the widely believed fiction that all men are created equal, or are they the irrational, unquestioning tribal kind that just assume clustering together around racial lines is some kind of natural duty, or something else entirely?

It was a private conversation, so I can't link to it.

That particular white supremacist NRX type is the kind that wants to create a whites-only state because they believe that's the only way to have a proper civilization. It's not that they have any particular hostility towards non-whites, it's just that they believe that (due to the aforementioned differences in intelligence levels and cultural behaviors) a high trust civilization can't be created which also includes them.

As I noted, Singapore certainly seems to be a counterexample to this.

Oh well, explanation is quite adequate at any rate, thank you for that.

Yes, I'm familiar with the type, and agree with your rebuttal. Singapore unfortunately is the exception rather than the rule, so I predict that these people are only likely to gain in volume and use large parts of the rest of their word as case in points for their position, with some worryingly recent trends in certain northern european countries with refugee issues acting as jet fuel on the fire.

Once again, Isn't that just another way of saying that people do not like being confronted with the fact that their positions are not actually rational at all, rather than that you are "trolling" someone by so confronting them?

I agree that the linked thread is a good example of exactly this phenomenon, and I think it's actually a far more common thing here than people would like to admit.

But that confrontation comprises a good bulk of what is actually called trolling.

There is the aspect that the confrontation is not always in good faith. The troll knows that those people don't like being confronted, and knows that it is not productive to do so. It's done only for the amusement: because those people don't like it.

So really you're saying it reduces to the intent of the interrogator?

If you interrogate someone for their irrational beliefs because you are genuinely curious if they are in fact as irrational as they appear, or you're missing something important, this is not trolling, but if you're well aware that they are definitely irrational, and you're familiar with all of the reasons that people come to believe these kinds of things, then this is?

No; we can't define trolling by referring to intent. It's a behavior.

The trolling intent does lead to a persistent, repetitive, long-term behavior: pushing the same buttons to obtain the same response.

There may be an agenda behind it: to keep that topic current and frequent in that forum, so that any newcomer to the forum sees mostly that discussion and nothing else.

The troll says: you are irrational in your beliefs, and I will keep stirring that up month after month, so that the forum is replete with exposure of this fact.

There may be some agenda behind it. Sometimes it is explicit or can be inferred (like promoting something). Sometimes it remains hidden.

If someone has a trolling intent, but fizzles away after one round, then we can't externally tell whether that was a would-be troll or someone genuinely curious. The behavior has to define it.

> The troll says: you are irrational in your beliefs, and I will keep stirring that up month after month, so that the forum is replete with exposure of this fact.

This sounds a lot like the behaviour of someone who is genuinely offended by a certain kind of irrationality which is prevalent in a particular forum, they might not be refuting that irrationality and confronting the holders of it for their personal amusement, but rather a sense of believing that irrationality is terribly harmful and needs to be destroyed/exposed for what it is lest it gain prevalence and support and position to cause further harm.

I view the state and political authority in exactly this light, support for this idea and institution is practically ubiquitous despite its terrible consequences, and when I say so, I am not trying to amuse myself in any way.

It seems by some measure the above would be trolling, because largely, people really do not like being confronted with the facts on the subject.

I love the pseudo-ancient Greek diction. The phrasing, the vocabulary, and the abundance of nested clauses do really remind me of translations of Aristotle. The only way this could be better is if he replaced the references to modern things like Republicans, Democrats, etc. with Thracians, Spartans, and other ancient Greek stuff. At that point you could try to pass this off as actual Aristotle, which would itself be a brilliant act of trolling.

Book one of Plato's Republic led to my lightbulb moment: witness Socrates's lilt of annoyance at Thrasymachus's behavior, which is not too far from what is being described here. People have not changed fundamentally in the last 2,500 years.

Reading that amused me to no end. Plato is how I was able to make peace with the legions of Internet message-board nerds. (And observe in myself the traits of a troll, at times.)

> no one is ever a troll involuntarily or by accident, but only an idiot who has posted in the wrong thread.

Then again -- was Thrasymachus just "posting in the wrong thread?"

The second lightbulb moment was reading some of Antonin Scalia's judicial opinions. My approximate train of thought: "Whait, am I actually reading this? This is like something I'd downvote on Hacker News. Well, justices are temperamental and opinionated people too, just like the rest of us..." RIP.

Yep. It's funny to me that people turn to Medium for life advice, because Shakespeare, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca etc all wrote it down in incredible detail hundreds of years ago.

I'm half-tempted to do modern translations of those old works and essays.

I think we, as hackers, are somewhat lucky when identifying trolls. This is because our projects, our work with computers encourages less ambiguity. For example, if a troll enters a thread and asks a question about why a product doesnt support feature X we can give good, rational answers. If they don't get our message and press forward with their ignorance we can dismiss them as troll.

We, as hackers, as members of communities outside our work or projects (for example, as an enthusiastic invested consumer of Apple, or a enthusiastic FOSS evangelist) where there is more ambiguity in whats true or false are more susceptible towards trolls.

In the first case there is a certainty about reality, and in the second the troll disturbs a fabricated reality based on social dynamics.

For example, if I were to say that you as part of the HN community believes things on faith which are not real or true, but you only believe these things because the community you belong to wouldnt accept you if you went against the group, you be slightly offended. I would be trolling you, but I would also be speaking the truth.

In both examples, trolls are outside the group, and the best way to identify a troll is to examine you and your peers within the group. How do you label the troll, how do you/they discuss the individual? Look at the words - "neckbeard" "basement" "not educated" "pyjamas" "troublesome" "problematic" - these are all commonly used to further exclude an individual from a group. Trolls can show group dynamics in action.

Codes of Conduct in online communities are all about group dynamics and security and not about making the community more inclusive or diverse. CoCs are anti troll measures.

In summary though - here is a radical idea. Without trolls your group is weaker. Its only by pointing out a threat to a group, by identifying what is not the group that the group is stronger. By fighting against trolls you defend your own investments in the groups and communities (no matter how fake and useless) you belong to.

The fact that people still discuss spaces vs. tabs easily disproves your point. Vi vs. emacs? Again, group dynamics in action, and those discussions still end up in thousands of replies.

>your point

I made several points in my comment :-)

I imagine you were referring to the first point - that we, as hackers are lucky in our projects and work in that there is often good clarity as to likely questions, but that vi vs emacs means that there is no clarity. I believe that this is not a good example of our work and our close technical projects but rather that you are agreeing with my other points, that it's about social dynamics and people being invested in a certain community. That is, vi vs emacs is about groups, but it's not about trolling. A troll is an individual. An entire other community, whilst helping to define other communities by its opposition cannot be labelled a community of trolls. Most people do not consider 4chan to be a community of trolls, for example. I don't think there has ever been a community of trolls, and if there has, they have never identified themselves as such.

Since 4chan was brought up:

Goons and 8chan's /int/, with both groups having a large overlap between each other.

I was unaware that people trolled for any other reason than amusement. Is there an estimate of how frequently people troll for calculated (e.g. monetary) reasons?

So my take is that she says trolls act as a kind of solvent to the natural bonds of community, and she lists a few frequently used constructions. I suppose the only beneficial use of trolls and trolling is to destroy communities of little worth. If trolls successfully kill even one terrorist cell, can we really call them evil? (And I'm not trying to troll with that question, I'm serious!)

EDIT: I mean "let's blow up a school bus of infidel spawn" type terrorist, not the "I'd rather not repeal the 1st, 4th, and 5th Amendments to feel more secure" type 'terrorist'.

Trolling for factions: http://www.theweek.co.uk/64829/russias-troll-army-how-the-pr...

Trolling for profit: https://www.reddit.com/r/shills/comments/3uoxpl/internet_shi...

What was called 'griefing' is now called trolling too, unfortunately.

I think trolling can be positive and well-done. I'd say Swift's "A Modest Proposal" is an example.

Swift is satire. People reading it weren't supposed to believe it was sincere.

People use the word differently, but to me a troll is someone who really wants people to think he has opinions that he doesn't have - for whatever reason.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1555005/Seven-chil...

Can we really call trolls evil if within a community they counteract group-think, wage a war on cliché, and subvert unthinking and tired stereotyping?

Perhaps Aristotelian virtue theory can help us answer these questions?

This section from an essay I read recently [1] might be relavent here

>In the 1960s, feminists faced social ridicule, media approbation and violent hostility. Now, mirroring the incremental changes seen in technology, social progress all too often finds itself down the blind alleyways of political correctness. Student bodies used to be hotbeds of dissent, even revolution; today’s hyper-conformist youth is more interested in the policing of language and stifling debate when it counters the prevailing wisdom. Forty years ago a burgeoning media allowed dissent to flower. Today’s very different social media seems, despite democratic appearances, to be enforcing a climate of timidity and encouraging groupthink.

So we are conditioned by the social media to encourage groupthink, and so, we are conditioned to hate "trolls", when their behaviors threatens breaking groupthink.

I see this manifested here in HN in discussions involving Tesla/SpaceX. In those threads, if you are in a position where you are going against the rabid enthusiasm, moderators will step in with a ban threat, if you are even slightly combative or go out of the line. But the other side is given a lot more slack, when it comes to silencing dissenting opinion..

[1] https://aeon.co/essays/has-progress-in-science-and-technolog...

I wonder, is there a correlation between the telegraph.co.uk article and your comment?

Well: https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/per...

Fwiw, "proper" trolling can be an art form. Done well, it can be a beautiful form of entertainment. Ken M's best (authentic) comments are a great example of this.

I think you mean "a art".

Indeed. The first paragraph:

> That trolling is a shameful thing, and that no one of sense would accept to be called ‘troll’, all are agreed

No they are not. There are many smart, funny trolls who are quite happy to accept the label. I can understand the media getting confused between actual creative trolling and being particularly mean, but I'd expect more out of an academic publication.

So can puns, but that doesn't make them socially acceptable either.

What, like dad jokes?

> I have a fear of speed bumps. Im slowly getting over it.

Dad jokes are one of those things were people shake their heads and sigh, as if they're displeased, but internally they're laughing their butts off.

... Or maybe I only think that because I'm a dad?

I think that's in the same category.

Sadly, I have an affliction where I can resist no opportunity to pun. Or dad joke.

It's a problem.

> Trolls <are> not to be fed. But though everyone knows this, everyone does it; for the desire to be right on the internet is natural and present to all.

Trolling is fed by frustration, not discourse. Discourse does not have to be frustrating. How you react to it is entirely up to you.

I'd argue there's no such thing as a troll. People aren't all bad or all good. Trolling is a concept of negativity that spreads when given more negativity.

A lecture about the same treatise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ.

Very funny to see that the modern word 'trolling' is used in this translation.

Oh very nice.

Video was a nice find and complements the article well.

Non-broken link http://crookedtimber.org/2016/05/07/aristotle-on-trolling/

Please excuse my ignorance, but can someone tell me where in that article Aristotle comes into play? I did not see any attributed quotes, unless I missed one?

Thank you

This is very much in the style of Aristotle's writings. The parenthesized Greek words appear as if placed there by a translator who had to reach for an approximate word in English and wanted to be precise about the meaning of the original.

>And indeed trolling is said in many ways; for some call ‘troll’ anyone who is abusive on the internet, but this is only the disagreeable person, or in newspaper comments the angry old man.

Sorry but if this prose is not Aristotle than where are his quotes? Or is the article simply meant to be written in his style?

The article is facetiously claimed to be written by Aristotle and merely translated by a modern scholar, Rachel Barney.

It's pseudepigraphical.

It's stylistically the same as Aristotle's writings. Very well done.

So, it's trolling if you use a Socratic dialogue to peddle falsehoods, but not trolling if you use it to tell truths? Who is the arbitrator of truth?

I think of trolling more as the method of argument, rather than the content. And in this way, Socrates was a troll. It just so happens that not all trolls are bad. They just have a bad label.

Trolling is just subtle abuse by people with sociopathic tendencies

Making Aristotle be not "pissed" at troll? O_o

Aristotle like Plato were so convince that being right mattered so much more than ethic that they did not care and resorted to any means to make their points; lying, fallacies, spinning the truth, using auhority (they loved auhthority).

And they would call sophists (troll) anyone who they would consider opposing them and ridicule them.

They were the bulliers of the wisdom.

They were the prominent philosophs lobbying for the Republic because Athenes was a democracy, and rich people was paying Plato to attack the concept of democracy so that the wealthiest could finally rule the city. (which resulted in the fall of Athenes)

Aristotle and Plato were more than trolls, they were assholes.

Sounds like Aristotle had a bad day with Socrates.

Yes.

This post gives me words to express what I always thought: They killed Socrates for trolling.

I read something recently that Socrates was killed because he supported the wrong political faction during a time of conflict. When their enemies gained power they exacted revenge by framing him by accusing him of impiety and corrupting the youth (won't somebody think of the children?). Besides they gave him an out (exile), which he declined so he chose martyrdom and the rest is history as they say. But at this remove, who knows. Can't for the life of me remember where I read that or I'd post a link.

I heard it was because some of his students rebelled against the government, took over and ended up acting as tyrants for a certain amount of time. So he kind of got the blame for their actions, as the one who 'inspired' them.

I imagine he doesn't get called a gadfly for nothing. The only Platonic dialogue I can stand is The Symposium because Socrates' method of interrogation is elsewhere too annoying†. Maybe instead of "don't feed the trolls" we should say "don't feed the gadflies".

† Having said that, I recently got out of the library Heyting's _Intuitionism: An Introduction_ and it's in fictional dialogue format initially which irritated me no end. (So maybe it's not Socrates but the form!) I guess I don't appreciate it as a teaching method but I can see why it is used especially if otherwise there would be a lot of back-and-forth question-response type segments in the text. Not a fan :)

sending a drawing of a spider to pay your bill is what I would call art when it comes to trolling

This is very well written, it reads like Aristotle indeed.

"of all merely asks a simple question about the evidence for climate change"

i am working on 'an investigation into the sex life of sterile coat hangers with particular reference to climate change' myself.

Noone else noticed the slight dissonance of reading something like this on an academic journal? Knowing nothing of the context here, it certainly sounds like an interesting story

I find it refreshing that there is a place for humor in otherwise “dry” contexts, such as academic journals. After all, the joke is obvious to the intended audience, or at least ought to be, and gets published for its own sake.

I like the Greek word comments, they greatly help my understanding of the meanings (I'm Greek; Greek words have more nuance).

Speaking of trolls and Ancient Greece philosophers...

When you troll your community so bad they sentence you to death by drinking hemlock.

Socrates is mentioned in the article, as an example of not-a-troll.

Mentioned as not being a troll for "telling the truth"...

Right, because "truth" is a completely not subjective concept.

Aka: "it's only trolling when I disagree with the opinions being expressed"

it belongs not to the serious person to be a troll but to the one who lacks education

Among the maxims on Lord Naoshige's wall there was this one: "Matters of great concern should be treated lightly." Master lttei commented, "Matters of small concern should be treated seriously."

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