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Comment by kazinator | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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> 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.

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