The tradition of debate in India that this article is about (or dialogue, or dialectic, or whatever you want to call it) is very interesting, and unfortunately not well-known because most of the sources on the topic quickly get into technicalities.
Two non-technical (somewhat accessible to the general public) sources I've found are:
1. The book “Religions, Reasons, and Gods” by the late John Clayton has many interesting essays that touch on the vāda tradition. One of his interesting points is that the goal of dialogue need not be consensus or establishing common ground, but simply the “clarification of defensible difference”: understanding the other party better, and coming to shared understanding of what our differences are. Some of it is also touched on in his lecture here: http://www.bu.edu/religion/mar25-98/
2. Elaborating on the jalpa/vitaṇḍa mentioned in this article, the nyāya tradition recognized a long list of logical fallacies and poor arguments that were grounds for losing a (formal) debate. A list I've found is in the paper “Twenty-Two Ways to Lose a Debate” (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-009-9083-y) which also carries out some comparison with the ideas of Grice.
I frequently argue points I do not personally hold. This sometimes gets misinterpreted as me holding the opinion, or an attack on the person, or some such. But really I am testing the idea and recognizing that someone else could hold this opinion but not be in the room to advocate for it.
Unless someone prefaces their statements with a disclaimer (like "just for the sake of the argument"), I will assume in good faith they believe their own statements. Any later claim to the contrary leaves me with the following choice to make: were they lying then, or are they lying now.
Very good point. The internet was a great opportunity to test divisive/contrarian hypotheses. In the ideal case, you get counter arguments which will help you come up with a decision rule. Unfortunately it does not work this way in most cases.
Today. the mechanics of internet forums works such that on average, the safe milquetoast post gets the most points, so it devolves into a popularity contest of who gets the most Internet points, especially when the person is not anonymous.
This is pretty much what the Sophists did professionally.
In the city state of Athens there were no such things as 'lawyers' to represent you. If you had a legal problem and it was brought up to court (typically consisting of dozens, sometimes hundreds of judges) you argued your case yourself. Those who were better orators had a better chance of winning, so the nobility and rich often went to schools where they practiced rhetoric.
This obviously meant having to argue over the dumbest and inane things possible, some of these discourses we've managed to preserve over the millennia.
I used to do that frequently and eventually came to hold some of those positions. In particular I convinced myself to be pro-choice after sort of arguing about abortion for sport with my very Christian conservative family.
I have come across this in some friends. It's super interesting but also dangerous. It has taken me sometimes years or a decade to fully come to terms with some past debates. My friends would seemingly hold opinions and cling to them dearly, opinions I felt were so unconscionable I could not imagine holding them. Friendships were strained and maybe some lost. They tell me now that they were doing as you do, and that they did not hold those opinions but were merely testing them and practicing debating, learning about both sides, etc.
But I wonder about the unintended consequences of this. How many 'opinions' are out there in the world purely to cause pain? What portion of opinions that are shared on social media or the news actual opinions from those people, vs crafted statements of trolling themselves?
When you take the 'other side' for practice, is there really a valid [1] other side to take? I find often that the other side is based on logical fallacies and is not, at its base, a valid argument. I wonder if you are creating distance between you and others while you test out the opinions of propagandists? How valid [1 again] really are all these opinions?
[1] Okay here we go with this. I am indeed calling some opinions "invalid". What I mean is, I do not think it is a valid opinion to cause harm to minorities on purpose. I think this is cruel and amounts to a crime in our society. But you will find people advocating it loudly on social media and TV - and their arguments are based on treating humans cruelly for no reason other than the cruelty and other various logical fallacies.
If you are to take stances that you don't agree with, please check them logically first before putting those arguments out there in the world. Some things are better understood without trying to understand 'the other side', simply because it is not going to be based in logic and has no possible outcome of being 'understood'.
On a slight tangent, has anyone ever looked into the etymology of the modern term troll? There hasn't been too much serious scholarship that I can find on the term, seemingly arising in mid-1980s newsgroups. But, I did find this which is my current best understanding; I also read in an old student newspaper edition that it refers to the trollish inhabitants underneath Bridge building on campus. From an Oral History of Caltech:
> ERWIN:Could you perhaps tell about bringing back A Broader View with its sequel, the new sequel? Because I think that’s very interesting. CLARK:Well, that was fun to do. The play readers group in 1987 decided to renew the play-reading party, which was one of the great traditions of the fifties and early sixties. And Bob Oliver asked me if I’d dust of f A Broader View. Well, I looked at it and I thought of updating it. But the shift in the twenty years had been so much that updating was impossible; it’s just a period piece or nothing. So we had to do it unchanged. And then I felt honor bound to write a sequel to it, which is called Troll’s Progress. The theme of it is that the essential Caltech never changes. It’s firmly founded on terror. [Laughter] And no froufrou can disguise that fact. And people who play together pray together, twitch together, stay together. Anyway, that theme allowed for a number of wisecracks, and I like to think the dialogue is rather funny. The kids who did it were tremendous. The undergraduates, of course, we know are stars.
> ERWIN:What was the origin of the troll?
> CLARK:Well, that goes back into Caltech history. And it’s probably Caltech’s only contribution to American culture. [Laughter] If you have to ask the meaning of the word, you’ll never understand what it means. But to put you sort of in the framework—that’s discussed, incidentally, in the dialogue of Beautiful Beckman there’s a segment on that. But a troll is a very high-voltage nerd. It used to be he lived “under DuBridge.” The kid that never sees the light of day, really, he’s so busy with his books. There are apprentice trolls at other schools, but ours are an order of magnitude more trollish. People who are compulsive and pathological students are much more so here.
> ERWIN:Somewhere you referred to this as a “random troll.”
> CLARK:Oh, that’s the worst thing you can be called. You see, it means you’re just like a number; you have no personality. You might as well be a computer—nothing to distinguish. Oh, man, when you’re a random troll, you’re beyond the pale. [Laughter]
> ERWIN:In A Broader View, you called the Caltech undergrad “intellectually brilliant, emotionally immature, culturally deprived, and socially gauche.” And then, immediately afterward, I believe you gave the Caltech professor the identical description. That brings us to the point of what the shows were for underneath it all.
1. [From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on
Usenet designed to attract predictable responses or flames; or, the
post itself. Derives from the phrase "trolling for newbies" which in
turn comes from mainstream "trolling", a style of fishing in which one
trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The well-
constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers
to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, while
subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact
a deliberate troll. If you don't fall for the joke, you get to be in
on it. See also YHBT.
2. An individual who chronically trolls in sense
1; regularly posts specious arguments, flames or personal attacks to a
newsgroup, discussion list, or in email for no other purpose than to
annoy someone or disrupt a discussion. Trolls are recognizable by the
fact that they have no real interest in learning about the topic at
hand - they simply want to utter flame bait. Like the ugly creatures
they are named after, they exhibit no redeeming characteristics, and
as such, they are recognized as a lower form of life on the net, as
in, "Oh, ignore him, he's just a troll." Compare kook.
3. [Berkeley]
Computer lab monitor. A popular campus job for CS students. Duties
include helping newbies and ensuring that lab policies are followed.
Probably so-called because it involves lurking in dark cavelike
corners.
Some people claim that the troll (sense 1) is properly a narrower
category than flame bait, that a troll is categorized by containing
some assertion that is wrong but not overtly controversial. See also
Troll-O-Meter.
The use of `troll' in either sense is a live metaphor that readily
produces elaborations and combining forms. For example, one not
infrequently sees the warning "Do not feed the troll" as part of a
follow-up to troll postings.
Vada and Vitana. I love this. When I was a prof. in a CSC department, I often had to persuade computing services or some other part of the university bureaucracy to do or get something for the students. I soon learned that I would encounter two types of beuracrats. (Actually, three, but I will discount the ones who were just not very smart. The other two types were smart.)
The first type I called "obstructors". If I (our my department) proposed something, the obstructors always had a dozen or more compelling reasons why the proposal was impractical, infeasible , or otherwise without merit.
The other type, I called them "enablers" might have some initial objections, but they would typically work with me (or us) to overcome the objections so that we could get what we wanted.
In the second case, it was "Vada". After a while I learned that the best way to achieve an outcome was simply to avoid ever engaging with the people whose style was "Vitanda".
Of course at the time (1980's and 90's) I did not think of them as Trolls - just as jerks who didn't want to do anything that created work for themselves.
> The third type of dialogue, if it can be called dialogue at all, is known as vitaṇḍa (Nyāya Sūtra 1.2.3). We may call this “trolling”, because its objective is not to win by proving one’s own idea correct, but to make the other person lose by opposing every argument of the opponent no matter what. Vitaṇḍa is considered a destructive style of argumentation. Here, the person who employs vitaṇḍa has no position of one’s own, and does not attempt to defend any thesis. A person may even adopt a viewpoint that is opposed to one's own for the sake of vitaṇḍa. There is nothing to be gained by either party in this encounter. It is the troll’s point of view – “I will humiliate you and argue that you are wrong, not because I fundamentally disagree with your position, but because it was you who said it!”
Sounds very much like what in the West is called the Socrattic method championed by Socrates... who used to ask questions until he proved that his opponent was an idiot who did not know what they were talking about.
The Socratic method doesn't come with the intent of making the other person "lose" by blunt-force contrarianism, is a difference I'd like to think matters.
Ancient sanskrit, yes. But the term vitanDa is very current. It is a common word in my language, Kannada and I imagine in other Indian languages as well.
This article is as much about the etymology of a modern term as about a concept from Sanskrit philosophical texts.
"The Notion of Trolling in Ancient Indian Literature" may have been a better choice of title. Of course it was in Sanskrit, because that was the literary language of the time.
But this is probably named this way because the names of Ancient Indian works of literature, especially obscure ones like Nyaya Sutra, are not well known in the west, whereas "Sanskrit" almost immediately contextualizes the post to Ancient South Asia for most readers, even though the language in which it is composed is a bit beside the point, which is that an ancient society sort of identified "trolling".
Indian languages are heavily influenced by Samskrutam and have borrowed words from the language. So the word vitanDa in Kannada is borrowed from Samskrut language.
There's a nice parallel in Ancient Greek, and from there to modern philosophical parlance: Eristic[0]. Here's Plato, for example:
"it is on the purely verbal level that they look for the contradiction in what has been said, and employ eristic, not dialectic, on one another." (Republic V 454a, translated by Reeve)
This is interesting to read and especially since their understanding of trolling is actually accurate.
"Here, the person who employs vitaṇḍa has no position of one’s own, and does not attempt to defend any thesis. A person may even adopt a viewpoint that is opposed to one's own for the sake of vitaṇḍa."
I think people mostly misuse the word trolling, a troll's final goal is to disrupt and incite reactions often times for the lulz. To me (you may very well disagree) anybody claiming that trolling is used to achieve something is wrong. It may have consequences but if they are intended it's just manipulation of opinions.
I also have my doubt about the motivation given to trolls, I believe they target people that are "weak" to trolling because their propension to react help the troll reach his goal faster. i believe this is a reason why trolling it can quickly become harassment or at least be perceived as such.
I used to like being a troll as a teenager and my first reaction when reading an opinion that looks absurd is to wonder if the author is trolling. This first reaction is slowly shifting to "who does this statement serves" since organisations of all sizes have weaponized internet to spread such opinions.
The useful thing to take away from this is to how to combat them.
> Simply by asking them what their position is, or what they propose to debate, they are forced into a quandary: if they propose something, then they have to defend it, and can be argued with; if they do not propose anything, then they may be asked to exit the debate. This may be easier said than done, but it may also help stop a troll once in a while!
If I could be forgiven to be meta here, are there any comments in this thread which are elaborate trolls on the nature of trolling?
I'm not as sophisticated as some of you but it seems as if those with more experience in these matters wouldn't find it easy to be sucked into discussions with a troll. Could there be a master troll or two here which you have fallen for?
Socrates “knows that he knows nothing” and spends his time trying to refute that. He looks for knowledge earnestly but usually doesn’t find it. Socrates is less devil’s advocate, more “how can we be sure of X when Y? If not Y because Z, doesn’t Z also make X problematic because of (blablabla)?”
Sure, he gets people RAGEing like a great troll, but at least ostensibly he’s doing more the 2nd type of argument described in the article, but with kind of a backdrop that precise intellectual beliefs are really hard to specify or maintain. It’s like dialectic but it’s not Hegelian; he wants to return to some central question and doesn’t necessarily see that thesis/antithesis climb as crucial, he just finds problems with the premises and wants to find better ones (Hegel’s whole thing was a bit more nuanced than that).
Re: article, trolling initially meant trying to get a rise out of people. It’s not so much you won’t admit you’re wrong or you’re eristically tearing everything down, it’s that you’re pretending to play the argument game (or some other game, like “art criticism” or “testimonial”) but in fact you’re fucking with people of varying levels of specificity.
In the Roman Catholic Church there was once an official position known as the Advocatus Diaboli, or Devil’s Advocate. Their task was to be the skeptic, and argue persuasively against the canonization of a new Saint - essentially an applied version of the third form of dialectic mentioned here.
This is very neat, and the last paragraph is indeed very heavy-hitting. It's always hard to read that some of our societies greatest present-day problems are so many thousands of years old.
However, I think this definition is narrow and only encapsulates part of the modern definition of 'trolling'. Today, 'trolling' is used as a weapon of war, not only in debate with other individual people. Trolling is as much a mechanism of creating emotional trauma among a large population as it is a mechanism for 'debating' in bad faith.
Modern trolls will post violent content, often based on lies, in order to get an emotional rise out of a population. This is a large-scale effect that wastes huge amounts of people's time and energy, as they 'debate' with these soldiers of war whose task at hand is to create unnecessary emotional pain and waste the time of their enemy.
Yes, trolling is also happening on a more individual 'debate' level still, but narrowing our notion of trolling down to these ancient definitions is doing a major disservice to our modern understanding of how language is used in debate.
In a way I feel like I might have misunderstood something within my self.
I agree with the assessment but I never connected trolling and trauma, because my personal concept of trolling is essentially a continual escalation of reductio ad absurdum. In that sense it's not really trolling or sarcasm, it's more of a way of livening up overly-serious conversations.
I should probably not refer to that as trolling as the intention isn't to fuck people off, gaslight them, traumatise them...but to soften the mood.
I don't think anyone is attempting to narrow the definition of trolling; but in general any appeal to more nuanced understanding is worthwhile too so don't take this as disagreeing with you.
I note that "doctrine" was also an important element of the definitions offered and regret that we do not question our doctrine (and its sources) enough even now.
>Trolling is as much a mechanism of creating emotional trauma among a large population as it is a mechanism for 'debating' in bad faith.
Perhaps this was not present in older societies (and other countries today) because people were not as touchy feely as the current generations...
And I'm not trolling. I seriously think modern western societies are too snow-flakey and touchy feely for their own good. It's like going out in life expecting padded roads, walls, and everything, lest you ever get hurt...
And that's despite older societies having it much harder, and having much more difficult problems to be "traumatized" with...
If I may add to this, the vāda usually composes of 3 parts.
1. Purva paksha.
2. Khandana
3. Uttara paksha.
Purva paksha which literally translates prior view is when the debater should talk from the opponent's perspective. This has to be confirmed by the opponent, which proves that the debater has understood the opponent's view point.
Then comes khandana, which is the actual opposing view point that the debater puts forward refuting the view point of the opponent.
The last is Uttara paksha, the opinion of the debater. (Or siddhānta as mentioned in this article)
[+] [-] svat|6 years ago|reply
Two non-technical (somewhat accessible to the general public) sources I've found are:
1. The book “Religions, Reasons, and Gods” by the late John Clayton has many interesting essays that touch on the vāda tradition. One of his interesting points is that the goal of dialogue need not be consensus or establishing common ground, but simply the “clarification of defensible difference”: understanding the other party better, and coming to shared understanding of what our differences are. Some of it is also touched on in his lecture here: http://www.bu.edu/religion/mar25-98/
2. Elaborating on the jalpa/vitaṇḍa mentioned in this article, the nyāya tradition recognized a long list of logical fallacies and poor arguments that were grounds for losing a (formal) debate. A list I've found is in the paper “Twenty-Two Ways to Lose a Debate” (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-009-9083-y) which also carries out some comparison with the ideas of Grice.
[+] [-] pvelagal|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ratmice|6 years ago|reply
Which at least in the case of Jain philosophy, with 3 basic truth values true, false, and unassertable, so really these traditions are not necessarily dialectic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaina_seven-valued_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekantavada
[+] [-] asveikau|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rciorba|6 years ago|reply
Unless someone prefaces their statements with a disclaimer (like "just for the sake of the argument"), I will assume in good faith they believe their own statements. Any later claim to the contrary leaves me with the following choice to make: were they lying then, or are they lying now.
[+] [-] rakejake|6 years ago|reply
Today. the mechanics of internet forums works such that on average, the safe milquetoast post gets the most points, so it devolves into a popularity contest of who gets the most Internet points, especially when the person is not anonymous.
[+] [-] coheeman1|6 years ago|reply
In the city state of Athens there were no such things as 'lawyers' to represent you. If you had a legal problem and it was brought up to court (typically consisting of dozens, sometimes hundreds of judges) you argued your case yourself. Those who were better orators had a better chance of winning, so the nobility and rich often went to schools where they practiced rhetoric.
This obviously meant having to argue over the dumbest and inane things possible, some of these discourses we've managed to preserve over the millennia.
[+] [-] empath75|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomrod|6 years ago|reply
Shane Parrish of Farnam Street and Sam Harris recently sat down and chatted,in part, about this need. Highly recommend giving a listen.[0]
[0] https://samharris.org/podcasts/155-mental-models/
[+] [-] wolf7|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sideaccount|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marstomorrow|6 years ago|reply
But I wonder about the unintended consequences of this. How many 'opinions' are out there in the world purely to cause pain? What portion of opinions that are shared on social media or the news actual opinions from those people, vs crafted statements of trolling themselves?
When you take the 'other side' for practice, is there really a valid [1] other side to take? I find often that the other side is based on logical fallacies and is not, at its base, a valid argument. I wonder if you are creating distance between you and others while you test out the opinions of propagandists? How valid [1 again] really are all these opinions?
[1] Okay here we go with this. I am indeed calling some opinions "invalid". What I mean is, I do not think it is a valid opinion to cause harm to minorities on purpose. I think this is cruel and amounts to a crime in our society. But you will find people advocating it loudly on social media and TV - and their arguments are based on treating humans cruelly for no reason other than the cruelty and other various logical fallacies.
If you are to take stances that you don't agree with, please check them logically first before putting those arguments out there in the world. Some things are better understood without trying to understand 'the other side', simply because it is not going to be based in logic and has no possible outcome of being 'understood'.
[+] [-] tanderson92|6 years ago|reply
> ERWIN:Could you perhaps tell about bringing back A Broader View with its sequel, the new sequel? Because I think that’s very interesting. CLARK:Well, that was fun to do. The play readers group in 1987 decided to renew the play-reading party, which was one of the great traditions of the fifties and early sixties. And Bob Oliver asked me if I’d dust of f A Broader View. Well, I looked at it and I thought of updating it. But the shift in the twenty years had been so much that updating was impossible; it’s just a period piece or nothing. So we had to do it unchanged. And then I felt honor bound to write a sequel to it, which is called Troll’s Progress. The theme of it is that the essential Caltech never changes. It’s firmly founded on terror. [Laughter] And no froufrou can disguise that fact. And people who play together pray together, twitch together, stay together. Anyway, that theme allowed for a number of wisecracks, and I like to think the dialogue is rather funny. The kids who did it were tremendous. The undergraduates, of course, we know are stars.
> ERWIN:What was the origin of the troll?
> CLARK:Well, that goes back into Caltech history. And it’s probably Caltech’s only contribution to American culture. [Laughter] If you have to ask the meaning of the word, you’ll never understand what it means. But to put you sort of in the framework—that’s discussed, incidentally, in the dialogue of Beautiful Beckman there’s a segment on that. But a troll is a very high-voltage nerd. It used to be he lived “under DuBridge.” The kid that never sees the light of day, really, he’s so busy with his books. There are apprentice trolls at other schools, but ours are an order of magnitude more trollish. People who are compulsive and pathological students are much more so here. > ERWIN:Somewhere you referred to this as a “random troll.”
> CLARK:Oh, that’s the worst thing you can be called. You see, it means you’re just like a number; you have no personality. You might as well be a computer—nothing to distinguish. Oh, man, when you’re a random troll, you’re beyond the pale. [Laughter]
> ERWIN:In A Broader View, you called the Caltech undergrad “intellectually brilliant, emotionally immature, culturally deprived, and socially gauche.” And then, immediately afterward, I believe you gave the Caltech professor the identical description. That brings us to the point of what the shows were for underneath it all.
Source: http://oralhistories.library.caltech.edu/95/1/OH_Clark_K.pdf
[+] [-] DanBC|6 years ago|reply
I'd try to find references for this but Google has fucked the search of Usenet archives.
There's this, which uses both meanings
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq/troll-faq/
---begin
Defining troll, flames and crossposts ============================================
From the Jargon file ( http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/T/troll.html ):
troll v., n.
1. [From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on Usenet designed to attract predictable responses or flames; or, the post itself. Derives from the phrase "trolling for newbies" which in turn comes from mainstream "trolling", a style of fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The well- constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't fall for the joke, you get to be in on it. See also YHBT.
2. An individual who chronically trolls in sense 1; regularly posts specious arguments, flames or personal attacks to a newsgroup, discussion list, or in email for no other purpose than to annoy someone or disrupt a discussion. Trolls are recognizable by the fact that they have no real interest in learning about the topic at hand - they simply want to utter flame bait. Like the ugly creatures they are named after, they exhibit no redeeming characteristics, and as such, they are recognized as a lower form of life on the net, as in, "Oh, ignore him, he's just a troll." Compare kook.
3. [Berkeley] Computer lab monitor. A popular campus job for CS students. Duties include helping newbies and ensuring that lab policies are followed. Probably so-called because it involves lurking in dark cavelike corners.
Some people claim that the troll (sense 1) is properly a narrower category than flame bait, that a troll is categorized by containing some assertion that is wrong but not overtly controversial. See also Troll-O-Meter.
The use of `troll' in either sense is a live metaphor that readily produces elaborations and combining forms. For example, one not infrequently sees the warning "Do not feed the troll" as part of a follow-up to troll postings.
[+] [-] herodotus|6 years ago|reply
The first type I called "obstructors". If I (our my department) proposed something, the obstructors always had a dozen or more compelling reasons why the proposal was impractical, infeasible , or otherwise without merit.
The other type, I called them "enablers" might have some initial objections, but they would typically work with me (or us) to overcome the objections so that we could get what we wanted.
In the second case, it was "Vada". After a while I learned that the best way to achieve an outcome was simply to avoid ever engaging with the people whose style was "Vitanda".
Of course at the time (1980's and 90's) I did not think of them as Trolls - just as jerks who didn't want to do anything that created work for themselves.
[+] [-] devoply|6 years ago|reply
Sounds very much like what in the West is called the Socrattic method championed by Socrates... who used to ask questions until he proved that his opponent was an idiot who did not know what they were talking about.
[+] [-] dvtrn|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shas3|6 years ago|reply
This article is as much about the etymology of a modern term as about a concept from Sanskrit philosophical texts.
[+] [-] danans|6 years ago|reply
But this is probably named this way because the names of Ancient Indian works of literature, especially obscure ones like Nyaya Sutra, are not well known in the west, whereas "Sanskrit" almost immediately contextualizes the post to Ancient South Asia for most readers, even though the language in which it is composed is a bit beside the point, which is that an ancient society sort of identified "trolling".
[+] [-] ensconced|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m33k44|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] QuercusMax|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thwave|6 years ago|reply
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eristic
[+] [-] t4ko|6 years ago|reply
"Here, the person who employs vitaṇḍa has no position of one’s own, and does not attempt to defend any thesis. A person may even adopt a viewpoint that is opposed to one's own for the sake of vitaṇḍa."
I think people mostly misuse the word trolling, a troll's final goal is to disrupt and incite reactions often times for the lulz. To me (you may very well disagree) anybody claiming that trolling is used to achieve something is wrong. It may have consequences but if they are intended it's just manipulation of opinions.
I also have my doubt about the motivation given to trolls, I believe they target people that are "weak" to trolling because their propension to react help the troll reach his goal faster. i believe this is a reason why trolling it can quickly become harassment or at least be perceived as such.
I used to like being a troll as a teenager and my first reaction when reading an opinion that looks absurd is to wonder if the author is trolling. This first reaction is slowly shifting to "who does this statement serves" since organisations of all sizes have weaponized internet to spread such opinions.
[+] [-] dav|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sideaccount|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emmelaich|6 years ago|reply
> Simply by asking them what their position is, or what they propose to debate, they are forced into a quandary: if they propose something, then they have to defend it, and can be argued with; if they do not propose anything, then they may be asked to exit the debate. This may be easier said than done, but it may also help stop a troll once in a while!
Be sure to read the linked posts
"The toll of the trolls" (5/25/19)
"Eristic argument" (4/6/19)
[+] [-] thinkingemote|6 years ago|reply
I'm not as sophisticated as some of you but it seems as if those with more experience in these matters wouldn't find it easy to be sucked into discussions with a troll. Could there be a master troll or two here which you have fallen for?
[+] [-] empath75|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simondedalus|6 years ago|reply
Sure, he gets people RAGEing like a great troll, but at least ostensibly he’s doing more the 2nd type of argument described in the article, but with kind of a backdrop that precise intellectual beliefs are really hard to specify or maintain. It’s like dialectic but it’s not Hegelian; he wants to return to some central question and doesn’t necessarily see that thesis/antithesis climb as crucial, he just finds problems with the premises and wants to find better ones (Hegel’s whole thing was a bit more nuanced than that).
Re: article, trolling initially meant trying to get a rise out of people. It’s not so much you won’t admit you’re wrong or you’re eristically tearing everything down, it’s that you’re pretending to play the argument game (or some other game, like “art criticism” or “testimonial”) but in fact you’re fucking with people of varying levels of specificity.
[+] [-] daodedickinson|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alchemism|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dheerajrav|6 years ago|reply
3 types of arguments - vaada, vivaada, and vittanda vaada.
[+] [-] marstomorrow|6 years ago|reply
However, I think this definition is narrow and only encapsulates part of the modern definition of 'trolling'. Today, 'trolling' is used as a weapon of war, not only in debate with other individual people. Trolling is as much a mechanism of creating emotional trauma among a large population as it is a mechanism for 'debating' in bad faith.
Modern trolls will post violent content, often based on lies, in order to get an emotional rise out of a population. This is a large-scale effect that wastes huge amounts of people's time and energy, as they 'debate' with these soldiers of war whose task at hand is to create unnecessary emotional pain and waste the time of their enemy.
Yes, trolling is also happening on a more individual 'debate' level still, but narrowing our notion of trolling down to these ancient definitions is doing a major disservice to our modern understanding of how language is used in debate.
[+] [-] ljm|6 years ago|reply
I agree with the assessment but I never connected trolling and trauma, because my personal concept of trolling is essentially a continual escalation of reductio ad absurdum. In that sense it's not really trolling or sarcasm, it's more of a way of livening up overly-serious conversations.
I should probably not refer to that as trolling as the intention isn't to fuck people off, gaslight them, traumatise them...but to soften the mood.
[+] [-] h2odragon|6 years ago|reply
I note that "doctrine" was also an important element of the definitions offered and regret that we do not question our doctrine (and its sources) enough even now.
[+] [-] coldtea|6 years ago|reply
Perhaps this was not present in older societies (and other countries today) because people were not as touchy feely as the current generations...
And I'm not trolling. I seriously think modern western societies are too snow-flakey and touchy feely for their own good. It's like going out in life expecting padded roads, walls, and everything, lest you ever get hurt...
And that's despite older societies having it much harder, and having much more difficult problems to be "traumatized" with...
[+] [-] labgrown|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] byteofprash|6 years ago|reply
If I may add to this, the vāda usually composes of 3 parts. 1. Purva paksha. 2. Khandana 3. Uttara paksha.
Purva paksha which literally translates prior view is when the debater should talk from the opponent's perspective. This has to be confirmed by the opponent, which proves that the debater has understood the opponent's view point.
Then comes khandana, which is the actual opposing view point that the debater puts forward refuting the view point of the opponent.
The last is Uttara paksha, the opinion of the debater. (Or siddhānta as mentioned in this article)
[+] [-] emily2747|6 years ago|reply
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