I was going to say “Come on LW! Obvious troll is obvious.” but then I remembered this recent post...
This person appears to take pleasure in being downvoted consdering how much it is happening. Moreover, they aren’t curious as to what norms they’re violating to receive so much downvoting indicating some awareness. Their username is automatically controversial, but it can’t even be a plausibly effective advocacy account for 9/11 conspiracy beliefs because then they would be polite the other rhetorical dimensions, so as to appear likable and be more effective at persuasion.
Admittedly, many of the beliefs they express are somewhat common, but they express too many of them too densely and with too much half-accurate background knowledge for it to be plausible. If you look at their other comments you’ll see them on a wide variety of topics, all of them dumb. Generally stupidity goes with a lack of intellectual passion in weird areas, which displays itself as ignorance and a tendency towards silence. Plus, 911truther is responding line-by-line to too many responses—there’s no sense of measured consideration or update delay, just the glee of someone who is being argued with by people who don’t realize that in doing so they are feeding a troll.
So a kind of interesting question here is who is behind the troll account? (It is a pretty good job if you stop and think about it. I mean… who trolls on the subject of genetic algorithmswith this much plausibility?)
But a more educational question is why are there so many responses, when we could have just downvoted to −10 and had one or two responses providing epistemic warnings to readers who might not understand, and then moved on? Is it the pleasure of scoring points on someone who is wrong? Is it a mistaken presumption of good faith because so many on LW write in good faith? I’m serious here. I’m honestly interested in LW’s radar for trolling. Troll radar seems like an important epistemic skill that many of us lack, and I think there’s something interesting in this lack.
One example: I have had to deal with people going on and on with “but it’s not really you!” arguments about mind uploading on other forums on several separate occasions. Of course it’s annoying to press on about it entirely by yourself, so I don’t really bother and move on after a post or two. Here, I don’t have to repeat myself over and over very often, and the userbase is sympathetic, so keeping systemic obnoxiousness out of the environment is feasible enough that we should crush it with overwhelming force.
If it’s a troll, I’d guess either Eliezer being meta or maybe Mitchell Porter trying to make a point, but I’ve seen people this oblivious before.
If it’s a troll, I’d guess either Eliezer being meta or maybe Mitchell Porter trying to make a point, but I’ve seen people this oblivious before.
If they are making a point about necessity of downvoting, I must admit that it works perfectly.
But yes, contributors of this kind have high prior probability of appearing spontaneously on the internet. I have probably met an example or two in real life, too.
Yes, it wasn’t obvious to me. Partly because I expect common hostility to be mislabelled as trolling, and partly because even just the obvious hostility was enough that it didn’t seem worth paying that much attention to—it looked like a classic example of politics as the mind killer. The thing about freezing and cryogenics though—it seems like someone from lesswrong would already know the counter argument, and 911truther did seem familiar with lesswrong. I have updated towards the troll possibility.
ETA: I hadn’t read the genetic algorithm comment until now, so there’s another example of me missing evidence of trolling. The thing is, paying more attention doesn’t seem like a good idea. I am glad I read your comment to point me a specific example rather than their whole comment history.
I was going to say “Come on LW! Obvious troll is obvious.” but then I remembered this recent post...
This person appears to take pleasure in being downvoted consdering how much it is happening. Moreover, they aren’t curious as to what norms they’re violating to receive so much downvoting indicating some awareness. Their username is automatically controversial, but it can’t even be a plausibly effective advocacy account for 9/11 conspiracy beliefs because then they would be polite the other rhetorical dimensions, so as to appear likable and be more effective at persuasion.
Admittedly, many of the beliefs they express are somewhat common, but they express too many of them too densely and with too much half-accurate background knowledge for it to be plausible. If you look at their other comments you’ll see them on a wide variety of topics, all of them dumb. Generally stupidity goes with a lack of intellectual passion in weird areas, which displays itself as ignorance and a tendency towards silence. Plus, 911truther is responding line-by-line to too many responses—there’s no sense of measured consideration or update delay, just the glee of someone who is being argued with by people who don’t realize that in doing so they are feeding a troll.
So a kind of interesting question here is who is behind the troll account? (It is a pretty good job if you stop and think about it. I mean… who trolls on the subject of genetic algorithms with this much plausibility?)
But a more educational question is why are there so many responses, when we could have just downvoted to −10 and had one or two responses providing epistemic warnings to readers who might not understand, and then moved on? Is it the pleasure of scoring points on someone who is wrong? Is it a mistaken presumption of good faith because so many on LW write in good faith? I’m serious here. I’m honestly interested in LW’s radar for trolling. Troll radar seems like an important epistemic skill that many of us lack, and I think there’s something interesting in this lack.
One example: I have had to deal with people going on and on with “but it’s not really you!” arguments about mind uploading on other forums on several separate occasions. Of course it’s annoying to press on about it entirely by yourself, so I don’t really bother and move on after a post or two. Here, I don’t have to repeat myself over and over very often, and the userbase is sympathetic, so keeping systemic obnoxiousness out of the environment is feasible enough that we should crush it with overwhelming force.
If it’s a troll, I’d guess either Eliezer being meta or maybe Mitchell Porter trying to make a point, but I’ve seen people this oblivious before.
If they are making a point about necessity of downvoting, I must admit that it works perfectly.
But yes, contributors of this kind have high prior probability of appearing spontaneously on the internet. I have probably met an example or two in real life, too.
Yes, it wasn’t obvious to me. Partly because I expect common hostility to be mislabelled as trolling, and partly because even just the obvious hostility was enough that it didn’t seem worth paying that much attention to—it looked like a classic example of politics as the mind killer. The thing about freezing and cryogenics though—it seems like someone from lesswrong would already know the counter argument, and 911truther did seem familiar with lesswrong. I have updated towards the troll possibility.
ETA: I hadn’t read the genetic algorithm comment until now, so there’s another example of me missing evidence of trolling. The thing is, paying more attention doesn’t seem like a good idea. I am glad I read your comment to point me a specific example rather than their whole comment history.
Oops I was getting mixed up with another user who also kept mentioning not having enough karma to downvote, and being rate-limited in commenting.
spelled wrong and I’m not a troll.