I’ve gone through and devaporized all of eridu’s comments in his epically successful “radical feminism” troll—I don’t like vaporizing things (or exercising direct moderator power at all, really), and since eridu at −243 karma can’t reply to anything else in that thread, it should be safe now. It also serves as an extremely clear exhibitable example of what this feature was for!
(Looking over so many at once makes me pretty sure that it was trolling (a reinforced behavior of provocation-for-attention), btw.)
It looks to me like Eridu sincerely holds positions that you would be expected to find particularly objectionable or even have trouble believing someone could hold in part due to a huge inferential distance between what the world must look like (including perceptual valences) to the two of you. He’s not presenting new ideas. Some People have been taking seriously those ideas for a long time. Is anyone who is a sincere radical feminist that bring their normal (imprecise and [even more]politicky) ways of speaking to less wrong going to be labelled a troll? If so your heuristic is broken because that’s a very common way for people to express themselves.
Also trolling almost always means provocation for a negative reaction. provocation for attention is a sad and pitiable state of affairs more commonly associated with the words attention-seeking whereas trolling usually means looking to upset people for the sake of it which is a much more hostile kind of thing.
I think both you and Eliezer are right. Eridu probably is sincere in his beliefs, but also has been reinforced by the attention he received into provoking people in a way that doesn’t help his cause. He seems to even know this but still endorses his behavior:
I knew what I was going to get when I posted my first comment—I just thought it’d be an amusing waste of my time, which has been roughly the case.
ETA: I’m not sure how we can try to help someone level up their rationality without at the same time giving them attention and risk turning them (by reinforcement) into a troll. The “hide downvoted threads” mechanism only limits the damage...
I’ve gone through and devaporized all of eridu’s comments in his epically successful “radical feminism” troll—I don’t like vaporizing things (or exercising direct moderator power at all, really), and since eridu at −243 karma can’t reply to anything else in that thread, it should be safe now. It also serves as an extremely clear exhibitable example of what this feature was for!
(Looking over so many at once makes me pretty sure that it was trolling (a reinforced behavior of provocation-for-attention), btw.)
It looks to me like Eridu sincerely holds positions that you would be expected to find particularly objectionable or even have trouble believing someone could hold in part due to a huge inferential distance between what the world must look like (including perceptual valences) to the two of you. He’s not presenting new ideas. Some People have been taking seriously those ideas for a long time. Is anyone who is a sincere radical feminist that bring their normal (imprecise and [even more]politicky) ways of speaking to less wrong going to be labelled a troll? If so your heuristic is broken because that’s a very common way for people to express themselves.
Also trolling almost always means provocation for a negative reaction. provocation for attention is a sad and pitiable state of affairs more commonly associated with the words attention-seeking whereas trolling usually means looking to upset people for the sake of it which is a much more hostile kind of thing.
I think both you and Eliezer are right. Eridu probably is sincere in his beliefs, but also has been reinforced by the attention he received into provoking people in a way that doesn’t help his cause. He seems to even know this but still endorses his behavior:
ETA: I’m not sure how we can try to help someone level up their rationality without at the same time giving them attention and risk turning them (by reinforcement) into a troll. The “hide downvoted threads” mechanism only limits the damage...
Thanks—I was curious to look into the details of that memetic attack.