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PG on trolls

paulgraham.com

161–170 of 190 posts

Re: PG on trolls

#161
post #156
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding contradicting goals: I think the way to tie things together is a common endpoint (the truth of the matter). If you move all your goals in that direction, it will cause them to become progressively less contradictory. You can also remove contradictions locally if you find any. If you want, you can say that is based on the common foundation "if two ideas contradict, at least one is false". But the point is, y…

Yes, I agree with the end point. I think morals are properly posed in teleological terms. So, moral philosophy has to do with determining the end. What are our goals aiming at?

What we should aim for, in the long term, is a tough question. But fortunately we don't need to know that, now. What's much easier is determining some good short term goals, and then after completing them, determining the next set of short term goals. In that way, we can make progress indefinitely, without ever seeing especially far ahead.

But certainly seeing as much of an "ultimate purpose" to aim for, as we can, is helpful. We have ideas of parts of it. Creating knowledge is good, and destroying it is bad. Freedom is good, and controlling other people is at best a temporary stopgap measure, not an ideal. Cooperation or indifferent tolerance is good, and violent conflict is bad, both because it's destructive, and because it's not a truth seeking process. Settling for less is not ideal, and anything that puts pressure on people, or creates incentives, to not strive for all we can, is bad.

Some of these assertions have directly applicability today. For example, the common perception that striving for more is "hard" (unpleasant) indicates something or other is going wrong. Or there's the idea that life is about compromise, which is essentially settling for less. People don't just fail to find a with to proceed with no downsides, but often people don't even try, and assume such things do not exist. The ideas in our culture which cause these attitudes clearly have room for improvement.

"moral philosophy has to do with determining the end"

Yes, but that's not all. How to approach goals, how to solve problems and correct errors, what sorts of policies for how to live your life are effective, are also very important topics (and perhaps more accessible and directly useful). One of the critical ideas here, I think, is that all these things depend on knowledge. How do you approach a goal? In general, you need to create knowledge about the goal and how best to approach it (and also whether it's worth accomplishing, in case it was mistaken). To solve a problem, you have to figure out how to solve it. (And if implementing the solution is hard or unpleasant in any way, that could be avoided with still more knowledge of how to solve the problem in an easier way.) To correct errors, you have to create knowledge of what ideas are in error, and what would be better ideas. And so on. And therefore, anyone who is seriously interested in morality ought to study epistemology.

Re: PG on trolls

#162
post #36

About what size was reddit (in uniques) before it jumped the shark?

Off the top of my head, maybe 40-50,000. The fascinating thing is, all the data is still there. You can go and look at the old comments and stories and see what the site used to be like. If you could find a good proxy for stupidity, like comment length or spelling mistakes, you could graph the change as the site grew.

Are you sure about that? reddit hit 50k uniques about 6 months after it launched. I'd say the discourse was very similar to what it is here at that point in the game.

Re: PG on trolls

#163
Pretty typical paul graham post. He doesn't provide any evidence and he shows very little understanding of the problem. He doesn't even understand he is being trolled because he is wrong. No one cares about 4000 lines of macros for PLT Scheme. All of his arc hype led to some dumb macros. We listened to years of essays about how to program and what makes productive programmers only to find he takes R5RS and adds some macros. Wow. Amazing LISP revolution.

Paul you are being "trolled" because people disagree with you. You haven't seen real trolls.

Re: PG on trolls

#164
I saw this on Metafilter. I am not a member but I enjoy almost daily reading on the site. I would offer than you have an unaddressed aspect in regard to those than are called trolls. Specifically Forum members who try to end a debate by labeling someone a troll. I am a member of Syracuse.com and DailyKos. I started posting maybe 7 years ago on Syracuse,com after RWers brought God to the defense an UNJUST war. I am a Catholic who marched against the Vietnam War and for black rights and anti-poverty programs. Since I started posting I have tried to distinguish between what Jesus would support in the positions of the Republicans and the Democrats. To the Right Wingers on Syracuse.com I am a troll because I call them to account concerning unjust wars, the death penalty and their continuing efforts to strangle social programs in a bathtub. On Daily Kos I am called a troll for not supporting "gay rights" or abortion. My views are consistent with my religion. Moreover when I was younger I developed a great appreciation for the Amish and Mennonites who view things in a similar manner but maybe to a greater extent and with greater consistency than the Catholics, I am civil and stay well within the site posting rules. I have had my posts and user name constantly deleted on Syracuse.com and that is fairly easily done there by any poster hitting the "Inappropriate Post" button. The modest size gay friendly community within DailyKos are very hostile to any posts that are in opposition to their goals.

Re: PG on trolls

#166
post #131

Who is this guy and what authority does he have to write about these topics? I haven't read the essay, but there's no way anything so short and written in such an informal style could have anything useful to say about such and such topic, when people with degrees in the subject have already written many thick books about it.

I also wonder how much of a contributing factor people's attempts at humor would spin the dynamics of group discussions out of control. The main reason why I went Slashdot -> Digg -> Reddit -> YCNews (and most likely YCNews -> ? within the next 18 months) was because of all the one-liners I kept reading over and over again of people attempting to be funny. My thinking is along the lines of UserXYZ posts something hum…

This thread is two days old, but I wanted to put some content in relation to the behaviour of "trolling" to my comment above. I would add being quick to judge as yet another dynamic that adds little value and can cause positive dynamics to devolve. I volunteer myself as an example in the following link:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=119120

I put forth a great deal of skepticism regarding a product and actually got a response from one of the founding members of the company. It turns out that they actually had a real product that shows a great deal of promise...

This just goes to show that sometimes being quick to judge can have drastic consequences for others. I would argue that this is a form of trolling when a great deal of skepticism mixed with anecdotal information from the past (which has nothing to do with the present as things are more mutually exclusive than we would otherwise like to believe) leads to quick karma points and increased skepticism on behalf of other members.

"I for one welcome our new overlords". Oops wait, wrong context. What I meant to say is that being quick to judge is in many ways similar to the reactionary "comedic lashing out" I was citing in the comedic trolling above and can often times lead to making yourself look foolish at no cost to nobody but yourself (as immortalized by Kent Brockman in the above opening sentence of this paragraph!).

Like the comedic attempts above, this is not something that can be easily controlled. Rather this requires restraint exercised on behalf of the author of any given comment. One thing that I feel works against this all is the fact that the anonymity of the internet often affords people to keep doing what they are doing.

The fact that I'm using my real name online (for the first time mind you) is causing me to respond more deeply to this issue and to the open (and unfair) skepticism I was voicing in another thread. Definitely a tougher thing to do...definitely worth it.

Re: PG on trolls

#167
I actually like trolls of the 1st kind. You know, the practical jokers, the original trolls, the ones that have no real bad intentions but just like to be silly once in a while. The second kind, well, I just call them "people"

Re: PG on trolls

#168
post #161
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I agree with the end point. I think morals are properly posed in teleological terms. So, moral philosophy has to do with determining the end. What are our goals aiming at?

What we should aim for, in the long term, is a tough question. But fortunately we don't need to know that, now. What's much easier is determining some good short term goals, and then after completing them, determining the next set of short term goals. In that way, we can make progress indefinitely, without ever seeing especially far ahead. But certainly seeing as much of an "ultimate purpose" to aim for, as we can, i…

ahhhhh.... I have been squished against the wall!

Re: PG on trolls

#169
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we should aim for, in the long term, is a tough question. But fortunately we don't need to know that, now. What's much easier is determining some good short term goals, and then after completing them, determining the next set of short term goals. In that way, we can make progress indefinitely, without ever seeing especially far ahead. But certainly seeing as much of an "ultimate purpose" to aim for, as we can, i…

ahhhhh.... I have been squished against the wall!

lol yeah the UI doesn't work so well with heavy nesting

Re: PG on trolls

#170
Give George Carlin The Asshole Theory(~):

"The amount of an asshole a person is is directly proportional to the distance they are away from you at the time you discover this fault. Someone on TV is REALLY AN ASSHOLE! Someone in the car next to you is Pretty Much of an Asshole. A guy standing next to you on line: 'this guy's a real asshole here'"

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