The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit
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The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit
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Re: The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit
#2This 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.
Re: The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit
#3Ancient 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.
Re: The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit
#4This 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 mec…
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.
Re: The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit
#5Ancient 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.
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.
Re: The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit
#6Seems like Socrates would fall under that definition.
Re: The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit
#7There'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)
Re: The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit
#8This 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 mec…
for a definition to be useful it needs to be as narrow as possible, otherwise declaring any form of argument you don't like as trolling would be...
Re: The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit
#9 Did they have a word for the intellectually dishonest practice of just making stuff up to support one's argument?
Re: The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit
#10Now you can judge who is lying or who is telling the truth
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