I see a dearth of evidence for the authors actual hypothesis as stated.
Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues
151–160 of 233 posts
Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues
#152I"m glad to see this point made: > I’m not saying that all online bad behaviour is because of mental health issues or personality disorders: lots of people are just dickheads, and there’s no need to pathologise them. One of the important lessons I took away from a milestone book on abuse, "Why Does He Do That?" is that people really want to excuse harmful behaviors as illness. When often, repeated bad behavior happen…
I would agree; "homophobes" are not afraid of homosexuality.
When I've looked into the research they tend to be mostly disgusted by homosexuality. Disgust sensitivity and Homophobia correlate whereas neuroticism and homophobia don't which you would predict if homophobes were literally afraid of gay people.
Homophobia is just a nice spin though. For the most part I couldn't care less about who people are dating or boning.
Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues
#153I"m glad to see this point made: > I’m not saying that all online bad behaviour is because of mental health issues or personality disorders: lots of people are just dickheads, and there’s no need to pathologise them. One of the important lessons I took away from a milestone book on abuse, "Why Does He Do That?" is that people really want to excuse harmful behaviors as illness. When often, repeated bad behavior happen…
So the PDF is broadly available on Google. It's section on mental illness says that abusers are too "selfish" to put up with a medications side-effects and that they overdose on medication to strike out at his partner dramatically. The guy isn't really an expert on mental illness at all, pushes the hypothesis that abusive behavior and mental illness are distinct things, and that abuse by and large is rational behavio…
Well that's certainly one take.
I strongly disagree with your notion that the book defines abuse so broadly that anybody could meet the criteria. As I read it, the book doesn't apply to most people; I'd say it only matches a handful of people I've met in my life.
I think the rest of your characterizations are also basically incorrect and unfair, and in ways that I don't see it as worth my time to dispute in detail. If others aren't sure, I'd encourage them to read the book to find out.
Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues
#154The article's actual title is "Are Twitter trolls mentally ill?" It makes me want to talk about how the concept of the troll has evolved from something specific to something very general. I glanced through the article and none of the behaviors it listed are what I'd consider troll behaviors. They're just the patterns of mild mental illness. Trolls, in my old-man's definition, are almost a type of hunter, looking to b…
Exactly.
The troll is someone who notices someone who is vulnerable and triggers them.
I do wonder though if there isn't more than a little reinforcement between the groups. Someone with BPD leaning behavior doesn't need someone giving a push to keep their emotional roller coaster going but someone provoking them can't help.
And, of course, trolls are in it for the reaction and the least well adjusted people give a rather strong reaction.
Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's not the rigor of physics, but rather the rigor of engineering or civic planning: I would say engineering has more rigour because almost everything that really matters is based on rigorous science. Engineering also includes a certain amount of artistry, but that's generally within a rigorous framework that allows this. But, yeah, as I said, psychology is pseudo-science. > Because we've figured out what the unde…
> But, yeah, as I said, psychology is pseudo-science. Science is about doing experiments to get data that allow you to create+refine models of reality that make predictions on what further data will look like. Psychology is a science. People may argue whether it is a hard science, but it’s doing all the science things. What is the difference between an RCT on how a drug affects cancer (given some formal rating scale…
> Psychology is a science. People may argue whether it is a hard science, but it’s doing all the science things.
True, when I say 'science' I mean 'hard science'. Every theory is basically an arbitrary statistical model trained on extremely noisy signals. Generally, it can't carry out controlled experiments or predict new phenomena.
> What is the difference between an RCT on how a drug affects cancer (given some formal rating scale for cancer), vs. an RCT on how a drug affects ability to concentrate (given some formal rating scale for ability-to-concentrate)? The former is considered medical research. The latter is considered psychological research.
You can measure the size of the cancer in a fairly direct and objective way. To measure ability to concentrate you need to have a statistical model that interprets a very noisy signal.
> Also, I don’t want people to drill holes in my skull. Most people don’t. It is, in fact, considered unethical by most medical boards to drill holes in a patient’s skull, if what you’re treating for would not be worse than a hole in the skull.
It was a joke about lobotomies...
> “Psychology” is to “neuroscience” as “ML” is to “Computer Science”
It's more like what 'astrology' is to 'astronomy'.
Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would agree; "homophobes" are not afraid of homosexuality.
I kind of disagree. To me, there does seem to be an element of fear behind homophobia, and homophobes often act as if "the gay" is something they can catch like a disease, or be talked or tricked into. It's practically a stereotype for homophobes to present as hypermasculine in order to avoid doing or saying anything that might be perceived as "gay." Some men won't even wipe themselves out of fear that the sensation…
It's disgust not fear, which explains the disease analogy. Although I suppose we do call people germophobic.
Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues
#157I"m glad to see this point made: > I’m not saying that all online bad behaviour is because of mental health issues or personality disorders: lots of people are just dickheads, and there’s no need to pathologise them. One of the important lessons I took away from a milestone book on abuse, "Why Does He Do That?" is that people really want to excuse harmful behaviors as illness. When often, repeated bad behavior happen…
I would agree; "homophobes" are not afraid of homosexuality.
And hydrophobic substances do not express the emotion of fear against water.
Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues
#158Nothing has changed since Jerry Pournelle wrote 35 years ago when discussing online forums: >I noticed something: most of the irritation came from a handful of people, sometimes only one or two. If I could only ignore them, the computer conferences were still valuable. Alas, it's not always easy to do. This is what killed Usenet,[1] which 40 years ago offered much of the virtues of Reddit in decentralized form. The n…
This is a paper I wrote on this topic and a proposed solution based on the work of Hal Finney. You might find it interesting:
Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues
#159Over 50% Of Liberal, White Women Under 30 Have A Mental Health Issue. Are We Worried Yet?
https://www.eviemagazine.com/post/over-50-percent-white-libe...
Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues
#160Nothing has changed since Jerry Pournelle wrote 35 years ago when discussing online forums: >I noticed something: most of the irritation came from a handful of people, sometimes only one or two. If I could only ignore them, the computer conferences were still valuable. Alas, it's not always easy to do. This is what killed Usenet,[1] which 40 years ago offered much of the virtues of Reddit in decentralized form. The n…
As someone who was on Usenet regularly until the mid 2000's, I don't think it was the trolls that killed Usenet. They were easy enough to ignore. The younger generations simply never found it, as the WWW forums were much easier to find and grew more popular. For the two dozen or so groups I visited regularly, over time they became the playground of only the old guards, and conversation slowly died out.