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The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

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Re: The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit

#21

Post by damnyou »

labgrown wrote: post #8
marstomorrow wrote: post #2

This 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...

That is just not true. Broader definitions are actually very useful when you're trying to describe general principles (like in law) — using a word that's too narrowly defined can limit the scope of what you're saying.

Re: The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit

#22

Post by nitheshm »

QuercusMax wrote: post #16
shas3 wrote: post #3

Ancient 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.

What does vitanDa mean in Kannada? Google hasn't been much help.

In Telugu, I use vitanda vadam to mean something closer to a rhetorical fallacy than deliberate dishonesty.

Re: The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit

#23

Post by marstomorrow »

asveikau wrote: post #12

I frequently argue points I do not personally hold. This sometimes gets misinterpreted as me holding the opinion, or an attack on the person, or some such. But really I am testing the idea and recognizing that someone else could hold this opinion but not be in the room to advocate for it.

I have come across this in some friends. It's super interesting but also dangerous. It has taken me sometimes years or a decade to fully come to terms with some past debates. My friends would seemingly hold opinions and cling to them dearly, opinions I felt were so unconscionable I could not imagine holding them. Friendships were strained and maybe some lost. They tell me now that they were doing as you do, and that they did not hold those opinions but were merely testing them and practicing debating, learning about both sides, etc.

But I wonder about the unintended consequences of this. How many 'opinions' are out there in the world purely to cause pain? What portion of opinions that are shared on social media or the news actual opinions from those people, vs crafted statements of trolling themselves?

When you take the 'other side' for practice, is there really a valid [1] other side to take? I find often that the other side is based on logical fallacies and is not, at its base, a valid argument. I wonder if you are creating distance between you and others while you test out the opinions of propagandists? How valid [1 again] really are all these opinions?

[1] Okay here we go with this. I am indeed calling some opinions "invalid". What I mean is, I do not think it is a valid opinion to cause harm to minorities on purpose. I think this is cruel and amounts to a crime in our society. But you will find people advocating it loudly on social media and TV - and their arguments are based on treating humans cruelly for no reason other than the cruelty and other various logical fallacies.

If you are to take stances that you don't agree with, please check them logically first before putting those arguments out there in the world. Some things are better understood without trying to understand 'the other side', simply because it is not going to be based in logic and has no possible outcome of being 'understood'.

Re: The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit

#25

Post by asveikau »

sideaccount wrote: post #20
asveikau wrote: post #12

I frequently argue points I do not personally hold. This sometimes gets misinterpreted as me holding the opinion, or an attack on the person, or some such. But really I am testing the idea and recognizing that someone else could hold this opinion but not be in the room to advocate for it.

This could also be considered gaslighting, or just plain old attention seeking behavior.

This sounds like paranoia. I have absolutely no malicious intent, do not make such arguments by lying, and don't do it for attention.

Re: The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit

#26

Post by dvtrn »

marstomorrow wrote: post #23
asveikau wrote: post #12

I frequently argue points I do not personally hold. This sometimes gets misinterpreted as me holding the opinion, or an attack on the person, or some such. But really I am testing the idea and recognizing that someone else could hold this opinion but not be in the room to advocate for it.

I have come across this in some friends. It's super interesting but also dangerous. It has taken me sometimes years or a decade to fully come to terms with some past debates. My friends would seemingly hold opinions and cling to them dearly, opinions I felt were so unconscionable I could not imagine holding them. Friendships were strained and maybe some lost. They tell me now that they were doing as you do, and that…

If you are to take stances that you don't agree with, please check them logically first before putting those arguments out there in the world.

You know, some could make the argument that in order to satisfy the second demand of your sentence here, one has to indulge in the first.

I don't know if I would, but maybe that's the point ;)

Re: The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit

#27

Post by sideaccount »

asveikau wrote: post #25
sideaccount wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could also be considered gaslighting, or just plain old attention seeking behavior.

This sounds like paranoia. I have absolutely no malicious intent, do not make such arguments by lying, and don't do it for attention.

That's good.

Re: The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit

#28

Post by rgrieselhuber »

marstomorrow wrote: post #23
asveikau wrote: post #12

I frequently argue points I do not personally hold. This sometimes gets misinterpreted as me holding the opinion, or an attack on the person, or some such. But really I am testing the idea and recognizing that someone else could hold this opinion but not be in the room to advocate for it.

I have come across this in some friends. It's super interesting but also dangerous. It has taken me sometimes years or a decade to fully come to terms with some past debates. My friends would seemingly hold opinions and cling to them dearly, opinions I felt were so unconscionable I could not imagine holding them. Friendships were strained and maybe some lost. They tell me now that they were doing as you do, and that…

This is a really interesting point. Trolling, in my opinion, occurs when the opportunity to question narratives is suppressed or forbidden.

Re: The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit

#29

Post by danans »

shas3 wrote: post #3

Ancient 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.

"The Notion of Trolling in Ancient Indian Literature" may have been a better choice of title. Of course it was in Sanskrit, because that was the literary language of the time.

But this is probably named this way because the names of Ancient Indian works of literature, especially obscure ones like Nyaya Sutra, are not well known in the west, whereas "Sanskrit" almost immediately contextualizes the post to Ancient South Asia for most readers, even though the language in which it is composed is a bit beside the point, which is that an ancient society sort of identified "trolling".

Re: The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit

#30

Post by claudiawerner »

marstomorrow wrote: post #23
asveikau wrote: post #12

I frequently argue points I do not personally hold. This sometimes gets misinterpreted as me holding the opinion, or an attack on the person, or some such. But really I am testing the idea and recognizing that someone else could hold this opinion but not be in the room to advocate for it.

I have come across this in some friends. It's super interesting but also dangerous. It has taken me sometimes years or a decade to fully come to terms with some past debates. My friends would seemingly hold opinions and cling to them dearly, opinions I felt were so unconscionable I could not imagine holding them. Friendships were strained and maybe some lost. They tell me now that they were doing as you do, and that…

My own experience with this tends to arise out of an extreme cognitive dissonance - I want my opinions to be internally consistent, and I've come to realize that a few of them just aren't consistent. When you get into reading the philosophy (or the relevant literature in other cases) you can come to conclusions which are quite far removed from beliefs one holds dear. So there's some tension between what I'd like to be true (security in a belief) and what seems true when I rationally consider the arguments. The second part of my experience shows that when you report your findings to others, they are immediately skeptical to the point of refusing to engage with the established literature. In reality, I try and make others aware of these opinions by arguing for them - partially in the hope that they can offer a counter-argument and that I can be back "home" safe in my original opinions which I thought I couldn't justify.

Secondly is the matter of epistemological framework; some people seem stuck with a particular way of finding information about the world which intentionally or not is constructed to dismiss critical engagement.

The most controversial topics of political philosophy are very interesting to me because it can be hard to find a view which is internally consistent. I'm emotionally upset when I can't arrive at such a view. To hold a view I can't justify is a horrible feeling. The kind of topics I'm talking about are issues of freedom of speech (pornography, hate speech, censorship, debate, the notion of harm and the validity of the harm principle), economics (the labour theory of value, tendency for the rate of profit to fall, objectivity or subjectivity of value, various historical arguments), social psychology (ideology in society and the flattening of culture, totalitarianism of the market, the experience of other sexualities e.g. the adult My Little Pony fan community and the Japanese lolicon phenomenon), and the nature of work (the meaning of consent and coercion, free will, the phenomenon of "bullshit jobs"). In the face of these issues, I find that it's hard to spend any energy on talking about such banalities as vim vs emacs or FOSS.

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