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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

#71

Post by coldtea »

marstomorrow wrote: post #67
coldtea wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have absolutely never once in my life seen someone cry over an opinion being published. Well, I've seen then cry, demand it's unpublished, demand the person writing it is fired, and so on. > I have, however, seen hundreds of people complain about others 'crying', or 'literally shaking' but I have never seen it once happen and I have been looking. Well, perhaps not looking unbiased enough. > Something happening in…

[flagged]

>Citation needed.

You really need a citation? Go look on social media for yourself, and the kind of trending complain posts. Or college campuses for that matter. Or youth oriented news outlets.

>And anyway, if it were true, why would that be bad?

Well, because for me people should be more resilience, less hysteric, and more adult. That's why. And because a society of touchy-feelers is a crippled society.

Also the world is not a safe space, and life is not a Disney movie. People unprepared for it will only fail more, be more gullible, and make a mess of things (like an idiot who thinks all animals are like cute pets, and gets eaten by a wild animal).

>Oh wow that is so wrong and so offensive to boot. These are straight up lies. You have no backing to this

Yeah, I don't have "backing", e.g. some expert report by scientists, saying "Only 21% of the people complained about this under Obama, but 87% under Trump", and "67.4% didn't care, they just show it on some media, and will drop it again, when it's not trending anymore", as if those things exist.

I only have my grasp of reality and observation skills. And my experience dealing with such things, and being involved with people across different decades, and seeing people jump on bandwagons, and going off again when it's not trendy anymore.

>> I argue that (1) the touchy feely issues should be dropped, >> Wait. You are arguing that young people should be banned from discussing topics of their interest?! A total ban on free speech for the youth? what do you mean by this?*

No, I'm saying that touchy feely issues should be dropped (e.g. voluntarily discarded by those peddling them).

That said, your (strawman) suggestion is not bad. "A total ban on free speech for the youth" could be a good plan to me, if somewhat heavy handed. They can listen, learn and understand first, speak later (e.g. after 25 or so).

As Bertolt Brecht once wrote (as a standing judge for a collection of crappy poems from young poets on social issues, most full of melodrama and naivety), "People shouldn't be allowed to write poems until they've completed their army service" (referring to the mandatory general conscription at his era, at around 18 y.o. or so, synonymous to becoming an adult).

I'm half joking, though B.B did say that. But the point is that people should be able to listen to such suggestions and be "offended" without screaming bloody murder and run for "safe spaces".

Re: The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit

#72

Post by anigbrowl »

thomascgalvin wrote: post #36
rciorba wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's my take on when people do this: Unless someone prefaces their statements with a disclaimer (like "just for the sake of the argument"), I will assume in good faith they believe their own statements. Any later claim to the contrary leaves me with the following choice to make: were they lying then, or are they lying now.

It seems to me that even when a statement is prefaced with something like "just for the sake of the argument", this is just a cover, allowing the writer to state an unpopular (or hateful, or patently wrong) opinion, while hopefully shielding themselves from some of the blowback. It's the whole "I'm just asking the question" phenomena, and I see it a lot with people who claim to be centrists but are more accurately de…

There's lots of rhetorical contexts where it's a valid approach if both parties are operating in good faith - ie in pursuit of some mutually agreeable truth or within the bounds of some mutually agreed-upon process such as litigation. Many bitter political debates involve the deliberate confusion of substantive and rhetorical claims for deceptive effect.

Re: The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit

#73

Post by [deleted] »

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #53
rgrieselhuber wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Open any unmoderated comments section on any site and you'll find thousands of trolls. It's strange that you think trolling is some subversive and venerable reaction to censorship, when anonymously commenting on websites is a nearly effortless act that incurs neither a cost nor risk.

[deleted]

Re: The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit

#74

Post by empath75 »

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 used to do that frequently and eventually came to hold some of those positions. In particular I convinced myself to be pro-choice after sort of arguing about abortion for sport with my very Christian conservative family.

Re: The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit

#75

Post by svat »

The tradition of debate in India that this article is about (or dialogue, or dialectic, or whatever you want to call it) is very interesting, and unfortunately not well-known because most of the sources on the topic quickly get into technicalities.

Two non-technical (somewhat accessible to the general public) sources I've found are:

1. The book “Religions, Reasons, and Gods” by the late John Clayton has many interesting essays that touch on the vāda tradition. One of his interesting points is that the goal of dialogue need not be consensus or establishing common ground, but simply the “clarification of defensible difference”: understanding the other party better, and coming to shared understanding of what our differences are. Some of it is also touched on in his lecture here: http://www.bu.edu/religion/mar25-98/

2. Elaborating on the jalpa/vitaṇḍa mentioned in this article, the nyāya tradition recognized a long list of logical fallacies and poor arguments that were grounds for losing a (formal) debate. A list I've found is in the paper “Twenty-Two Ways to Lose a Debate” (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-009-9083-y) which also carries out some comparison with the ideas of Grice.

Re: The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit

#76

Post by anigbrowl »

trevyn wrote: post #38
rciorba wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's my take on when people do this: Unless someone prefaces their statements with a disclaimer (like "just for the sake of the argument"), I will assume in good faith they believe their own statements. Any later claim to the contrary leaves me with the following choice to make: were they lying then, or are they lying now.

> Unless someone prefaces their statements with a disclaimer (like "just for the sake of the argument"), I will assume in good faith they believe their own statements. That is perhaps an unusually... mechanical... way of conversing. Human conversation can be a playful dance when contextual grey areas of shared and individual intent and information are explored. Most people do this implicitly, without need for explici…

the pleasure of the dance

That's great when it's mutually understood, but just like a real dance you should solicit someone's agreement to participate beforehand.

Re: The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit

#77

Post by Dylan16807 »

d0100 wrote: post #39
marstomorrow wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I find often that the other side is based on logical fallacies and is not, at its base, a valid argument. Does this mean you are "often" right?

I'd hope so! If anyone keeps getting in arguments and they're not "often" right they're doing something very wrong.

Re: The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit

#78

Post by Dylan16807 »

asveikau wrote: post #35
marstomorrow wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I totally agree that, when adopting a hypothetical opinion, it's a good idea to vet it, and prevent wasting everybody's time in hypotheticals. Though part of that process may be to temporarily adopt an absurd view and work out how it fails.

You almost never have to spend an entire argument to vet a complete garbage opinion. If you do it quickly, or the opinion isn't complete garbage, you're not running afoul of the complaint.

Re: The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit

#80

Post by nordsieck »

bittercynic wrote: post #55
chmod775 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the time it doesn't even matter whether that someone actually believes what they say. It should be all the same to you either way.

It matters when one of your goals is to determine what the people around you believe.

>> Most of the time it doesn't even matter whether that someone actually believes what they say.

> It matters when one of your goals is to determine what the people around you believe.

What people say is some of the lowest fidelity information to use when trying to assess what people believe.

Actions >>> Words

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