Responses to trolls
Apr. 13th, 2010 02:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackI recently had the interesting experience of someone trolling me and attempting to press my buttons but missing. They picked on something I might very likely been sensitive about, but actually it turned out that I wasn't.
The rest of the comments were interesting, however, in that I treated them as a thought exercise, "can I justify this apparently reasonable opinion I hold against a skeptical questioning?" and actually found it interesting. However, I thought it was a purely intellectual exercise: I didn't think there was actually very much legitimate doubt about what I meant that could do with clarifying, just that it's a good exercise to try justifying ANYTHING you'd accepted as obvious.
But several friends have spoken up in favour of the technique of challenging people's assumptions, and I resolved to answer the question: WHEN is it a useful edifying Socratic approach, and when is it purely provocative? I am now going to use an analogy which doesn't add anything factual to the question, but hopefully commits you emotionally to the points I'm about to make.
Suppose you lived somewhere where people where in serious risk of personal assault, and decent self-defence skills are really necessary, but many friends are lacking in them. You resolve to help by stalking them into dangerous areas and then punching them very hard in the back of the head when they're not expecting it. What are the prerequisites for this to be good behaviour? I would say as a MINIMUM, you should look at:
* Is self-defence actually important?
* Are you targeting the things they need to know?
* Are you doing it not solely for the pleasure of hurting them, or for their own good?
* Are you truly testing their defences, not taking advantage of their trust to betray them?
* Have they implicitly/explicitly agreed to this exercise?
* Have you undertaken a reasonable burden of care that you are not just LIKELY to be attacking someone who wants to play, but HIGHLY CONFIDENT of it, avoiding cases of people who committed half-heartedly or who were mistaken for someone else?
I think as an ABSOLUTE MINIMUM you should be able to answer yes to all those questions, and even then, I still think it might be an effing stupid idea. If you answer "no" to the first two, it's plainly useless. If you answer "no" to any of the last three, then I think you are seriously ethically wanting, even if you have convinced yourself you are trying to benefit someone and merely blinded yourself to the negative consequences.
In this analogy, "self defence skills" correspond to "critical thinking in conversations". Obviously it doesn't completely hold because being punched in the back of the head is typically (not always) worse than someone questioning your integrity, but I think that the analogy to when it's a good thing to play devil's advocate is accurate. Specifically:
* Is learning to be critical about your beliefs important? This is the only one to get an unqualified YES. It may be difficult and not always appropriate, but learning to question yourself a little ought to help you understand yourself better.
So I support sometimes playing devil's advocate. However, the question remains when it is appropriate to do so, and when it's just being an asshole. I think many people who try to do so fail on ALL of the other points.
* Are you targeting the things they actually need to improve? If someone is having a substansive conversation and you barge in and demand they define some irrelevant word or concept, which everyone understands, but they may not be able to articulate on the spot, then you are providing a service which can be useful SOMETIMES but you are an asshole for unilaterily trying to derail an interesting and productive conversation in order to argue about an irrelevant semantic point-- which although interesting is not the the be all and end all of conversation, often only the start.
* Are you abusing their trust in order to falsely seem more insightful than you are? Just because trust can be betrayed doesn't mean that it's always a mistake to give it. Online people commonly give some latitute to apparently rude people to check whether they are deliberately rude or simply misunderstood due to the flatness of the medium. If sufficiently many people deliberately violate this trust, it can indeed be destroyed, but this is not a new or clever observation, or a desirable outcome. It's the social equivalent of smashing shop windows "just because I can", without stopping to consider that anyone CAN, and people who don't aren't necessarily stupid, that whether they articulate it or not, they implicitly recognise that it's better if everyone DOESN'T.
* Are you doing it just to hurt them, or because you think people will genuinely be interested? Some people deserve baiting, or can benefit from it, but if you just pick acquaintances at random and try to provoke an emotional reaction you are probably being an asshole.
* Many people enjoy arguing about details and sharpening their wits at least some of the time. Other people are hurting, and can be seriously hurt by someone saying "your pain is stupid because you didn't prepare a three-paragraph defence to every aspect of your experience in advance before talking about it to friends". If you want to be interesting, and not an asshole PICK THE FORMER, NOT THE LATTER.
* It's not enough to simply pay lip service to not hurting people. You should actually positively TRY not to hurt people. Many people choose to employ politeness for this purpose.
So, I've had many interesting conversations where someone plays devil's advocate. I've also met a lot of people acting like assholes. Good advice for the former is to look for someone who's obviously interested, and make it clear what you're doing (or at least pick on someone who obviously needs it). Good advice for the latter is to fuck off already.
The rest of the comments were interesting, however, in that I treated them as a thought exercise, "can I justify this apparently reasonable opinion I hold against a skeptical questioning?" and actually found it interesting. However, I thought it was a purely intellectual exercise: I didn't think there was actually very much legitimate doubt about what I meant that could do with clarifying, just that it's a good exercise to try justifying ANYTHING you'd accepted as obvious.
But several friends have spoken up in favour of the technique of challenging people's assumptions, and I resolved to answer the question: WHEN is it a useful edifying Socratic approach, and when is it purely provocative? I am now going to use an analogy which doesn't add anything factual to the question, but hopefully commits you emotionally to the points I'm about to make.
Suppose you lived somewhere where people where in serious risk of personal assault, and decent self-defence skills are really necessary, but many friends are lacking in them. You resolve to help by stalking them into dangerous areas and then punching them very hard in the back of the head when they're not expecting it. What are the prerequisites for this to be good behaviour? I would say as a MINIMUM, you should look at:
* Is self-defence actually important?
* Are you targeting the things they need to know?
* Are you doing it not solely for the pleasure of hurting them, or for their own good?
* Are you truly testing their defences, not taking advantage of their trust to betray them?
* Have they implicitly/explicitly agreed to this exercise?
* Have you undertaken a reasonable burden of care that you are not just LIKELY to be attacking someone who wants to play, but HIGHLY CONFIDENT of it, avoiding cases of people who committed half-heartedly or who were mistaken for someone else?
I think as an ABSOLUTE MINIMUM you should be able to answer yes to all those questions, and even then, I still think it might be an effing stupid idea. If you answer "no" to the first two, it's plainly useless. If you answer "no" to any of the last three, then I think you are seriously ethically wanting, even if you have convinced yourself you are trying to benefit someone and merely blinded yourself to the negative consequences.
In this analogy, "self defence skills" correspond to "critical thinking in conversations". Obviously it doesn't completely hold because being punched in the back of the head is typically (not always) worse than someone questioning your integrity, but I think that the analogy to when it's a good thing to play devil's advocate is accurate. Specifically:
* Is learning to be critical about your beliefs important? This is the only one to get an unqualified YES. It may be difficult and not always appropriate, but learning to question yourself a little ought to help you understand yourself better.
So I support sometimes playing devil's advocate. However, the question remains when it is appropriate to do so, and when it's just being an asshole. I think many people who try to do so fail on ALL of the other points.
* Are you targeting the things they actually need to improve? If someone is having a substansive conversation and you barge in and demand they define some irrelevant word or concept, which everyone understands, but they may not be able to articulate on the spot, then you are providing a service which can be useful SOMETIMES but you are an asshole for unilaterily trying to derail an interesting and productive conversation in order to argue about an irrelevant semantic point-- which although interesting is not the the be all and end all of conversation, often only the start.
* Are you abusing their trust in order to falsely seem more insightful than you are? Just because trust can be betrayed doesn't mean that it's always a mistake to give it. Online people commonly give some latitute to apparently rude people to check whether they are deliberately rude or simply misunderstood due to the flatness of the medium. If sufficiently many people deliberately violate this trust, it can indeed be destroyed, but this is not a new or clever observation, or a desirable outcome. It's the social equivalent of smashing shop windows "just because I can", without stopping to consider that anyone CAN, and people who don't aren't necessarily stupid, that whether they articulate it or not, they implicitly recognise that it's better if everyone DOESN'T.
* Are you doing it just to hurt them, or because you think people will genuinely be interested? Some people deserve baiting, or can benefit from it, but if you just pick acquaintances at random and try to provoke an emotional reaction you are probably being an asshole.
* Many people enjoy arguing about details and sharpening their wits at least some of the time. Other people are hurting, and can be seriously hurt by someone saying "your pain is stupid because you didn't prepare a three-paragraph defence to every aspect of your experience in advance before talking about it to friends". If you want to be interesting, and not an asshole PICK THE FORMER, NOT THE LATTER.
* It's not enough to simply pay lip service to not hurting people. You should actually positively TRY not to hurt people. Many people choose to employ politeness for this purpose.
So, I've had many interesting conversations where someone plays devil's advocate. I've also met a lot of people acting like assholes. Good advice for the former is to look for someone who's obviously interested, and make it clear what you're doing (or at least pick on someone who obviously needs it). Good advice for the latter is to fuck off already.