Clever Troll Admiration

Sometimes you just have to admire the work of clever trolls. They may frustrate you initially, but in retrospect one can admire their work like appreciating the mental work of a clever criminal (even though you are glad when they are locked up).

For example, in one debate somebody pointed out that "tree" and "hierarchy" are sometimes not the same thing even though I treated them as interchangeable. Hierarchy sometimes refers to rank regardless of parent relationship. I considered it a minor point and agreed to be more careful about my usage of the words, but this particular troll kept bringing it up in a successful attempt to make me look bad.

On later topics, he'd say something like, "why should anybody listen to you, you didn't even know what a hierarchy is". The reader, not knowing the full story, may indeed assume the troll is right looking superficially at the prior debates on the terms, and I couldn't quickly refute it since in some usages the word are indeed different than my original usage and it could indeed be argued that I was repeatedly misusing the term until corrected by this "generous" troll. (This, despite the fact that the reader probably assumes they are interchangeable terms also.) Thus, he found a successful way to make me look bad. The jerk "got" me.

(Perhaps "troll" is not the right classification, since it's based on AdHominem attacks. However, "flamer" is too strong, for he was somewhat subtle in his personal attacks and social manipulation. I tend to separate topic trolls from reputation trolls.)

Perhaps, then, the appropriate response is to call an ad hominem attack a spade as soon as it occurs. It is not mean spirited to point out when someone else is actually being mean spirited.

Ad hominem attacks are sometimes effective from a typical reader's perspective, despite being a formal fallacy. A damaged reputation can force others to ignore or discard your arguments, even if that's not how "proper" debates are to work because the arguments should be evaluated on their own merit and evidence, not the claimer's reputation. It's essentially social trolling to use reputation to "win".

The Harlem Globetrotters could be seen as clever trolls. They could often beat "regular" teams because the regular players were caught off guard by their unique style and gimmicks. However, if they took a path where they entered into the standard season games, eventually other teams would learn to counter their moves and the Globetrotters would usually lose. But why ruin a good thing; it is entertaining to see them fsck with real teams in occasional exhibition games.

(It is also noteworthy that the rules are "bent" to allow the Globetrotters to play "their" way. If they were called for genuine infractions they'd never get through a real game with all five starters; they'd foul out long before 48 minutes of play.)

Troll is not equal troll. There are lots of possible ideas the may evolve in an otherwise normal person due to personal circumstances which leads to a particular meme-complex that sticks. So your CleverTroll? may be jsut that: A clever person who just focusses on that particular differentiation. Or non-differentiation. And you will in all likelihood not be able to change him. There are always people that cannot be convinced - even in principle.

Compare with http://lesswrong.com/lw/rn/no_universally_compelling_arguments/

It appears that one key to Apple's rocketing "success" under SteveJobs was that he knew he was dying soon and burned bridges left and right in order to grab as much early-mover market-share as possible to gain leveraging power for Apple.

People couldn't blame his bad moves on Apple itself because the dude behind it would be worm-bait when all the court judgements came out such that the reputation of the company wouldn't take such a huge hit. He was a voluntary shock-absorber.

There is also the employee "poaching" situation in addition to the Ebook "monopoly" move. I bet more will come out someday.

One has to give Jobs credit for using every weapon at his disposal, including death. His slimebaggery was masterful chess (except maybe for ignoring doctors).

See: TrollDefinition, CompellingIrritant, ProjectSabotagePatterns

CategoryCommunication