Didn't know a better board to put this under.
Thoughts on Trolls.
1. There seems to be a recurring troll type that leads in with a provocative question, fakes a level of scholarly interest, but rapidly descends to moronic ranting. It's the geo-strategic equivalent of showing up at an astronomy convention, asking a question about cost over-runs on the Hubble telescope, and within an hour screaming "The Earth is Flat! Flat, I tell you! The Space Program is a lie!"
I'm thinking of a good name for this kind of troll. We've had a run of them.
2. Another Troll Tactic which I really don't get. WHY would you choose to lie about the simple things? Why say "I'm from New York" if you are not in fact from New York? Really, do we have THAT kind of credibility, so much so that simply claiming residence here makes one a more beleivable source? Jeez, trolls, figure it out: When you make a claim like that, sooner or later, someone's gonna catch you, and then whatever additional credibility you might have had, if any, you've just lost all that and more. When you get exposed as a bald faced liar, it tends to discredit you.
3. Big troll tactic- false weighting of sources. A troll finds a authoritative source and says "this source says X, and the source is an authority, so X must be correct." This ignores the fact that the 99.9% of sources with the SAME level of authority say Not X. The reality is, the Troll isn't choosing to agree with the source, the Troll is finding a source that agrees with the Troll. No problem, the world is full of loonies. |