We seem to have some fresh meat new creationists coming by. It’s been a while since we had such an opportunity—they seem to run away so quickly—so I’m going to remind everyone of the 3 comment rule. Please give people a chance to explain themselves before you decide to pound on them, OK? Abuse is a few doors down the hall, this is supposed to be Argument.
Along those same lines, we have a few persistent trolls who keep coming back. I kill them as I see them (these are a few so far gone that they don’t get disemvowelled, just junked), but please don’t engage them. I’m going to start trashing replies, too, just to discourage people from feeding the trolls.
Also, there are a few people who are being just plain vicious. That’s my job, and I’m beginning to resent the usurpation of my reputed evil temperament. Again, if you find yourself writing 5 snarling comments in a row, stop. Take a break. Dunk your head in some cool water. I’m not one to encourage drug abuse, but some people here need Vicodin, Oxycontin, Xanax and Percocet by the handfuls. If you’ve got to attack someone, and you can’t at least make it light and funny, go out on your front porch and yell at those damn kids instead.
We’re getting lots of comments lately, and you’ve got to stop over-reacting to the occasional jostle.
Everybody cool it–this is a party, not a brawl
Where are the snacks?
GWW,
I HATE snacks!
Hey! Long time lurker, first time commenter. I figured I’d take this opportunity to not only put my name in the books, but to also say hello and tell you that I certainly do enjoy the read here. Keep up the good work.
So what is the difference between trolling and engaging in critical reflection? Isn’t a moderate skepticism necessary to any intellectual development? What else can the open-ended process of scholarship be based upon other than a critical engagement with arguments and their validity, along with a critical consideration of the relevant evidential background to a particular claim?
And why does everyone appear so emotional and angry whenever, pardon the pun, “the articles of the faith” are questioned? It really is quite the sight to see self-styled “highly intelligent” people throw a tantrum if their mix of unreconstructed positivism and massively unsophisticated and naïve scientism is in anyway questioned.
But the expression of these thoughts no doubt makes me a ‘troll’, so let the insults fly (don’t worry I really couldn’t care less). And what precisely is the deal with all of this ‘symbol’ stuff? It’s a little pathetic and somewhat vulgar if you ask me (“damn it I want a symbol too, it’s not fair, sob sob!”).
Ohh, not Percocet… I’m allergic to Percocet… Vicodin, now, I respond particularly well to. :)
OK, three comment rule, did not know. Will cool it, since verb sap and all that. Thanks.
Glad I got some microwave popcorn.
Ahhhh… another fake concern troll.
Oh wait. 3 posts is the rule.
We’re always game to debate and argue. It’s the type who just come and make statements and disregard any attempt to engage and then usually succumb to name calling that are trolls. They often post the same thing over and over again.
I suspect the Saint is the pious kind we’re familiar with.
So is it therefore considered “not cricket” if one
adds a loon to the filter list after only two
intensely stupid comments?
I tend to have less patience for people who write
very long stupid comments as it seems a greater
waste of time.
I find it is easier to ignore trolls over time,
but they still take up space and time.
Dr. Myers, thank you for this.
But what if a troll wants us to “let the insults fly?” Are three comments necessary? I know. I’ll try counting to 10 and proceed to ignore it.
Or perhaps talk about it as if it weren’t in the room:)
“So what is the difference between trolling and engaging in critical reflection?”
1st comment: To explain that we need to find out: what exactly do you mean by “trolling” and “critical reflection”, my dear fellow commenter?
2nd comment: No, no, a troll is one who poor out a lot of inflammatory comment, as if you didn’t know that very well, mister.
3d comment: A @#?! troll is @$!!, for %+/!
Ahem… See, that wasn’t too difficult to explain, was it? On critical reflection, of course.
I find that drinking tequilla out of my Minnesota Citizens for Science Education (MCSE) cup, a purposeful arrangement of part, is perfect for getting me in the Pharyngula party mood!
Anybody up for a round of Pin the Tail on the Behe?
“who poor” – who pour
Speak of poor wording…
Ohhh, I like party games!
But isn’t Dembski a bigger ass to pin? Behe would be a better target for whack-a-creo with books.
And speaking of which, who spilled my Beheer? It was grown by special microevolved yeast only.
“grown” – fermented. Sheesh, it was strong beheer!
“It really is quite the sight to see self-styled “highly intelligent” people throw a tantrum if their mix of unreconstructed positivism and massively unsophisticated and naïve scientism is in anyway questioned.”
Indeed it is! Where can I go to see that?
How about a Pharyngula message board? That could allow for some extended conversation that’s easier to follow than post comments.
I found out the other day, just minutes before my colonoscopy, that I’m allergic to Demerol. So after my head-to-toe welts subsided about 10 minutes after the shot, they proceeded without drugs of any sort.
That was fun.
Not.
I was alert as possible. Not even a tiny bit groggy.
Colonoscopies hurt.
I was 100% clean, by the way.
St. Sebastian:
How kind of you to inquire, please let me humbly address your question.
As atheism / sub-supernatural / free thinking is growing in popular culture it seems worthwhile to have a symbol for this shared value.
Since the xians have such a fetish for torture, and a profound fear of death, it makes sense they would choose the cross to symbolize their affinity.
However, without magical delusions, we tend to focus on science and life, which makes “Xeno” the perfect symbol, see: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/11/freethought_symbology.php#comment-256905
(x)
I think it would be ‘cricket’ to add someone to the kill file as soon as you like. You’re not as likely to respond in a hostile fashion if you can’t see the person that irritates you.
I don’t believe this is a violation of the 3 post rule.
Killfiles are strictly personal – they don’t affect anyone *but* you – and thus there is no way PZ could plausibly make a rule against them.
I’m generally of the position that people should be given the benefit of a great deal of doubt, and killfiles only resorted to after a long history of dumbness, but if someone offends you that much, go right ahead.
I HATE snacks!
You make country weak.
And speaking of which, who spilled my Beheer? It was grown by special microevolved yeast only.
Hmm, okay troll person, I guess they’re supposed to keep their cool around here, for now…
“grown” – fermented. Sheesh, it was strong beheer!
Hmm…
St. Sebastian is my favorite Christian martyr. But that’s probably because I like archery.
Message boards tend to be even more vitriolic than blogs. It’s no coincidence that the most vitriolic blogs are also those that behave the most like forums.
I just hope that by creationist you don’t mean “he disagrees with me on the atheism issue”.
There’s a “three-comment rule”? I did not know that.
On the other hand, I’m pretty sure I have not broken that rule, even inadvertently. I’ll keep an eye on it, though, just to be sure. Anyway, I usually feel sated after two posts (if that) and try really, really hard to avoid feeding trolls. (It is damnably tempting though, since a troll loves to stick his chin out there and practically begs you to slug it.)
But, yeah, it’s poor sport and an exercise in utter futility.
As a newcomer who’s just reached the three comment limit, I’m wondering which category I fall into, particularly since in the first comment I dropped a link to my own blog. Still, t’is a funny video, and relevant.
The trolls and rabble-rousers ruin it for everyone else.
We lefty evolution-believing folk can have a downright nice time with even the most religious of them out there.
It’s when one of their ‘leaders’ tells them we threaten to take away their rights that people start to get huffy.
On the other hand, we seem to have just as tough a time with the idea that them thar religious folk are trying to take away our science.
Who benefits from keeping us busy arguing with each other? Arguing over apples and oranges? Debating a subject that won’t be agreed upon until we’re all long dead- as with most paradigm shifts?
but some people here need Vicodin, Oxycontin, Xanax and Percocet by the handfuls.
unfortunately, I don’t think that’s covered under the Bush perscription drug plan.
damn.
So what is the difference between trolling and engaging in critical reflection?
Trolls say things just to be inflamatory. This would be like someone posting racist stuff on the Africa story just to get people mad. If it’s a disagreement that gets heated, it’s called flaming. The loud mouth who has gone away (or is he one that is too far gone?) was a flamer, not a troll. Critical reflection sounds like something you should do by yourself or there isn’t much reflection involved. If people want to have a discussion about stuff that they disagree about, they should be able to without getting all worked up and mad. That’s what I suspect the presidunce would do and most of the Fox followers.
I don’t remember from last time whether it was ‘wait three comments per post’ or three stupid comments total.
Torbjorn, toss me some of that Beheer. I’ll have to root around, but I think I’ve got some mead left. It’s not beheer, but it’ll have to do.
I find that point-by-point responses are somewhat helpful in avoiding succumbing to premature hostility, since it forces you to stop and think about the opponent’s point. Granted, it’s certainly possible to respond to each point in a hateful fashion, but the degree of thought and structure required for a sincere point-by-point tends to dampen knee-jerk hostility in a responder who has any intention of refraining from Conduct Unbecoming a Human Being in the first place.
Here is an example, addressed to St. Sebastien:
The difference is two-fold. The basic difference is that those engaging in critical reflection attempt to respond to a faithful representation of their opponents’ positions, attempt to develop an intelligent and coherent counter-argument or set of questions, and conduct themselves in a civil fashion. Trolls, however, typically respond to a straw-man caricature of the opponent’s position, use ridicule not to accentuate their reasoned argument but to disguise its absence, and are rude, hateful, hostile, and/or smarmy, with the intention of provoking an angry response rather than actually debating (one might identify a further category, “demonizers,” who use the above tactics to try to make themselves look better and their opponents look worse in order to sway the opinion of onlookers).
Moderate skepticism is necessary to any intellectual development. Trolling is not based on skepticism nor does it constitute critical engagement with arguments and their validity or critical consideration of background evidence; it’s based on sadistic (in the loose sense) self-indulgence by irritation of others and general obnoxiousness. It is an attempt to make oneself feel good by making others feel bad, rationalized in the cases you appear to be referencing by an affectation of piety. Furthermore, creationist apologists–even the civil ones, which are somewhat rare on this blog–do not display “a moderate skepticism,” etc., but rather an unbounded and dogmatic credulity towards ideas they favor on emotional or ideological grounds, no matter how poorly supported, and a refusal to even acknowledge or honestly consider the evidence supporting ideas which they dislike.
In other words, the objection is not to skepticism but to uncivility. Based on past experiences, I suspect you know this perfectly well, but am according you the benefit of the doubt.
Emphasis mine. The emphasized bits above are classic examples of trolling, in that they constitute straw-man attacks, the use of ridicule in place of rather than in addition to reasoned counter-arguments (the use of sesquipedalian, latinate terminology does not make it any less name-calling), and smarminess, as well as a dramatic illustration of the fact that trolling is not limited to profane or “low-brow” lexicon. As these are clearly not intended to be engaged honestly, I will not engage them, nor address the fact that the commenter seems to be throwing big words around as if he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
And it’s not a “pun”; not even an unfunny one.
This is true of your second paragraph, for reasons given above.
Which, of course, is why you took the time to come here uninvited, type out this sneering message, and quite possibly look up the SLT above.
I believe the rationale behind it was explained. I also believe you’re aware of this.
I disagree. Your characterization of the motives (no mention of “it’s not fair” or anything that would legitimate imply “sobbing” ever occurred within those discussions) behind the search for a symbol for godless bloggers is more than “a little” pathetic, and more than “somewhat” vulgar. As is your decision to come here and sneer at it.
Now then. Perhaps we can discuss why *you* feel so threatened by godless web communities and their discussions that you feel the need to come here and harass us under a transparent pretense of reasoned discussion which disintegrates rapidly into childish name-calling, without ever manifesting any semblance of “critical engagement with arguments and their validity, along with a critical consideration of the relevant evidential background to a particular claim,” “moderate skepticism,” or even “any intellectual development”?
My thry s tht pssng cmt sm dcds g prdcd mssv brth f mrcn rtrds clld “stv”…wh wnt n t bcm knghts f flmng thsm hhh
[grow up, Vargas.]
Unreconstructed positivism?!! Here I sit on the veranda sipping a mint julep, and find that the gentile philosophy is now in disrepute. Alas!
The heirs of the Vienna Circle are the only logicalists that have a loose enough definition of proof to allow the spiritualists a crack through which to stick their toe.
(See the pile of severed toes). Science just isn’t fair to the orthodox.
Discussing origins with a creationist is like playing baseball, while they play football. The score is meaningless, and nobody has any fun.
Sebastien’s crack about ‘unreconstructed positivism’ reminds me of one a professor of mine once uttered: Better to be a positivist than an English professor. No offense meant to literary types, but if we’re going to talk about science here, the rules of engagement don’t allow for idle skepticism.
The positivists had one great virtue– their philosophical programme was so clear about its aims and its methods that it actually could fail, and so indeed it did, as their own work finally demonstrated. The best way to honour their clarity and honesty is to continue in the same vein, with new ideas about observation and its relation to theory. The worst way is to seize on their failures as an excuse to pretend that there is no epistemic difference between science and literary criticism. I think I know which way Sebastien has chosen.
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“jst hw t s”. Sffc t t sy, t ths tht knw, tht mst rnd hr blv n “slfsh gns” s th mn wy f xplnng vltn. Fnny, sn’t t.
[Time to get back on your meds, Vargas]
Um… what work was that, exactly?
Drugs … does scotch on ice count? It does make the trolls go down easy.
PZ it takes a Presidential election cycle to make you truly intense. If these folks think you are a hard case now, I encourage them to come back in 2 years.
Also, there are a few people who are being just plain vicious. That’s my job, and I’m beginning to resent the usurpation of my reputed evil temperament. Again, if you find yourself writing 5 snarling comments in a row, stop. Take a break. Dunk your head in some cool water. I’m not one to encourage drug abuse, but some people here need Vicodin, Oxycontin, Xanax and Percocet by the handfuls.
But… but… but… I *need* to be vicious. I started out on Prozac once and lapsed into complete catatonia – my entire personality disappeared.
Desert Donkey – I prefer a good beer, and I suspect you’d get better results on the trolls with Everclear and matches. :P
BB wrote: “The positivists had one great virtue– their philosophical programme was so clear about its aims and its methods that it actually could fail, and so indeed it did, as their own work finally demonstrated.”
Caldonian asked “Um… what work was that, exactly?”
It depends on which bits of the positivism programme you’re thinking of. Ayer raised objections to his own earlier editions of Language Truth and Logic in the later editions. Hempel’s “Empiricist Criteria of Cogntive Significance” is usually viewed as pointing out serious problems with various positivist attempts to state a kind of verifiability theory of meaning (and also raises, e.g., the tacking problem for Popper’s theory of falsifiability…) and I suppose many would consider (more controversially) Quine “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” as promiment critic of the analytic-synthetic distinction (even if he did misrepresent or ignore the way that Carnap himself used this distinction; if indeed Carnap was really his target).
Best,
“St. Sebastian’s” sputterings are an excellent example of why I, a 50-something lifelong committed Christian, generally prefer hanging out with agnostics and atheists.
Not only am I a Christian (Baptist preacher’s kid), I’m also a scientist by training (chemist and chemical engineer, although I haven’t worked in the industry in many years), and for me personally, faith “vs.” science has always been a false dichotomy and therefore a complete non-issue.
My experience tells me that faith exists to explore why I’m here (OK, all you skeptics out there, I hear you thinking those Very Loud Skeptical Thoughts!!!!!!! —grin—), and science exists to explore how I (and everything else) got here.
Because the two don’t overlap, neither can tell me anything concrete about the other, but they don’t constrain one another either. As a result, I’m not restricted to a narrow faith or a limited science; I can explore the full extent of both.
Apples and oranges. I don’t squeeze the one to make my own juice, and I don’t make pies out of the other.
=====WARNING: QUASI-SERMON AHEAD=====
(I promise to keep it short, and don’t worry, I’m not going to pass the offering plate.)
Sebastian, my friend:
There’s a tremendous irony here, and it’s a sad one. To deny any of the amazing things science continues to discover about the workings of this vast, intricate universe is to limit God, or at the very least, to limit your ability to comprehend God (to the extent that anyone can). In a very real sense, saying “God wouldn’t do it that way” or “God didn’t do it that way” is a form of blasphemy. To try either to use God to constrain science, or (on the flip side) to use science to prove (or disprove) anything about God, is a failure of both your God-given imagination and your professed faith.
What makes your finite little mind (or mine, or anyone else’s) think it knows what God is thinking, what God intends to do, or how God intends to do it? Go back and read the last few chapters of the book of Job, and you’ll see God asking exactly those sorts of questions and challenging Job to answer. (Job, of course, is completely flummoxed. I don’t blame him; I’d be blubbering too.)
=====END OF QUASI-SERMON=====
(Stepping down from pulpit. Now, if you’ll open your hymnals to hymn number 364……….)
Just 2 brass farthings’ worth from someone who’d like you all to know that not all of us had our brains washed away with our sins when we got baptized……….
Sorry, just couldn’t resist that last smartass remark. Now where did I put that asbestos suit?
—grin, duck, and run—
It really is quite the sight to see self-styled “highly intelligent” people throw a tantrum if their mix of unreconstructed positivism and massively unsophisticated and naïve scientism is in anyway questioned.
If you wanted to know the definition of trolling, this would be it. Instead of engaging honest intellectual discussion, you decide to toss out a couple of a strawmen just to get the posters here riled up.
FYI, I can’t speak for anyone else here, but I have no commitment to “positivism” of “scientism”. I am probably in a minority position here, even among atheists, but I am simply not interested in the sort of metaphysical obscuritanism that philosophers engage in.
In science, it would be difficult to find a proposed theory from any longer than 20 years ago being defended in it’s entirety. Among philosophers, you still have ideas from the 16th. and 17th. centuries being defended by it’s practitioners, and theologians still defend ideas from the middle ages. That’s because these ideas, unlike those in science, are vague, ill-defined, mystical and generally designed in a way that shields them from failure. I avoid engaging in those discussions, call it my own lifestyle of pragmatic atheism.
Speaking of party games, it struck me that the creationists actually seem to be engaging in one of my favorite party games: you say three things, only two of which are true, and then everybody else has to try to figure out what the lie is.
(Yes, I realize that many of them don’t even manage to get two out of three things right, but in the spirit of PZ’s post, I was trying to be charitable, OK?)
“Hmm, okay troll person”
Hmm. I never thought anyone could construe me as a troll because I made a joke in a continuing series of jokes.
“In Internet terminology, a troll is a person who enters an established community such as an online discussion forum and intentionally tries to cause disruption, most often in the form of posting inflammatory, off-topic, or otherwise inappropriate messages.”
Nope. No troll under this bridge.
Stogoe:
Sure, and thanks for the chips!
The problem with the concept of ‘troll’ is that there’s no way to tell what someone’s intention is. Messages that are sufficiently off-topic or grossly insulting usually make it clear what the poster wants to do, but “inflammatory” is in the eye of the beholder.
Many people use this as an excuse to label people who say things they don’t like as ‘trolls’.
An administrative post on civility that ends up touching, in comments, on the positivist programme(s) . . . oh, bella, bella!
Anyway – got myself into a debate over ID, mind-body dualism, and &tc. that I am so not up for right now – so if anyone’s bored, um . . . help?!
(after you vote!)
Phoenician: “But… but… but… I *need* to be vicious. I started out on Prozac once and lapsed into complete catatonia – my entire personality disappeared.”
: )!
Just remember, never mix Wellbutrin and Vivarin. Especially not before going unawares to Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse, which has (had?) animatronic boreal flora and fauna. Having a wall-mounted moose head suddenly start talking (while a weasel pops out of an apparently decorative log by one’s table, and a seemingly innocuous pine tree begins to sing and sway) . . . well, under the best of conditions that might be a bit disorienting . . .
I wish literal trolls could post. Although one would have to be careful about mentioning billygoats . . . it’s worse than unthinkingly dropping in a comment about Israel, in terms of utter disruption and thread derailment. . .
oh, crap.
well, perhaps that’s more a political blog thing . . .
This is a political blog, Mr. S. It just touches on biology more than most.
Hehe. I missed the return of Vargas. It’s nice to just come on and find him disemvowelled.
I won’t even try to read his posts. Although I suspect he called me a retard.
“At least the ID people are promoting something observable. The evolution scientists promote things like speciation and the gradual and accidental (whoops!) random emergence of a cell that has never been observed (science = repetitive experimentation and/or observation) and that are mathematically implausible. (Evolutionists talk about immense time making evolution possible, but when the mathematicians run the numbers, it simply isn’t possible for probability to account for it. It is, in fact, vastly improbable.) They also have many problems that they tend to brush off, such as the Cambrian explosion. Most of the variation in life occurred during the Cambrian explosion, but there is far less time to allow for it. One of the dirty little secrets of evolution is that they are not just trying to account for a few miraculous occurrences – they are trying to account for uncountable miraculous occurrences, and the unlikelihood of these myriad occurrences reduces the already vast improbability of evolution exponentially.”
It never ends. Good recycling ethic, though . . .
“We shall see if you can make the case – which you clearly haven’t, yet. But the other task that lies before you is to demonstrate that _evolution_theory_ is any less bunk than ID. If you say that ID is bunk because it lacks “scientific evidence,” please demonstrate the “scientific evidence” in evolution that is superior to the scientific evidence in ID. Whatever you say is lacking in ID, you had best demonstrate it is not lacking in evolution. (I already anticipate a lot of what you might throw at me – I’m not new to this exercise – so please give these things careful consideration.”
Blood pressure too high . . . cannot see keyboard . . .
Trolls say things just to be inflamatory.
An important technique of your modern troll is not simply inflaming, but trying to change the subject. Much of what you see from the Bush administration and the Wurlitzer nowadays is trolling in the offline world. The troll directs the conversation away from the topic the troll dislikes — where the conversation goes is less important than directing it away. It’s like a killdeer luring a cat away from the nest; the troll may even feel noble if their are slings and arrows aimed at him or her, as the troll imagines they are committing a great sacrifice in defense of their beliefs — taking a bullet point for their team.
Newbie-of-suspect-ideological-purity asks:
Who’s Vargas?
I’ll understand if you tell me I don’t want to know…….
Never mind. He’s that funny-looking guy under the bridge, right?
I like the disemvowelment thing. Never seen it before. OTOH, it makes some people (like me) spend pointless time staring at the message trying to figure out what the fool is trying to “say.”
Just one brass fathing’s worth this morning. I’m off to do my part in the battle against the Evil Minions of Satan’s (excuse me, I mean “God’s”) Own Party.
You’re goin’ down, Santorum!
Bwahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!
Vargas is a concern troll who doesn’t like PZ or Dawkins very much.
He’s agnostic but goes on and on about how religion is harmless
and that it’s a good idea to have religion class in public school.
Oh and he hates metaphors. He doesn’t seem to understand the
American democratic system or the constitutions seperation of church
and state.
Tht’s thst, pls. Mr thn Dwkns r Wlsn, wh thnk tht vdnc fr Gd mght jst shw p.
Bryson Brown: I’ve heard something like that line attributed to Clark Glymour. Were you a student of his? (I was at CMU for a while but didn’t study with Clark.)
And I agree, though I have known some sensible people in English departments.
“You’re goin’ down, Santorum!”
Given the trend in mindbending hypocrisy, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised to find he has been.
____
Robotrolls. It’s the obvious next step.
ROFLMAO, SDHICSI*
*”so damned hard I can’t stand it”
Vargas is an agnostic, and he wants to let bad-religion-meets-bad-science run rampant in the public schools? I can recommend a good psychiatrist.
I’m trying to recall where I saw something in the last few days indicating that Americans’ “belief” in evolution is near the bottom of the list of developed countries, just ahead of Turkey’s.
On second thought, evidently almost 2/3 of our countrymen and -women are the Turkeys.
I think I’ve just spent my third and last allowable two brass farthings on this thread. I guess I’ll have to go make trouble somewhere else.
PZ, r y gng t dsmvwll vrythng? ts bttr f y mst bn m, y knw.
“The problem with the concept of ‘troll’ is that there’s no way to tell what someone’s intention is.”
Point.
And I can certainly be abrasive or pointed at times, and post often when I feel like it. Perhaps I must fall on my knees in front of “enter an established community” and plead being part of it for quite some time. :-)
“I think I’ve just spent my third and last allowable two brass farthings on this thread.”
Umm. I think you misunderstand the policy. There is no comment limit as such.
IIRC, PZ wants us to be civil against what we percieve as inflammatory commenters for at least two comments and try to unriddle any misunderstandings. After that attempt it is free for all. It is a good policy, and we certainly needed the reminder – I know I had forgotten.
You’re goin’ down, Santorum!
…and you were right!
he’s been “rubbed” out. (3 more to go to get the senate back)
…and the dems control the house, too (17 seats gained)!
it’s been a good week, all around.
PZ, y rsntfl bby.
Cnnt sy tht th dft f th dmcrts s nt gd. Cngrtltns
ps mnt th rpblcns