From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Fri Aug 16 2002 - 10:10:29 MDT
It seems that we are of two minds on the issue of trolling.
On one side are those, such as Harvey, Louis, me, Natasha,
and I think Dossy who denigrate any form of trolling,
"experimenting", playing Devil's Advocate, and so on, and
instead maintain that all posts (except the obviously fun-
filled forays into jokes, or sarcasm) should be as completely
honest and sincere as possible. Avoiding misunderstandings
and even more importantly, avoiding *over-reacting*
is difficult enough as it is.
On the other sides appear to be those such as Brian, Mike Wiik,
and Alex who probably (it seems) think that either everything
is an experiment, more or less, or who advocate techniques of
provocation.
Mike, for example, writes
> Perhaps the more social and personal nature of this list makes
> such experimentation more obvious when it happens, but in my
> view, all life is an experiment and all argument can be considered
> experimenting to see what reactions one can get out of others.
Hmm. But isn't this an invitation for people to suspect everything
you write? Doesn't this seem to get in the way of having honest
exchanges?
> Even on this highly intellectual list it's clear to me that some people
> have very visible, easy-to-use buttons on them that will elicit highly
> predictable, almost automatic responses when pressed. So I don't apologize or
> think it's bad if I start 'experimenting' on folks by pushing such buttons
> in various combinations and sequences.
Aha! This explains your comments about the fiendish "Mr Corbin"
in your posts on American Education? 8-D
> I have found such button-pressing to be especially useful on this list since
> (imho) there is little *acknowledged* interest (from the group as a whole) on
> introspection and (to an extent) on developing new models of cognition. One
> can argue this, and I would welcome such debate.
Well, you got it. (The debate, I mean.) Gads! This sounds
like an all out invitation to the dreaded FLAME WAR, that so
many here are scared shitless of.
Yes, please start some threads on introspection or on speculative
new models of cognition. I myself was badly burned by misreading
people and what they were trying to do in the recent thread
"META: trolling?". Oops. That's this thread!
> If any of you have kids going to public school, I think there's a good
> chance that your kids are being experimented upon daily, with all sorts of
> wacko experiments derived from equally wacko theories tinged with 'political
> correctness' and memes such as 'no child left behind' and 'nationwide testing
> standards'.
Yes, I agree, except that I wouldn't call these "experiments".
The particular teachers involved are as sincere in their
attempts (hopeless) to indoctrinate children as you would
be were you in a classroom to denounce racism or superstition.
But we digress back to the "American education" thread.
> Thanks, -Mike
You're very welcome.
Lee
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