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CitationNeeded comments on December 2009 Meta Thread - Less Wrong
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Comments (67)
Do people think that "Don't Feed the Trolls" should apply to mormon2 in all his myriad identities (sharing numerous matching spelling errors, the same personal insults of Eliezer and Less Wrongers, creationism and other baiting tactics)? He has used exploits on the karma system, lied about his credentials and the links between his identities, and regularly makes rude personal attacks on people other than Eliezer. The only plausibly positive thing mormon2 has done is ask Eliezer for info about his work at SIAI, but he ignores answers and doesn't actually seem interested in answers, only in getting at Eliezer.
I propose the following:
1) Anyone other than mormon2 who has questions they think Eliezer has been inadequately answering can put them in replies to this comment, and then collectively ask Eliezer for clear straight answers.
2) Afterwards, no one responds to mormon2 or any other aliases he comes up with.
I'm new here, so i don't have anything to say on whether this mormon2 is a troll.
But, in his response where he explains his motivation, does anyone think he might have a point? Of course, if one's goal is to be received favorably, then it's best to phrase an argument in a way the audience wants to hear it. But he says that his goal was actually to see if people here could answer his criticisms despite his delivery.
At a glance, it doesn't seem that his explanation is taken seriously. But i think that, whether he's a troll or not, this is a valid question, whether we can answer a criticism even if it was phrased in a hostile manner. Although, it could be that everyone has already decided that doing so isn't worth our time or effort.
Quite the reverse. The initial post has a point but the response is a juvenile rationalisation.
In the response he claims that his spelling and grammar errors were intentionally adopted as a trick, but then makes more in the response. Likewise with respect to crude and offensive language. The guy has been caught lying about numerous other things, and transparently lied in that response.
CitationNeeded, thanks for that link. I'm not sure how clear it is that these several commenters are the same person, but i can see why you'd be suspicious. Interesting that most of mormon2's early comments were upvoted, until recently he adopts this hostile tone. And rereading the "question of rationality", mormon2 remains belligerent in the response, so i'm inclined to agree with wedrifid's "juvenile rationalization" conclusion.
So, i understand dismissing mormon2 specifically, even if i think that listening-to-arguments-from-possibly-unfriendly-commenters is generally worth thinking about. I'm thinking that i may have given him too much benefit of the doubt, but stopped clock, twice a day, i suppose.
The nearby deleted comment clearly speculated that i'm mormon2 as well. I'm not, though it feels a bit silly to have to say so.
It looks like i've accidentally derailed this thread. Sorry about that. Well, as CitationNeeded originally suggested, commence with the collectively asking Eliezer for clear straight answers of inadequately answered questions.
Now I got this silly mental picture of the legacy of mormon2: from here on, every new poster will be suspected of being mormon2 for a few weeks before proving themselves. (Until it's finally revealed that mormon2 was Eliezer in disguise, testing how the community would react to such behavior.)
Hi RNO, welcome to lesswrong. Congratulations on, well, not being mormon2 and please pardon me for affirming the suggestion.
To the extent that people are interested in how Eliezer believes his rationality work relates to his 'save the world' gig, the perfect place to ask questions is the ask Eliezer questions page. Naturally, the 'Eliezer has not been subpoenaed' caveat still applies.
Indecently, any word on when Eliezer is likely to make that presentation?
... and quite obviously to me.
I didn't ask to become an expert in troll psychology, but I've been wasting my time on internet discussions of questionable quality for years, and this is what I have to show for it.
I hadn't even considered it, but now that you mention it seems incredibly likely. Damn, I fell for it. I chose not to downvote the comment because it was just a new guy who was a bit naive. Thanks for pointing it out.
Now, unfortunately I can only downvote once and not "disable account, disable all detectable aliases, block IP address".
ETA: Now it would seem that I agree with your assessment more than you do.
The writing style is noticeably different, and there are no vitriolic personal attacks. If this was mormon2, I am quite favorably impressed with him.
You're right, all lower-case "i" for the first-person pronoun in comments thus far. Those were my biggest reasons for not being more suspicious.
We need IP address records to check or something. All this suspicion about duplicate identities is very tiresome.
At least that way we would be selecting for trolls with a certain minimum standard of subtlety and resourcefulness when it comes to identity management.