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palladias comments on False Friends and Tone Policing - Less Wrong
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It seemed pretty clear to me at the time that PZ Myers was trolling — in the classic sense of doing something provocative in order to selectively make people who become outraged look stupid in public.
As ESR puts it (with his usual subcultural defensiveness):
— http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/T/troll.html
Trolling isn't really an attempt to have a conversation or debate with the trolled. It's an attempt to demonstrate power, status, ability to take control of the social situation; to deflate the ego (or self-control) of the outraged victim, and so on. It is a performance for an audience, in which the victims of the trolling are a not-entirely-consenting part of the performance.
IIRC, the political context of that particular troll had a lot to do with religious folks (not particularly Catholics) insisting that non-religious folks should be obliged to express respect or deference to religious symbols. See also Qur'an-burning, "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day", and a long thread here involving British people being offended by salmon. I argued in that thread that one point of "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day" was akin to that of "Banned Books Week" — it is a show of defiance against those who would censor particular expressions.
I don't really like "Proof of Opponent's Unreasonableness by Trolling" as an approach, from my side or anyone else's. For almost any movement of size, there will be people who take the bait, so I don't learn much from what announces to a proof of "There exist people on the other side such that, if I poke them with a stick, they will yell."
It can make it harder for the more patient people on the other side to engage with the more patient people on your side, to boot, since now the people you want to dialogue with have to do more work placating the people on their side that you teed off, before a conversation can begin at all.
I think trolling also requires a fair amount of callousness towards the harm/pain etc you're inflicting through your stunt. I prefer, when possible, to engage in something like civil disobedience, where you can show your commitment to your cause by being willing to accept suffering for yourself (jail, beatings, etc) rather than demonstrating the strength of your opinion through your willingness to hurt others.
[That's my general feeling. In this specific instance, I don't think "Don't desecrate a Eucharist" is really equivalent to censorship or banned books, since it doesn't limit your freedom any more than "Don't set your neighbor's house on fire" or "Don't piss in the baptismal font." This kind of politeness doesn't infringe on day-to-day actions of non-believers the way anti-blasphemy laws might generally.]
Right. I do not think fubarofusco was endorsing PZ Meyers' actions - just saying that this wasn't really an argument against them.
Again, PZ Myers responded to the use of physical violence against someone who allegedly disrespected a Eucharist. The intended proof is of, "There exist people your bullies can't shut up using threats of violence."
It's kind of like if someone were trying to drive away everyone who disagreed with his politics, using mass-downvoting (and thereby decreasing humanity's chance of survival).
This requires that you only use such techniques to criticize people who can hurt you, though. What about people who can't hurt you, but who can hurt someone else — for instance, their own children? How would you apply this principle to, say, anti-vaccinationists? Provoke them by illicitly vaccinating their children without their consent, thus risking jail for battery? Doesn't sound like a very good idea to me.
That's not trolling, that's battery at least.
Uh, that's what I said.
In that case, I don't understand the comparison you're making in the grandparent.
palladias seemed to be asserting that trolling people who are wrong was morally inferior to civil disobedience:
My question was whether this generalizes to cases where we might choose to make someone who is wrong look ridiculous in public, to discredit their cause (e.g. by trolling them) but where we could not rightfully oppose them using civil disobedience, because the matter at hand involved a third party (e.g. the child of an antivaccinationist).