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fubarobfusco comments on False Friends and Tone Policing - Less Wrong
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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.]
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).