If I hadn't recently seen that "students fighting segregated prom" story from credible news sources, I'd have considered this part of the story to be nearly conclusive evidence of trolling.
I can imagine some lesswrong users thinking it would be terribly clever for them to create a sock-puppet and "test" how gullible the lesswrong readerbase is via a post like this. If such a case were ever identified I would like to see the user banned by IP rather than rewarded with status and congratulations.
Banning by IP is useless at best and harmful in most cases (where hapless customers of an ISP get the old IP address of a troll). There is no way to prevent attempts to test how gullible we are; therefore we need to be generally immune to all attempts and not only to specific cases or instigators.
I'd estimate a 30% probability (but with a fairly large variance) that at least some elements of this article are inaccurate and an attempt at trolling. The "best" trolls are 90% truth with one or two outrageous elements using the halo effect to gain b...
Post will be returning in Main, after a rewrite by the company's writing staff. Citations Galore.