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Why Trolls Start Flame Wars: Swearing and Name-Calling Shut Down the Ability to Think and Focus
Psychological studies show that swearing and name-calling in Internet discussions shut down our ability to think.
2 professors of science communication at the University of Wisconsin, Madison - Dominique Brossard and Dietram A. Scheufele - wrote in the New York Times last year:
In a study published online last month in The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, we and three colleagues report on an experiment designed to measure what one might call “the nasty effect.”
We asked 1,183 participants to carefully read a news post on a fictitious blog, explaining the potential risks and benefits of a new technology product called nanosilver. These infinitesimal silver particles, tinier than 100-billionths of a meter in any dimension, have several potential benefits (like antibacterial properties) and risks (like water contamination), the online article reported.
Then we had participants read comments on the post, supposedly from other readers, and respond to questions regarding the content of the article itself.
Half of our sample was exposed to civil reader comments and the other half to rude ones — though the actual content, length and intensity of the comments, which varied from being supportive of the new technology to being wary of the risks, were consistent across both groups. The only difference was that the rude ones contained epithets or curse words, as in: “If you don’t see the benefits of using nanotechnology in these kinds of products, you’re an idiot” and “You’re stupid if you’re not thinking of the risks for the fish and other plants and animals in water tainted with silver.”
The results were both surprising and disturbing. Uncivil comments not only polarized readers, but they often changed a participant’s interpretation of the news story itself.
In the civil group, those who initially did or did not support the technology — whom we identified with preliminary survey questions — continued to feel the same way after reading the comments. Those exposed to rude comments, however, ended up with a much more polarized understanding of the risks connected with the technology.
Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater than they’d previously thought.
While it’s hard to quantify the distortional effects of such online nastiness, it’s bound to be quite substantial, particularly — and perhaps ironically — in the area of science news.
So why do people troll in a rude way?
Psychologists say that many of them are psychopaths, sadists and narcissists getting their jollies. It's easy to underestimate how many of these types of sickos are out there: There are millions of sociopaths in the U.S. alone.
But intelligence agencies are also intentionally disrupting political discussion on the web, and ad hominen attacks, name-calling and divide-and-conquer tactics are all well-known, frequently-used disruption techniques.
Now you know why ... flame wars polarize thinking, and stop the ability to focus on the actual topic and facts under discussion.
Indeed, this tactic is so effective that the same wiseguy may play both sides of the fight.
Postscript: Fortunately, it's not that difficult to isolate the trolls and stop their disruption ... if we just point out what they're doing.
For example, I've found that posting something like this can be very effective:
Good Number 1!
Or this might be better if the troll is a sociopath:
Isn't that kind of "entertainment" more appropriate elsewhere?
(include the link so people can see what you’re referring to.)
The reason this is effective is that other readers will learn about the specific disruption tactic being used … in context, like seeing wildlife while holding a wildlife guide, so that one learns what it looks like “in the field”. At the same time, you come across as humorous, light-hearted and smart ... instead of heavy-handed or overly-intense.
Try it … It works.
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Is this article the pot calling the kettle black?
Idn't that rayciss?
Utensilists are up in arms!
Nice to know I'm not the only one who notices this blantant inconsistency of logic.
I would agree with you if you could agree that either we are all trolls or all not trolls ;)
if USG is spending time and resources to flame out certain dissidents they must believe it works. to backtrack to the year 2000, the GOP had used all sorts of negative claims about the Clintons, to discredit his legacy. in matters of policy Clinton was moving toward the middle all during his second term, and the Congressional extension of this was a group called Blue Dog Democrats, Pelosi Harmon Condit and others, who wanted to reach across the aisle and work with Republicans. Condit was drawn into a honey pot with a Jewish agent.
the GOP strategy was to attack these moderates and polarize the debate, so that the election would be between a Standard Conservative candidate and an (extreme) Liberal Democrat.
in terms of terrorism, the goverment wants to make people who are moderately dissatisfied, assume the label of terrorist, or become statist supporters. their means are primarily to attack middle class values, and they have put huge economic pressure into this effort. the presidency of obama proves this policy does not belong to either one party or the other (Bush, the standard conservative, defeated the extreme liberal Gore, even though Bush abandoned his campaign plank, and became a globalist) Obama abandoned hope and change and continued the war against the two party system, and participatory democracy, and the demise of the middle class, increasing wealth disparity gap, and huge deficits to enrich the banking class. (not very democratic or liberal values)
conflict has the desired effect, or they wouldn't do it.
as a contraindicator, praise really means nothing on a website like this, present something which is balanced and meant to open the debate, and you get the red arrow, well that's like a golden star. thank you
Debate?
The truest of the true believers are the government lovers and there isn't even the slightest hint of debate in them. They believe they are right and no one dare challenge that belief.
Like the religious psychos of the past, they would rather kill you than let you be free from their precious beliefs.
So much for debate.
Green arrow from me. On all your points.
"True Believers" First place for "true believers" goes to those whose belief system isn't their own at all but what others have told them to believe. Second place goes to believers who haven't questioned the beliefs of others. Third place goes to those who haven't considered the questions others have. Or something like that.
And while I am a believer in God (my definition of God could be a few words or a few million worsd) I always promise not to excommunicate (end that debate) or kill (end all debate) you or anyone else who believes differently.
It's a good way of making friends instead of enemies :)
i green arrowed you; but i meant it as a red arrow; at least in the contraryily indicative fashion you intended; which is to say, i'm for what you said, in an inverted sorta fashion -- double-irony so thick i couldn't see straight, so i up-arrowed you.
awww, what the fuck. it's difficult to complement a post like that; so perhaps i'll try with song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmT_4RQ0ANU
i got no dime/
but i got some time/
to hear your story/
my name is...,
janus
Janus you are two faced but I like your films, especially the pre war japanese talkies.
are you referring to the janus film library from the 60s'?
that's some fucked up -- but riveting and densely textured -- shit!
i wouldn't trust any man who was twisted enough to watch any of those movies; which is why i watched them all...just to see what you wierdos were up to (and that's the ONLY reason...pinky swear).
all good stuff (in the worst possible way).
http://www.janusfilms.com/
next thing you're gonna tell me, you're an ingmar bergman fan...but, wait, don't tell me that, it would tell me way too much.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4M3AQMHRufY
{'the seventh seal' is one of the most profound movies i've ever seen...another great sweedish film is 'my life as a dog'. the swedes, dim witted and over floridated as they may on the surface may seem, do have something of an intellect -- and a few of them are actually passable artists}
i was watching this in a recent mayoral runoff in SD. attack ads have the effect of raising support among the candidate who is being attacked. A attacks B, the voters who like A get nothing out of it really, it merely confirms what they knew. What the attack ad does is cause the supporters of B to come out and support their man (who is under attack for his values). A is mere defining B, which benefits B. we see what Christie did in Nj and we say to ourselves ruthless SOB. (it hasn't changed our minds much) but his supporters see SOB, and they say ahhh, i better get out and vote for my candidate. the swing vote has gone the way of the dinosaur.
yes, and it's mans most ancient sport...politics:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wstIBq2H0z8
thank God we're so evolved now-a-days:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdRo7okHCAc
'we' who have no 'us' & 'them' are so very few...but, 'we're' worth a shot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDbeqj-1XOo
after all, we're only ordinary men,
janus
mans most ancient sport...politics -- janus
Arguable. I think second, right after the oldest profession.
yes, and i am loathe to both...rid the world of every form of whore -- politicians and prostitutes.
what kind of civilization let's its sluts go steet-walking...these girls were made to be mistresses.
give me liberty (and an harem) or give me death!
sluts need love, too. and it's the kind i particularly enjoy sharing.
fuckin is my love language.
venus/mars...what a load of horse-shit.
call me helios,
janus
"if USG is spending time and resources to flame out certain dissidents they must believe it works."
I.e. keeps government employees collecting high wages for light work.
Yep..works.
Fucking Sapir-Whorf bitchez.
Enter emotion, exit reason.
I've been trolling statists on Newsvine for years. The progressive hostility that can be conjured up there provides more entertainment than a man can possibly digest....
Have you ever looked up the definition of sadist?
Sadist: Anyone who works for government or supports government.
Liberating stato-masochists is a noble persuit....
Politicians have understood this for years.
"...years." Maybe millenia.
Variation on the 'strategy of tension'.
To my detriment and regret I lose my temper now and again. Not helpful.
Good post, GW.
Whoever wrote this is full of shit.
Beware of troll Chas Caldwell on MarketWatch.
.
Fuck off, shit-for-brains troll!
Fucken A, dammit.
I'm with you LF. The real psychopaths are the Psychologists and Sociologists doing these studies. Didn't I read somewhere on here a while back that unless you had a facebook page employers wouldn't or shouldn't hire you? WTF?
If you read the article on the latest Snowden disclosures this morning you would have noticed that it's these same psychologists and sociologists who are designing the black ops used against the internet and it's users to sway public opinion and control the discussion. Sometimes you have to get loud just to be heard. Having that catch-all sociopath label is absurd and indeed "full of shit".
If I disagree with you vehemently, I'm a sociopath. If I don't agree with the AGW crowd, I'm a sociopath.
Anyone that gives me pseudo-science psycho-babel is a sociopath.
How dense are you?
AGW: thermometers & measurements of actual CO2 & methane output.
Everything else: opinion.
It's that simple: to be against AGW is to form an emotional anti-science opinion.
The very notion you think of this as fact is... mentally disturbing.
It takes a powerful mental effort to refuse to read a thermometer, to act as if you did, and to refuse to admit measured output of CO2 and methane, and to refuse to even test that these gases do indeed reflect infrared.
Holy fucking shitsnacks - you do realise you just decloaked your retardness in front of the whole internet?
If you seriously believe that all that's required for the AGW hypothesis (a claim regarding causation) to be proved, is a correlation between CO2/methane output* and global mean temperature**, you are too ignorant to be helped. It's like claiming that there's a causative link between any 2 current-dollar value time series in the World Bank World Tables (both will be I(2), so in the logs they will be apparently correlated - in fact the correlation will be close to 1).
Dunning - meet Kruger. (I detest the entire discipline of psychology, as I've made clear... but I choose to accept the anecdotal validity of the DK Effect).
Fucking morons who latch on to some new trope "because science", when they have not got a fucking clue what they're talking about. Priceless.
*, **: for the vast bulk of the putative historical record, both the mean temperature data and the CO2 concentration data used are proxies (tree ring/ice core data etc), where the proxy relationship is estimated and has relatively poor statistical properties. The datasets used are also very very selective in which observations from the ice-core data they choose to reject (they reject those with high CO2, systematically).
No proxies - directly over all areas emitting more CO2 & methane from industry there's a bigger heat blanket & more warming effect at night, you know, when the sun is not shining. What I decloaked is that I can read a fucking thermometer so record hotter years is not global cooling and record methane & CO2 output from industry is not magically cooling down the earth, as some morons here have stated, and where there's less CO2 because it does take a while to diffuse globally, there's less warming. That much is very clear from infrared satellite images.
You're in epic denial.
"there's a causative link between any 2 current-dollar value time series in the World Bank World Tables"
Which is 100% also truth and you are in denial of it.
The linked causation is criminal operations by the same criminal hand. This is why the work of NANEX, of Eric Hunsader, is so important.
Dumbfucks say you can't chart a manipulated market.
Smart people like me know you can only prove the manipulation using charts.
The most powerful myths on zerohedge today:
Nigga, nevvah go full retard.
Relax. Globes can warm and cool, for different reasons, in different locations, at the same time. The grievance among many at ZH is the fact that would-be technocrats turn it into environmental Al Qaeda.
well, no.
The problem here is some wilfully do damage to others for personal gain, tangible gain like better water, food & land while ruining it for others, and there's no compensation. It's an act of environmental war as sure as if I salted one's crops and then enjoyed my own unharmed crops. We know who's doing it and we have the means to stop it, perhaps by force, and the offer's been made: clean the shit up, make more self-contained machinery, or be forced to stop and it will have no limit as survival is on the line.
Content free blathering....
Sort of like Bill O'Reilly saying "Tide goes in, Tide goes out"....
Re: "Content free blathering"
On that point at least, you oughtta know.
A fine example of projection on your part...
We got 800,000 years of directly measured C02 data...
Not a fuckng proxy to be found...
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/history.html
Here is the Pages 2K results...
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v6/n5/abs/ngeo1797.html
figure 4 is here
http://skepticalscience.com//pics/Ahmed_2013_paleo_fig4.jpg
It's incredibly frustrating being a real scientist facing an army of retards who pretend that down is up, hot is cold & who appear on the verge of denying gravity itself.
Never forget, Flak, we live in a privileged era.
200 years ago these same fucktards would hang us for witch-craft for using evidence and math.
100 years after the coming collapse they have both welcomed & caused, they their children's children's children will be raiding camps with hammer-axes, bashing in skulls. They won't call themselves kings or soldiers, they'll call themselves truth-makers. What's scary isn't that people around them will believe it, they will be too afraid to say otherwise. What's scary is these fuckmonkeys saying it, doing this, will utterly believe their own insanity, just like the fuckmonkeys that caused global warming while pretending it was cooling.
The truth & survival is in for a rough ride with dumb fucks like this as the majority.
You need to get a fucking job
"it's that simple"
people who insert this phrase into any debate are themselves simple -- it's just that simple...eh?
so you're one of those correlation=causation fuckers...eh?
i've heard about you people, and i sometimes brush against you in the street; but you rarely look up, as i know i make you nervous.
{okay, hopefully i'm reading you aright and not misinterpreting tone...you seem sincere, and aggressive about it. i'm not gettting any sarcasm...but i've missed it before...so, just in case you are in earnest...}
but, as is always the case, i'm learning from you guys...i'm starting to think there may be an alarming shortage of oxygen. i'm a gonna measure it; thermomitize it; baptize it in the font of 'scientific' certitude; politicize it; market it; insult, ridicule, defrock, disbar, yank tenure and tap the phones of all who disagree...i've got O2 futures to sell, goddamit! and since the world has far more morons skulking about than ever it did before, and the shortage of O2 being far more than co-incident to the presence of these unsightly hordes, it is in fact...ta da! -- CAUSAL! i propose we ban all morons from accessing our precious O2! stop the proliferation of morons now!
will somebody ever think of our children!?!
here's some methane for ya, buddy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvJF0j-RLxk
...and your father smelt of elderberry,
janus
Janus,
You make me laugh. I had a friend in high school who was as quick as you. but that was a long time ago. You manage to hit the nail on the head every time and yet be funny as hell while your at it.
Thank you, you are much appreciated.
nowhereman? i thought you, of all people, would remember janus...
it was 1985, the year they started bussin us white kids into downtown nashville...we played pick-up football at warton elementary everyday; you were dan marino, i was mark duper -- the long ball/deep threat was what put that victory pep into our step on the way to lunch each day. remember when i made that grab between my legs to win the all-out/final-deathmatch-who's the king of the playground/last day of the school/superbowl grab? i've never felt so heroic since...and i never will (sigh).
remember heather? she was somethin! first catholic i ever held hands with. and then yashpree from the gifted classes? man, did her hindu father ever HATE the sight of janus...he once told me, in very a very clippy tone (i might add), "never call this house again!"...but he said it in this dense hindu accent -- i couldn't help but giggle, and immediately call back. they were high-brahmin, though...certified by lord mountbatten himself!
ahhh, those were the days; back when mom used to call 'african-americans' 'colored'...bless her heart, she thought it was the most polite term ever derived...my mother hated bigots; but was terrified of black-folk.
we shortly thereafter moved to north georgia...my parents were believers in public schools; so long as they were mostly white and middle-class.
but i never forgot you, nowhereman...those bright, sunny days on the cumberland platuea...those pre-boobies almost ready to be groped...run DMC; the beasties; tom petty; dire straits; billy idol; hulk hogan; cobra chi; ET; atari; the A Team; back yard wiffle-ball; BMX; SK8 or die!; rat-tails; gargabage pale kids...i could go on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAQCHZpM_3I&list=PLxvJsFhG0ZqW1NiNHATegX1...
deliver colonel sanders/
to davey-jones locker,
janus
There's poetry in that prose.
"i'm starting to think there may be an alarming shortage of oxygen"
Me too janus. What on Earth caused that? I'm not very interested in buying your futures however. See, while buying them today while they are still inexpensive would make me a keen trader, I'm also going to have to buy so much ammunition to protect my oxygen from the unsightly hordes as to make having O2 very expensive to maintain once I take delivery. I thought I was clever buying the farm. The Rolls was cheap but that driver is so expensive I'm gonna have to ditch it.
I'm just another poor soul.
Guess I'll just have to learn how to make my own O2. Ya, and sell it and get rich! What a beautiful world!
sniff sniff. Do I smell rotten eggs?
I want the Original MDB back!!!
Oh and #FreeFrancisSawyer
and, nowhereman, janus is likewise with you.
let ole janus reveal to you all what's in back of the oh-so altruistic ambition to heal via the palliative arts (those the hardest of hard sciences) of psychology/sociology...psychologically speaking, that is.
first of all, it is the attempt to leverage what is perceived to be an esoteric knowledge to gain power over others. in that, the individual counselor/practitioner/therapist is attempting to compensate for some or several personal weaknesses by cultivating an alternate strength. it's an analog to penis envy. it is the very reason so many (almost every single member, in fact) of our 'psychologists' are women and/or effeminate & slightly built 'men'. just look at any representative from this field and you will see a pant-suit or a dainty wrist.
in the second place, it is a voyeuristic and perverse curiosity rooted in the individual's id; it needs to know that it's not so different after all, that there are others with minds so mangled as its own.
thirdly (and this is in reference to the first point), it is the manifest futility of someone who, though their innate faculties and aptitudes would otherwise consign them to endeavors both menial and subservient, would try to circumvent their natural deficiencies and obvious inadequacies in order to exercise a most artificial and arbitrary authority. that is why Doestoevsky called them new priesthood (please read a book called 'the possessed' otherwise translated 'demons'...he covers this subject when he discusses the atomized specialization of medicine at that time developing in europe) before they even started calling themselves psychologists.
and as an aside, to those who may accuse janus of 'narcissism' or whatever, i do what i do on purpose. i have noted a uniform consistency in this world, and it has to do with the overarching theme of our age, it is something of a supra-strata under-which all the other methods of control fall, and it's the consistent hammering away at the slave, such that he may always be reminded that he is a slave, such that it will magnify his need for a master all the more.
i refuse to think like a slave; be addressed as a slave; and, goddamit, i will not be treated like one any more! My Lord said, "behold, ye are gods" (and I believe Him); and Peter, in his second epistle said we are as a "royal priesthood". I am a Son and an inheritor; I am free-born and accepted; i am no man's monkey dancin to the crackled tune from a gangster's grinding box.
but, for the rest of you, i more than encourage you lil ants, you worthless slaves, to sit there and politely take it. your master is a system; its priests lord over your every thought, deed and desire; it manipulates your better angles and nobler impulse to effect your abject and willing servitude; it's structured at every level to mangle, warp and eventually meld your will into its own.
and you fuckers think i'm a goddam narcissist? i drive a fuckin cab; but i am freer than many of you'll ever understand. i bow to no man. i never check my speech. i have removed the bit and bridle from my mind. so many of you are so fully constrained by your quantified estimations of what you think others think you should think that you cannot think at all.
i watch so many of you do your pathetic best to muster something original and/or clever, and you fail over and over and over. like watching a dork learning to ride a bike...hilarious and sad at the same time.
and i almost never call you bithez out on it...and i'm the bad guy? i'm the narcissist?
i'm not obliged to agree with anyone on any subject at any time; and i proportion the pitch of my response to the stank of the swill i'm wading through. and i furthermore reserve the right to play devil's advocate; just in case i want to sharpen someone's argument...for both their and my own good.
there is a place for comity and polity and decorum; there must also be an arena, where gladiators slaughter wild beasts for the pleasure of the people. i feel just as much at home in either; and i wouldn't want a world without both...however 'sociopathic/narcissistic' that makes me.
i love football, and i love solemn reverent moments of sublime reflection.
i love to fellowship; and i love to fight.
i am beast; and i am divine.
i am two things at once; and with that i am just fine.
i am scared of very little in this world, but i am terrified of that man who thinks himself 'good'.
not to be contentious, but, GW, are you a 'good' guy?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L33OWl2eUQ
there's a man goin round/
and takin names,
janus
You da man.
I too have noticed an underlying mind think that is pervasive in the group. This is an "investing and market" site after all. But I see it evolving. People like Janus and Cog D are opening eyes, and avenues that every mature human shoud be required to explore. Cog D through thought exercises, Janus through humor and a good smack up side the head.
This is why ZH rocks.
The post about social sciences and technocracy is one for the ages. I never met a therapist or social scientist who didn't seem broken somehow. Psychopaths are destroyers because they seek to remake the world in their own broken image. Oligarchy as we know it is the last barrier to human progress.
Well said Janus.....+1k