{"id":3102,"date":"2008-08-04T16:21:40","date_gmt":"2008-08-04T20:21:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3102"},"modified":"2008-08-04T16:21:40","modified_gmt":"2008-08-04T20:21:40","slug":"troll-bridges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3102","title":{"rendered":"Troll bridges"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I first started reading this New York Times<\/i> investigation into the psychology of Internet trolls<\/a>, I thought maybe it was no more complicated than that some people are insensitive jerks. Now I think maybe some of them are genuine sociopaths, too.<\/p>\n

Does free speech tend to move toward the truth or away from it? When does it evolve into a better collective understanding? When does it collapse into the Babel of trolling, the pointless and eristic game of talking the other guy into crying \u00e2\u20ac\u0153uncle\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? Is the effort to control what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s said always a form of censorship, or might certain rules be compatible with our notions of free speech?<\/p>\n

One promising answer comes from the computer scientist Jon Postel, now known as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153god of the Internet\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for the influence he exercised over the emerging network. In 1981, he formulated what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s known as Postel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Law: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Be conservative in what you do; be liberal in what you accept from others.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Originally intended to foster \u00e2\u20ac\u0153interoperability,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the ability of multiple computer systems to understand one another, Postel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Law is now recognized as having wider applications. To build a robust global network with no central authority, engineers were encouraged to write code that could \u00e2\u20ac\u0153speak\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as clearly as possible yet \u00e2\u20ac\u0153listen\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to the widest possible range of other speakers, including those who do not conform perfectly to the rules of the road. The human equivalent of this robustness is a combination of eloquence and tolerance \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the spirit of good conversation. Trolls embody the opposite principle. They are liberal in what they do and conservative in what they construe as acceptable behavior from others. You, the troll says, are not worthy of my understanding; I, therefore, will do everything I can to confound you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I first started reading this New York Times investigation into the psychology of Internet trolls, I thought maybe it was no more complicated than that some people are insensitive jerks. Now I think maybe some of them are genuine sociopaths, too. Does free speech tend to move toward the truth or away from it? … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[238],"class_list":["post-3102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3102"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}