As someone who was probably doing more feeding than most, I’d like to apologise here.
In my case it was primarily the ‘didn’t recognise troll’ problem, I’m not very good at distinguishing the more eloquent and seemingly reasonable type of troll from honest commenters who disagree with me. I also have a strong aversion to just walking out on a debate without reaching any kind of agreement, mainly because it annoys me a lot when other people do it.
I will try not to fall into a similar pattern again, but since I’m not all that good at noticing it any ‘don’t feed the troll’ PMs are appreciated.
I’m in a similar situation—I can, technically, recognize that someone fits the profile of ‘troll’, but my brain doesn’t like to actually use that information for anything. (It’s not just an issue with trolls, it’s a general inability to use different scripts for people based on categorizing them.) What I’ve found works, in my case, is to be more aware of subtleties in peoples’ behavior, rather than trying to categorize them. I still wind up feeding trolls sometimes (and in fact tend to enjoy doing so in those cases), but if someone is being logically rude or otherwise offensive, that’s a thing worth noticing and reacting to whether they’re ‘a troll’ or not.
Another trick that’s useful sometimes is backing out of the argument a bit and looking at the bigger picture. Sometimes that shows patterns that aren’t otherwise obvious, and that can make it clear that the person isn’t worth continuing to deal with. For example, in the most recent case, the individual was defying the evidence in an irrational and not very obvious way. Once I noticed that, it seemed obvious to me that without a more thorough understanding of when that is and isn’t a reasonable thing to do, they weren’t going to stop doing it to any evidence that we gave them, and thus the argument at hand was not going to resolve anything, so it was pointless. It’s a lot easier to walk away in a situation like that, when you can see that it’s impossible to actually get the goal you were aiming for.
I’d like to apologize as well. I have a bad habit of not knowing when to stop talking to someone. I agree with you and several commenters about about not being able to immediately recognize trolls, although I think it’s good in the long run that we are slow on the uptake rather than trigger-happy.
There is, of course, an important difference between leaving a debate unfinished and walking out on one that’s a lost cause. But as you pointed out, it’s hard to distinguish between the two from an inside perspective. What I’m going to try to do in the future is simply ignore people when they reuse previously refuted arguments, as this is generally a sign of dishonesty or denial.
As someone who was probably doing more feeding than most, I’d like to apologise here.
In my case it was primarily the ‘didn’t recognise troll’ problem, I’m not very good at distinguishing the more eloquent and seemingly reasonable type of troll from honest commenters who disagree with me. I also have a strong aversion to just walking out on a debate without reaching any kind of agreement, mainly because it annoys me a lot when other people do it.
I will try not to fall into a similar pattern again, but since I’m not all that good at noticing it any ‘don’t feed the troll’ PMs are appreciated.
I’m in a similar situation—I can, technically, recognize that someone fits the profile of ‘troll’, but my brain doesn’t like to actually use that information for anything. (It’s not just an issue with trolls, it’s a general inability to use different scripts for people based on categorizing them.) What I’ve found works, in my case, is to be more aware of subtleties in peoples’ behavior, rather than trying to categorize them. I still wind up feeding trolls sometimes (and in fact tend to enjoy doing so in those cases), but if someone is being logically rude or otherwise offensive, that’s a thing worth noticing and reacting to whether they’re ‘a troll’ or not.
Another trick that’s useful sometimes is backing out of the argument a bit and looking at the bigger picture. Sometimes that shows patterns that aren’t otherwise obvious, and that can make it clear that the person isn’t worth continuing to deal with. For example, in the most recent case, the individual was defying the evidence in an irrational and not very obvious way. Once I noticed that, it seemed obvious to me that without a more thorough understanding of when that is and isn’t a reasonable thing to do, they weren’t going to stop doing it to any evidence that we gave them, and thus the argument at hand was not going to resolve anything, so it was pointless. It’s a lot easier to walk away in a situation like that, when you can see that it’s impossible to actually get the goal you were aiming for.
I’d like to apologize as well. I have a bad habit of not knowing when to stop talking to someone. I agree with you and several commenters about about not being able to immediately recognize trolls, although I think it’s good in the long run that we are slow on the uptake rather than trigger-happy.
There is, of course, an important difference between leaving a debate unfinished and walking out on one that’s a lost cause. But as you pointed out, it’s hard to distinguish between the two from an inside perspective. What I’m going to try to do in the future is simply ignore people when they reuse previously refuted arguments, as this is generally a sign of dishonesty or denial.