Punked by the Rationality Troll
by Andre on Oct.23, 2011, under holodoxy
More stupidity on Ye Olde Interwebbe. I pretty much lost my shit with a guy on io9 this week. Not that I wanted to, but… well, here’s a synopsis of the conversation:
Me: Exploring fantasy is a good thing. Metaphorical thinking is useful in a personal crisis. It helps because thinking about metaphors allows you to be more conceptually flexible.
Him: YOU’RE WRONG! Because… SCIENCE! Magic is bad!
Me: Umm… I think you’re misunderstanding what I’m saying. I didn’t say anything about magic. What I mean is, theoretical knowledge doesn’t disprove the experience of pain or misery, but previous practice exploring metaphors can help deal with it. Here’s a scientist talking about what that means (linked video).
Him: Fantasy implies magic. That guy seems to be saying that consciousness is magic. But I only watched a few minutes of that video. It’s a whole hour long! Obviously he is wrong. You’re wrong! Science! SCIENCE!!! Metaphors are stupid!
Me: Go away.
Him: You’re boring. You go away! I’m not even interested in this topic.
Me: Seriously? What do you want here? We can’t really have a conversation if you’re not interested in the discussion. Maybe you’re misunderstanding me. Here, this linked video talks about it more directly.
Him: Yes seriously. I shouldn’t have to look at those videos because I disagree with that guy, and anyway, they’re too long. I came here to have fun and have a discussion. I don’t think you understand SCIENCE!… [I skimmed the rest.]
Me: Sorry, I didn’t read your whole post. After all; I disagree with you, so why should I?
That’s when I left the conversation. He replied twice more, but I didn’t read them. This guy just made me so angry. I seriously would have hit him if we’d been in the same room. I know the internet magnifies everything, but holy crap.
It’s unfortunate when someone disagrees with you because he doesn’t understand what you said. It’s obnoxious when that person vehemently insists that you’re wrong, because he thinks he understands you but refuses to find out what you actually meant. It’s bullshit when that person doesn’t even live up to his own standards of argumentation, because then you can’t even talk to him on his own terms. And it’s absolutely infuriating when that person continues to shout at you, regardless.
I find myself wondering what the lesson is, here. I guess I could have been a lot cooler about it, and obviously it was a mistake to keep talking to this troll as long as I did. As usual, it seems that contrary to their own assumption, believers in hard rationalism are no more immune to irrational speech as their counterparts in religion.
It’s very frustrating.
January 7th, 2013 on 18:00
Wonderful, the troll seems to have become a perfect illustration of one of the points you were trying to make.
“The moral failings of the resentful individual who is unwilling to take responsibility for the nature of their own being, directly with atrocious acts of social conflict.” Jordan Peterson on The Necessity of Virtue, 00:24:00
Thanks for the link to the lecture, the guy’s got some strong arguments on rationality vs. virtue.
January 7th, 2013 on 18:33
In a way, yes. I don’t think the troll was necessarily a bad person or someone exceptionally prone to atrocity–but he certainly was a colourful example of a kind of mentality I see a lot on sites like io9, which says that rationality is everything yet fails to understand the context in which rationality exists, such as the rest of human psychology & experience. Although, I think it is telling that in this particular case, the troll wasn’t even able to live up to his own ideals of scientific inquiry, since he had no interest whatsoever in weighing evidence; and only wanted to shout me down.
Unfortunately, it’s a real problem among the anti-religious hardcore, which really makes them seem like religious fundamentalists by another name.
In any case, you’re welcome for the link (Peterson is really a brilliant guy—look up his videos on YouTube; he’s got a few I haven’t posted here). Also, thanks for commenting! Please look around and feel free to comment on other posts. I must apologize for the lack of updates; I’m currently working on some new pieces, and I’m hoping to re-launch the site with a better look and a more frequent posting schedule over the coming months.
January 7th, 2013 on 19:08
oh yes, ofcourse Peterson was giving the example of atrocious social behaviour on the extreme side of the scale.
I agree on the emphasis of context, especially with information on the internet, where information is easily manipulated and misplaced to fulfill the reinforcement of one’s beliefs. In reference to the ‘Power of Silence’ blog post, ‘we’ve turned up the noise, and lost the signal’, from the noise distorted signals are being drawn out.
I’m quite the enthusiastic reader of your blog, and am very happy to have engaged in a discussion!
I will look forward to the updates
My personal metacitrography blog is a more visual take similar thought processes.
January 7th, 2013 on 20:42
Yes—context in the way that you mentioned, but also in terms of the context of our emotions, sensations, and all the other aspects of our being, which our rationality is just a small part of.
I’m glad you like the blog—it’s always good to meet a kindred spirit
I’ve bookmarked metacitrography—your photographs are amazing!
January 8th, 2013 on 07:40
Very true about the context of the alive and aware Being.
As a very distressed Einstein said ‘Spirit must overcome technology’, because of its tremendous power.
January 8th, 2013 on 19:04
It will. Technology is fleeting, like all material things. Spirit is eternal, and flows through everything. Or, in more practical terms, humanity will either get its priorities straight as a species, or will annihilate itself in the attempt and the planet will get along just fine without us.
January 17th, 2013 on 17:03
Do you have an email I could send you a very interesting debate on very similar subjects I’ve recently had on my FB page?
You can always send it to me on mine, which appears in my details here.
January 17th, 2013 on 20:13
Yes–I will send you that, presently.