Reddit Has Become a Battleground of Alleged Chinese Trolls

I think you underestimate the entertainment value of intentionally posting inflammatory things. It's fun to play devil's advocate. That doesn't mean you believe it.

This is a ridiculous, not to mention untenable, position. I take it you never read Socrates? He saw great value in poking and prodding -- being the proverbial gadfly.

Serious question: is it possible to play devil's advocate without insincere motivations? For example, say someone holds a strong but simplistic belief on a complex topic, if asking a legitimate question in a straightforward and non-offensive manner upsets the person holding the belief, is it necessarily (and always) a form of aggression?

That's not what Socrates did, was it? I thought he was just making observations and asked questions he thought had merit, despite knowing it would upset some people. But the objective wasn't to upset people in the sense of them feeling bad, more like medicine that tastes bitter but is beneficial in the long run.

What I do see a lot is that people impute a bad motivation for a question or claim that allows them to dismiss it without actually having to answer or challenge it, so today, Socrates surely would be called a troll by many. Wouldn't make him one though.

You play devil's advocate because you want to test your convictions by making a good faith effort to argue for the other side. You attempt to present the other side's argument in the best light, and really think about your reasons for actually concluding against that side.

Trolling is the opposite of a good faith effort; you are intentionally making an argument you know is absurd, in an attempt to get someone to engage as if it were a real argument. You have no intention of trying to understand the other side or think about why people might feel differently, you are simply trying to confuse and anger people.

You can argue that you think trolling is funny, but you can't argue that you posting inflammatory things is playing devil's advocate.

> Socrates surely would be called a troll by many

Exactly. I contend that he would be called a troll by the person I quoted -- which I think is wrong.

That behavior is acceptable in an academic setting, but nobody blithely posting contrarian or inflammatory content on a fansite or Facebook is doing it because they're hoping to inspire Socratic discourse.

You have two choices: (1) execute Socrates, or (2) accept Socrates as part of the Miltonian "marketplace of ideas" and leave him be. I'd like to think we've started to see that (2) is a better choice than (1). Dismissing Socrates as "aggressive" (and implicitly "dangerous") is, from what I can tell, not the right move.

Do you think Socrates' objective was to get people angry? Do you think that's what he was trying to accomplish?

The second reason it is fundamentally mistaken is that it ignores the fact that there has always been a "trolling" aspect to far right discourse such as Nazism. Think of the racist carictures Nazi's or KKK members draw, they are meant to be taken "seriously not literally" as some have said of Trump. Reactionary politics goes hand in hand with intentionally trying to provoke a reaction, both of them have this shared idea of trying to gain power through provocation and the idea that the status quo is a sham. As Sartre said in Anti-Semite and the Jew:

"Never believe that anti‐Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly since he believes in words. The anti‐Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument has passed."

So, much like "no pain, no gain," anger and discourse often go hand in hand.

That's why I gave examples of aggression that could be healthy or productive. A football game or a boxing match is an aggressive competition but one in which all participants contend voluntarily. Likewise, a debate or dispute can be quite heated but nevertheless proceed by mutual agreement. I distinguish these from cases where aggression is inflicted upon unwilling recipients.

That's a clever distinction, but I don't think it's sufficient. It's not clear that, e.g., the Athenian leadership, were "willing recipients" in Socrates' case and so your test would fail.

Further, I think this thread itself is a testament to the murkiness of "willingness" -- are we willingly engaged in a formal spar? We disagree, we're talking, we're debating. If I had thinner skin, I could accuse you of aggression and that would be that. You could do the same.

The "marketplace of ideas" should trump an individual's sensitivities. I will concede that the internet complicates this. Weirdos† -- neo-Nazis, furries, flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, bronies, hoarders, etc. -- can now find like-minded communities that validate their weird beliefs. The danger is the town square turning into a bunch of silos. Weirdos can often be a good thing for a society if their beliefs are validated in the marketplace. But they can also be a very dangerous thing if they all congregate on 8chan.

† By 'weirdos' I mean those that hold fringe beliefs or partake in fringe activities.

I don't think it's hard to answer at all—in fact, you answered it right there. No, Socrates objective wasn't to get people angry. His objective was to point out flaws in deeply held beliefs.

> I don't think it's hard to argue that when pointing out flaws in deeply-held beliefs, the subject at hand will get angry -- or at the very least uncomfortable.

It definitely can, but there's still a difference between trying to inflict anger, and anger being an undesirable possible side effect.

I guess I did shoot myself in the foot there :)

I was trying to reconcile this: suppose Socrates was a dick and actually did get pleasure out of annoying people -- and the pointing out of the flaws was actually the side-effect. Would his execution somehow have been justified?

I still don't think so.

Hmmmm....can you think of an example of a case where "asking a legitimate question in a straightforward and non-offensive manner" about suicide cults would not be easily distinguishable from an attempt at recruitment?

I am not trying to reinvent the notion of discourse, but to say something about the patterns of behavior that are readily observable and functionally comparable to real life interpersonal interactions. Imagine, for example, if I had responded to your initial comment with vile personal slurs or similarly inappropriate behavior and then mocked you for getting angry.

So, it is necessarily (and always) a form of aggression then?