
The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit - mcenedella
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=42700
======
svat
The tradition of debate in India that this article is about (or dialogue, or
dialectic, or whatever you want to call it) is very interesting, and
unfortunately not well-known because most of the sources on the topic quickly
get into technicalities.

Two non-technical (somewhat accessible to the general public) sources I've
found are:

1\. The book “Religions, Reasons, and Gods” by the late John Clayton has many
interesting essays that touch on the vāda tradition. One of his interesting
points is that the goal of dialogue need not be consensus or establishing
common ground, but simply the “clarification of defensible difference”:
understanding the other party better, and coming to shared understanding of
what our differences are. Some of it is also touched on in his lecture here:
[http://www.bu.edu/religion/mar25-98/](http://www.bu.edu/religion/mar25-98/)

2\. Elaborating on the _jalpa_ / _vitaṇḍa_ mentioned in this article, the
_nyāya_ tradition recognized a long list of logical fallacies and poor
arguments that were grounds for losing a (formal) debate. A list I've found is
in the paper “Twenty-Two Ways to Lose a Debate”
([https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-009-9083-y](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-009-9083-y))
which also carries out some comparison with the ideas of Grice.

~~~
ratmice
I guess a pet peeve of mine, the Di, in Dialectic refers specifically to two-
valued logic, resolving to a truth or false.

Which at least in the case of Jain philosophy, with 3 basic truth values true,
false, and unassertable, so really these traditions are not necessarily
dialectic. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaina_seven-
valued_logic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaina_seven-valued_logic)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekantavada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekantavada)

~~~
OJFord
The prefix is _dia-_ , not _di-_.

My own pet peeve is people saying the same thing about 'dialogue', which is
also 'dia-logue', not 'di-alogue'.

~~~
WorldMaker
The confusion seems rooted in the relatively common word "monologue" which
etymology seems to imply was a 17th Century French "back formation".
Interesting how much that bit of word play seems to confuse things centuries
later.

~~~
OJFord
Wiktionary says it's ancient Greek.

Which makes sense, it doesn't need to be a back formation or slight pun - it's
already different from dia 'across'/'between' (like diameter) talking, it's
specifically not that.

------
asveikau
I frequently argue points I do not personally hold. This sometimes gets
misinterpreted as me holding the opinion, or an attack on the person, or some
such. But really I am testing the idea and recognizing that someone else could
hold this opinion but not be in the room to advocate for it.

~~~
rciorba
Here's my take on when people do this:

Unless someone prefaces their statements with a disclaimer (like "just for the
sake of the argument"), I will assume in good faith they believe their own
statements. Any later claim to the contrary leaves me with the following
choice to make: were they lying then, or are they lying now.

~~~
chmod775
Most of the time it doesn't even matter whether that someone actually believes
what they say. It should be all the same to you either way.

~~~
bittercynic
It matters when one of your goals is to determine what the people around you
believe.

~~~
nordsieck
>> Most of the time it doesn't even matter whether that someone actually
believes what they say.

> It matters when one of your goals is to determine what the people around you
> believe.

What people say is some of the lowest fidelity information to use when trying
to assess what people believe.

Actions >>> Words

~~~
mycall
Body language is very important and sits between Action and Words.

------
tanderson92
On a slight tangent, has anyone ever looked into the etymology of the modern
term troll? There hasn't been too much serious scholarship that I can find on
the term, seemingly arising in mid-1980s newsgroups. But, I did find this
which is my current best understanding; I also read in an old student
newspaper edition that it refers to the trollish inhabitants underneath Bridge
building on campus. From an Oral History of Caltech:

> ERWIN:Could you perhaps tell about bringing back A Broader View with its
> sequel, the new sequel? Because I think that’s very interesting. CLARK:Well,
> that was fun to do. The play readers group in 1987 decided to renew the
> play-reading party, which was one of the great traditions of the fifties and
> early sixties. And Bob Oliver asked me if I’d dust of f A Broader View.
> Well, I looked at it and I thought of updating it. But the shift in the
> twenty years had been so much that updating was impossible; it’s just a
> period piece or nothing. So we had to do it unchanged. And then I felt honor
> bound to write a sequel to it, which is called Troll’s Progress. The theme
> of it is that the essential Caltech never changes. It’s firmly founded on
> terror. [Laughter] And no froufrou can disguise that fact. And people who
> play together pray together, twitch together, stay together. Anyway, that
> theme allowed for a number of wisecracks, and I like to think the dialogue
> is rather funny. The kids who did it were tremendous. The undergraduates, of
> course, we know are stars.

> ERWIN:What was the origin of the troll?

> CLARK:Well, that goes back into Caltech history. And it’s probably Caltech’s
> only contribution to American culture. [Laughter] If you have to ask the
> meaning of the word, you’ll never understand what it means. But to put you
> sort of in the framework—that’s discussed, incidentally, in the dialogue of
> Beautiful Beckman there’s a segment on that. But a troll is a very high-
> voltage nerd. It used to be he lived “under DuBridge.” The kid that never
> sees the light of day, really, he’s so busy with his books. There are
> apprentice trolls at other schools, but ours are an order of magnitude more
> trollish. People who are compulsive and pathological students are much more
> so here. > ERWIN:Somewhere you referred to this as a “random troll.”

> CLARK:Oh, that’s the worst thing you can be called. You see, it means you’re
> just like a number; you have no personality. You might as well be a
> computer—nothing to distinguish. Oh, man, when you’re a random troll, you’re
> beyond the pale. [Laughter]

> ERWIN:In A Broader View, you called the Caltech undergrad “intellectually
> brilliant, emotionally immature, culturally deprived, and socially gauche.”
> And then, immediately afterward, I believe you gave the Caltech professor
> the identical description. That brings us to the point of what the shows
> were for underneath it all.

Source:
[http://oralhistories.library.caltech.edu/95/1/OH_Clark_K.pdf](http://oralhistories.library.caltech.edu/95/1/OH_Clark_K.pdf)

~~~
DanBC
On Usenet it always seemed to be a fishing metaphor, which is why people talk
about taking the bait or spitting the hook.

I'd try to find references for this but Google has fucked the search of Usenet
archives.

There's this, which uses both meanings

[http://www.faqs.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq/troll-
faq/](http://www.faqs.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq/troll-faq/)

\---begin

Defining troll, flames and crossposts
============================================

From the Jargon file (
[http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/T/troll.html](http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/T/troll.html)
):

troll v., n.

1\. [From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on Usenet
designed to attract predictable responses or flames; or, the post itself.
Derives from the phrase "trolling for newbies" which in turn comes from
mainstream "trolling", a style of fishing in which one trails bait through a
likely spot hoping for a bite. The well- constructed troll is a post that
induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless
than they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced
that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't fall for the joke, you get
to be in on it. See also YHBT.

2\. An individual who chronically trolls in sense 1; regularly posts specious
arguments, flames or personal attacks to a newsgroup, discussion list, or in
email for no other purpose than to annoy someone or disrupt a discussion.
Trolls are recognizable by the fact that they have no real interest in
learning about the topic at hand - they simply want to utter flame bait. Like
the ugly creatures they are named after, they exhibit no redeeming
characteristics, and as such, they are recognized as a lower form of life on
the net, as in, "Oh, ignore him, he's just a troll." Compare kook.

3\. [Berkeley] Computer lab monitor. A popular campus job for CS students.
Duties include helping newbies and ensuring that lab policies are followed.
Probably so-called because it involves lurking in dark cavelike corners.

Some people claim that the troll (sense 1) is properly a narrower category
than flame bait, that a troll is categorized by containing some assertion that
is wrong but not overtly controversial. See also Troll-O-Meter.

The use of `troll' in either sense is a live metaphor that readily produces
elaborations and combining forms. For example, one not infrequently sees the
warning "Do not feed the troll" as part of a follow-up to troll postings.

~~~
emmelaich
> On Usenet it always seemed to be a fishing metaphor, which is why people
> talk about taking the bait or spitting the hook.

This is why I'm certain it started out as 'trawling'. The conversion to
'troll' was a result of misspelling or misunderstanding the spoken word. Or
perhaps just standard punning - one who trawls is a troll.

"trawling for opinions" is a well-known and still often used phrase.

~~~
DanBC
But trolling is a type of fishing. Trawling uses long nets, trolling uses long
lines with hooks.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolling_(fishing)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolling_\(fishing\))

~~~
emmelaich
Thanks. TIL.

I'd still guess that it comes from the phrase "trawling for opinions" \-
everyone has heard of that phrase and knows what a "fishing trawler" is.

------
herodotus
Vada and Vitana. I love this. When I was a prof. in a CSC department, I often
had to persuade computing services or some other part of the university
bureaucracy to do or get something for the students. I soon learned that I
would encounter two types of beuracrats. (Actually, three, but I will discount
the ones who were just not very smart. The other two types were smart.)

The first type I called "obstructors". If I (our my department) proposed
something, the obstructors always had a dozen or more compelling reasons why
the proposal was impractical, infeasible , or otherwise without merit.

The other type, I called them "enablers" might have some initial objections,
but they would typically work with me (or us) to overcome the objections so
that we could get what we wanted.

In the second case, it was "Vada". After a while I learned that the best way
to achieve an outcome was simply to avoid ever engaging with the people whose
style was "Vitanda".

Of course at the time (1980's and 90's) I did not think of them as Trolls -
just as jerks who didn't want to do anything that created work for themselves.

------
devoply
> The third type of dialogue, if it can be called dialogue at all, is known as
> vitaṇḍa (Nyāya Sūtra 1.2.3). We may call this “trolling”, because its
> objective is not to win by proving one’s own idea correct, but to make the
> other person lose by opposing every argument of the opponent no matter what.
> Vitaṇḍa is considered a destructive style of argumentation. Here, the person
> who employs vitaṇḍa has no position of one’s own, and does not attempt to
> defend any thesis. A person may even adopt a viewpoint that is opposed to
> one's own for the sake of vitaṇḍa. There is nothing to be gained by either
> party in this encounter. It is the troll’s point of view – “I will humiliate
> you and argue that you are wrong, not because I fundamentally disagree with
> your position, but because it was you who said it!”

Sounds very much like what in the West is called the Socrattic method
championed by Socrates... who used to ask questions until he proved that his
opponent was an idiot who did not know what they were talking about.

~~~
dvtrn
The Socratic method doesn't come with the intent of making the other person
"lose" by blunt-force contrarianism, is a difference I'd like to think
matters.

------
shas3
Ancient sanskrit, yes. But the term vitanDa is very current. It is a common
word in my language, Kannada and I imagine in other Indian languages as well.

This article is as much about the etymology of a modern term as about a
concept from Sanskrit philosophical texts.

~~~
ensconced
Telugu too! It's called "vitanDa vaadam"

~~~
ultrasounder
Which is a direct translation of the same word from Sanskrit which carries the
same meaning. Hardly surprising as Telugu is at lest 50% Sanskrit

------
thwave
There's a nice parallel in Ancient Greek, and from there to modern
philosophical parlance: Eristic[0]. Here's Plato, for example: "it is on the
purely verbal level that they look for the contradiction in what has been
said, and employ eristic, not dialectic, on one another." (Republic V 454a,
translated by Reeve)

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eristic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eristic)

------
t4ko
This is interesting to read and especially since their understanding of
trolling is actually accurate.

"Here, the person who employs vitaṇḍa has no position of one’s own, and does
not attempt to defend any thesis. A person may even adopt a viewpoint that is
opposed to one's own for the sake of vitaṇḍa."

I think people mostly misuse the word trolling, a troll's final goal is to
disrupt and incite reactions often times for the lulz. To me (you may very
well disagree) anybody claiming that trolling is used to achieve something is
wrong. It may have consequences but if they are intended it's just
manipulation of opinions.

I also have my doubt about the motivation given to trolls, I believe they
target people that are "weak" to trolling because their propension to react
help the troll reach his goal faster. i believe this is a reason why trolling
it can quickly become harassment or at least be perceived as such.

I used to like being a troll as a teenager and my first reaction when reading
an opinion that looks absurd is to wonder if the author is trolling. This
first reaction is slowly shifting to "who does this statement serves" since
organisations of all sizes have weaponized internet to spread such opinions.

------
dav
Did they have a word for the intellectually dishonest practice of just making
stuff up to support one's argument?

~~~
sideaccount
I think gish galloping is the modern phrase, gish gallopers are toxic.

~~~
anigbrowl
Gish galloping is burying an opponent in an avalanche of claims or factoids
that would take far longer to refute. The practice of just making stuff up
without regard to its truthfulness is called _bullshit_ , and has achieved
some traction as a technical term thanks to this excellent little essay on the
topic: [http://www2.csudh.edu/ccauthen/576f12/frankfurt__harry_-
_on_...](http://www2.csudh.edu/ccauthen/576f12/frankfurt__harry_-
_on_bullshit.pdf)

It reads like a joke at first, but is well worth your sustained attention.

------
emmelaich
The useful thing to take away from this is to how to combat them.

> Simply by asking them what their position is, or what they propose to
> debate, they are forced into a quandary: if they propose something, then
> they have to defend it, and can be argued with; if they do not propose
> anything, then they may be asked to exit the debate. This may be easier said
> than done, but it may also help stop a troll once in a while!

Be sure to read the linked posts

"The toll of the trolls" (5/25/19)

"Eristic argument" (4/6/19)

------
thinkingemote
If I could be forgiven to be meta here, are there any comments in this thread
which are elaborate trolls on the nature of trolling?

I'm not as sophisticated as some of you but it seems as if those with more
experience in these matters wouldn't find it easy to be sucked into
discussions with a troll. Could there be a master troll or two here which you
have fallen for?

------
empath75
Seems like Socrates would fall under that definition.

~~~
simondedalus
Socrates “knows that he knows nothing” and spends his time trying to refute
that. He looks for knowledge earnestly but usually doesn’t find it. Socrates
is less devil’s advocate, more “how can we be sure of X when Y? If not Y
because Z, doesn’t Z also make X problematic because of (blablabla)?”

Sure, he gets people RAGEing like a great troll, but at least ostensibly he’s
doing more the 2nd type of argument described in the article, but with kind of
a backdrop that precise intellectual beliefs are _really hard_ to specify or
maintain. It’s like dialectic but it’s not Hegelian; he wants to return to
some central question and doesn’t necessarily see that thesis/antithesis climb
as crucial, he just finds problems with the premises and wants to find better
ones (Hegel’s whole thing was a bit more nuanced than that).

Re: article, trolling initially meant trying to get a rise out of people. It’s
not so much you won’t admit you’re wrong or you’re eristically tearing
everything down, it’s that you’re pretending to play the argument game (or
some other game, like “art criticism” or “testimonial”) but in fact you’re
fucking with people of varying levels of specificity.

------
daodedickinson
What's called "debate" at high schools and universities fell to vitanda
decades ago.

------
alchemism
In the Roman Catholic Church there was once an official position known as the
Advocatus Diaboli, or Devil’s Advocate. Their task was to be the skeptic, and
argue persuasively against the canonization of a new Saint - essentially an
applied version of the third form of dialectic mentioned here.

------
dheerajrav
This was taught to us as kids.

3 types of arguments - vaada, vivaada, and vittanda vaada.

------
marstomorrow
This is very neat, and the last paragraph is indeed very heavy-hitting. It's
always hard to read that some of our societies greatest present-day problems
are so many thousands of years old.

However, I think this definition is narrow and only encapsulates part of the
modern definition of 'trolling'. Today, 'trolling' is used as a weapon of war,
not only in debate with other individual people. Trolling is as much a
mechanism of creating emotional trauma among a large population as it is a
mechanism for 'debating' in bad faith.

Modern trolls will post violent content, often based on lies, in order to get
an emotional rise out of a population. This is a large-scale effect that
wastes huge amounts of people's time and energy, as they 'debate' with these
soldiers of war whose task at hand is to create unnecessary emotional pain and
waste the time of their enemy.

Yes, trolling is also happening on a more individual 'debate' level still, but
narrowing our notion of trolling down to these ancient definitions is doing a
major disservice to our modern understanding of how language is used in
debate.

~~~
coldtea
> _Trolling is as much a mechanism of creating emotional trauma among a large
> population as it is a mechanism for 'debating' in bad faith._

Perhaps this was not present in older societies (and other countries today)
because people were not as touchy feely as the current generations...

And I'm not trolling. I seriously think modern western societies are too snow-
flakey and touchy feely for their own good. It's like going out in life
expecting padded roads, walls, and everything, lest you ever get hurt...

And that's despite older societies having it much harder, and having much more
difficult problems to be "traumatized" with...

~~~
marstomorrow
> It's like going out in life expecting padded roads, walls, and everything,
> lest you ever get hurt...

What? How offensive.

Let me be clear, then. _The United States is committing a genocide against
minorities as we speak and it is enabled and emboldened by "trolls"_. This is
not touchy-feely. This is children in cages, separated illegally from their
families and put into places of extreme disrepair, unhealthy conditions, etc,
while the President goes on TV to state that machine guns would be a more
"effective solution".

This is not touchy feely or snowflaky stuff and I honestly have no idea what
you're talking about. What I'm talking about are _trolls going online an on
TV_ to spread messages of hate and cruelty. This directly results in human
suffering and death of innocent people.

There is no logic behind talking about using machine guns to kill people who
are trying to legally migrate to your country. To make those statements is to
wage a weapon of war and to do it online and on TV en masse is a new kind of
trolling that is _physically dangerous_.

Your ..... dismissal of the problems of youth....and use of .... to not
finish...sentences makes it difficult to understand your point.

Trolling in the modern era has _nothing to do_ with any of this "touchy feely"
or "snow-flakey" rubbish.

 _It has to do with enabling genocide._ Trolls normalize bad behavior to the
point where it goes unpunished. Bad behavior to the extreme, unpunished from
the top, for years on end, can and does result in really bad things like
genocide.

I'm not making leaps here. This is real, it is physical, it is urgent, and it
matters.

~~~
coldtea
> _Let me be clear, then. The United States is committing a genocide against
> minorities as we speak and it is enabled and emboldened by "trolls". This is
> not touchy-feely._

The United States has committed some soft of genocide or another since the
days of the Native Americans. That's not touchy feely.

Crying about this or that opinion being published, or whether a coworker can
make or not make a comment, or what group is the more victimized for BS
offenses (where usually the crying is made white middle/upper middle class
self-appointed spokepersons) is.

And I'm not talking about the "children in cages" either. This is obviously
not a kind of "touchy feely" issue.

Plus, the "children in cages" has been going on since forever one way or
another. My people were hunted by the KKK back in the 20s and 30s for not
being white enough. I've written (in other places) about the Mexican
immigrants fueling the California agricultural sector, and how they're
exploited and sent away when bosses are done with them (eg. the strawberry
picking business).

Even the Wall is nothing new, there has been a wall, beatings, and killings at
the border well before Trump. Now it's just fashionable to speak against it
(because Trump), whereas under Obama 2 million could be deported and it was OK
(and it didn't involve as many children imprisoned, so late night talk shows
didn't feel the need to cover it).

Still, I'm not an American myself. But the hypocrisy is strong, as if all
those "good souls" care about the "children in cages".

There are "children in cages" all over Europe, in camps for immigrants (where
they're not allowed to leave):

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/10/life-in-
italy-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/10/life-in-italy-
migrant-camps-a-photo-essay)

> _Your ..... dismissal of the problems of youth....and use of .... to not
> finish...sentences makes it difficult to understand your point._

You could replace "..." with "." in my comment, and nothing would change of
its point. Instead you've chose to point an inconsequential stylistic issue,
and exaggerate it to death.

Let's make my point even clearer: aside from general economic prospects
(college debt and so on), there are no serious "problems of youth" in 2019 in
the USA in the white middle/upper middle-class population that cries about
being "traumatized" the most. It literally never had been better trauma-wise,
today when people cry the most about it, for anything and everything.

And I don't expect you to agree with this assessment. That's my opinion, it's
a free universe.

~~~
marstomorrow
> Crying about this or that opinion being published,

I have absolutely never once in my life seen someone cry over an opinion being
published. I have, however, seen _hundreds_ of people complain about others
'crying', or 'literally shaking' but I have never seen it once happen and I
have been looking. I honestly think such people do not exist. Can you cite
any? This is surely not the cultural phenomenon you make it out to be.

> Plus, the "children in cages" has been going on since forever one way or
> another.

Something happening in the past does not make it okay to happen today. Are you
suggesting that nobody should protest children being put in cages, simply
because it has happened before? I don't understand. Since it has happened
before, and it's awful, and it's happening again right now, don't you think we
should stand up and stay that it should be stopped?

> Even the Wall is nothing new, there has been a wall, beatings, and killings
> at the border well before Trump.

Again, just because something isn't new doesn't have any bearing on it being
bad or not. In fact I think it emphasizes how important these issues are. They
persist and we must fight against them fully.

> Now it's just fashionable to speak against it (because Trump), whereas under
> Obama 2 million could be deported and it was OK (and it didn't involve as
> many children imprisoned, so late night talk shows didn't feel the need to
> cover it)

What are you talking about? Putting children in cages, family removals, etc of
legal immigrants is completely different from deportations of illegal
immigrants.

Are you suggesting nobody should speak out against these atrocities or try to
avoid them happening in the first place, simply because they have happened
before? I don't get it.

> There are "children in cages" all over Europe, in camps for immigrants
> (where they're not allowed to leave)

That sounds awful. Everyone should be protesting this everywhere. Everyone
should aim to avoid the circumstances that allow this to happen: chief among
them is trolling.

~~~
coldtea
> _I have absolutely never once in my life seen someone cry over an opinion
> being published._

Well, I've seen then cry, demand it's unpublished, demand the person writing
it is fired, and so on.

> _I have, however, seen hundreds of people complain about others 'crying', or
> 'literally shaking' but I have never seen it once happen and I have been
> looking._

Well, perhaps not looking unbiased enough.

> _Something happening in the past does not make it okay to happen today._

Which I didn't say in the first place. My point is that as an old thing this
is not related to the recent touchy-feely behavior I spoke against. (Nor of
course are the people kept in cages, or the people who complain about them,
are complaining about touchy feely issues).

> _Are you suggesting nobody should speak out against these atrocities or try
> to avoid them happening in the first place, simply because they have
> happened before? I don 't get it._

No, there are two threads here: 1) tons of younger people today complain about
touchy feely issues, and 2) most younger people complain about these serious
issues only when it becomes fashionable (e.g. now under Trump or previously
under Bush, not before under Obama or Clinton).

I argue that (1) the touchy feely issues should be dropped, and (2) the
important issues should be complained all the time, not when it's in vogue.

> _That sounds awful. Everyone should be protesting this everywhere. Everyone
> should aim to avoid the circumstances that allow this to happen: chief among
> them is trolling._

Trolling is nowhere in the list of things that "allow this to happen".

Capitalism, EU immigration policies, hypocrisy, exploitation, and other things
are.

------
byteofprash
Very well written article.

If I may add to this, the vāda usually composes of 3 parts. 1\. Purva paksha.
2\. Khandana 3\. Uttara paksha.

Purva paksha which literally translates prior view is when the debater should
talk from the opponent's perspective. This has to be confirmed by the
opponent, which proves that the debater has understood the opponent's view
point.

Then comes khandana, which is the actual opposing view point that the debater
puts forward refuting the view point of the opponent.

The last is Uttara paksha, the opinion of the debater. (Or siddhānta as
mentioned in this article)

