Where are the Trolls?

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

Reading over last few days I see a notable absence of the dedicated pollyannas, aka trolls.

Could it be they have done their job and moved on?

-- Bill P (porterwn@one.net), August 01, 1999

Answers

"We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, his *donnee*: our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it." Henry James, in 'Partial Portraits' (1888)

-- Spidey (in@jam.commie), August 01, 1999.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh............. PLEASE !!

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), August 01, 1999.


They're whitewashing their bunker.

-- Huck Finn (painting@the.fence), August 01, 1999.

Maybe the weekend rate at Rent-a-Troll is too high. Perhaps they go home to mom at weekends to get their laundry done. cpr is probably busy selling Texas in his real estate business. Another possibility is they don't want to use their home PCs for their dirty work.

-- Just (watching@the.bridge), August 01, 1999.

They're concocting their deity. It has feathers.

-- pluck (paint@totem.pole), August 01, 1999.


Bill P:

Is this what you really mean to say? As I understand it, a polly is one who believes y2k errors will not lead to severe or widespread disruptions (*nobody* is claiming nothing at all will happen). A troll is someone posting with the intent to interfere with the purpose of the forum. The two can only be equated (as you do) if any argument against severe disruptions constitutes interference with the forum's basic purpose.

But this necessarily implies that the purpose of the forum is to *preach* doom rather than debate likely consequences. I regard most of the pollys as being like the loyal opposition (with the emphasis on "loyal"). If pessimists are asking to be allowed to bewail their frustrations, fears and paranoia without such opposition, they are disdaining any reason for them to be honest, thoughtful or rational. Surely an opinion honed in spirited debate will serve better than random kvetching, with a Greek Chorus chanting "right on, brother" in the background?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), August 01, 1999.


Hmmmm...

Interesting observation, Bill...

-- (pshannon@inch.com), August 01, 1999.


I think what Flint is trying to say is that you Doomers are making fools out of yourselves suffiently without the help of any trolls.

Oh woe to thee Doomers who have no enemies to argue with. For in a single hour has thy judgement come.

-- ('@E.T), August 01, 1999.


See ,,,,,,,,,,, I told you to be queit

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), August 01, 1999.


See .......... I told you to be quiet !!

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), August 01, 1999.



Hey!

A troll/polly is a trolly!

-- R (riversoma@aol.com), August 01, 1999.


"Oh woe to thee Doomers who have no enemies to argue with. For in a single hour has thy judgement come."

Doomer phrasing if we ever saw it! Sshhhh, the trolls are infected with the dread meme. They're in the BITR FORD the Bridge detox/deprogramming center, intensive care, DTs

LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), August 01, 1999.


Flint,

Be gentle. Bills ob w/o polly/troll differention is common. To his point however, perhaps Diane's comments on the c4i issue bore some fruit. Hope so.

-- Carlos (riffraff1@cybertime.net), August 01, 1999.


No, that's *not* what I'm saying at all.

For the sake of discussion, let's assume (or at least hypothesize) an atmosphere of mutual trust. Let's assume that those who argue for any possible future are sincere, that they've given sufficient thought to the available material to come to an informed opinion, and that they are attempting (however inarticulately) to defend that opinion. Certainly there are many viewpoints expressed here both vigorously and reasonably carefully, based on genuine available evidence. To paraphrase Oliver Wendell Holmes, this is an issue on which intelligent people can honestly arrive at different opinions.

The key to getting something useful from this forum is to make a sincere attempt to understand *how* intelligent people can form very different conclusions from the same material. Certainly it can't be honestly doubted that there's a great deal to support almost any opinion. What has led some of us to integrate this material so differently from others?

Extremists at both ends have violated this assumption of trust. Extreme optimists have concluded that extreme pessimists are suffering from delusions deriving from frustrated lives, while extreme pessimists accuse optimists of expressing dishonest opinions for pay. In a nutshell, the extremists (at both ends) are saying, "No sane, honest person could disagree with ME that drastically. Therefore, they are either insane or dishonest or both".

What started this thread was just such a violation. Bill P has attempted to discredit anyone who disagrees with him, rather than show *any* willingness to listen and maybe even learn. His equating of pollys with trolls indicates that he feels that disagreement, however honestly arrived at, is *unacceptable*.

I'm trying to suggest that extremism (at either pole) is our enemy

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), August 01, 1999.


Is *differentiation* a word? Ya. Looks good.

-- Carlos (riffraff1@cybertime.net), August 01, 1999.


I'm not the only one that has a trolly that goes to and from the Neighborhood of Make-Believe? Well isn't that something. They must be very proud :-)

-- Mr. Rodgers (mytrolleysbetter@myplace.org), August 01, 1999.

I've noticed that they really come out right at the first weeks of a new month. I suspect that this is to try to downplay the psychological awareness that yet another month has clicked by towards 2000, and the world is not that much better off than it was at the beginning of last month.

People will not remain stupid indefinitely. They will figure out the hopelessness of the situation, one way or another, in five more months....

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.com), August 01, 1999.

"People will not remain stupid indefinitely."

Oh, I expect some paranoid, guv'ment fearing, tabacky chewin, society hatin", Doomers would look in the mirror and disagree with you...

-- Y2K Pro (y2kpro1@hotmail.com), August 01, 1999.


PRO,

Your "some" ain't enough to worry about. So, what's with you? Got a worry problem? Trying to save us from the evil "some"? Show me.

-- Carlos (riffraff1@cybertime.net), August 01, 1999.


"Let's assume that those who argue for any possible future are sincere, that they've given sufficient thought to the available material to come to an informed opinion..."
Is "informed opinion" even possible in this context? No matter how exhaustively anyone may study the ramifications of the Y2K problem, there is no way to predict how the multiordinal interconnections and mutual dependencies spanning the world will respond to the event itself. Nor how various local populations will themselves respond to possible cascading failures of data, of essential services, of infrastructure.

No amount of thought, no matter how rational, based on incomplete information, can provide an informed opinion. Whatever will or will not happen will be evident soon enough.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), August 02, 1999.


yep, when the world ends it will all be the trolls fault. :-(

-- Butt Nugget (nugbuttet@better.mousetrap), August 02, 1999.

If you had been in WalMart this weekend, you would know where the trolleys are.!! Buying beans and rice!

-- Hannah (Hannah@Colonial America.com), August 02, 1999.

Flint,

Sorry. I did in haste offer an abbreviated statement that could be construed differently than I had intended.

My point was/is that it seems as more facts are being introduced (I hope you don't ask what facts, but in case you do I would offer John Koskinen's recent statement on CNN that Y2K will last longer than the day of 01/01/2000; recent increase in Y2K testing failures (Bellingham) etc) some of the "no big deal" crowd have modified their position on Y2K. While Gartner Group appears to have softened their position, it appears to me that Mr. Koskinen, State Emergency Managers and authorities have increased the severity of their public assessment of the likely Y2K impacts.

If those in the know are increasing the severity of their assessment of Y2K, it may also be that some polly viewpoints are being upgraded to a higher level of concern and hence less disruptive to this forum. I posted to see if that was the case. I also posted to see if August would be a telling change in perception management that could result in some of the trolls moving on to other activities.

I know you are more optimistic than I am regarding potential Y2K impacts, yet I find your posts well reasoned and well developed. I meant no offense.

My own expectation is that those in the know will become increasingly candid about the real nature of Y2K and that a middle of the road outcome like a 5-7 will be openly discussed by credible sources.

-- Bill P (porterwn@one.net), August 02, 1999.


Tom:

If informed opinions are truly not possible, then why even bother posting articles or citing testimonies or surveys? If such material is meaningless, than all people are doing here is projecting their inner fantasies onto the future groundlessly. This leads us too easily into analyses of y2k based on subconscious stirrings rather than computer problems, and I confess I'm not comfortable with that approach.

Bill P:

I also think I've noticed a bit of convergence on the part of mainstream observers (let's ignore the loonies in the boonies for now, since they reject all uncongenial information a priori).

What we don't have is anything resembling a good definition of what might constitute 'big' or 'significant' or 'substantial' problems. Even our 1-10 scale hasn't worked very well, since some of us put a 1974-level recession at a 3 while others consider it at least a 7.

As a kind of after-the-fact scale, I suggested earlier that we might check how many of us (say in a year) absolutely needed their preparations and would have died without them, how many could have survived but their preparations made them far more comfortable, how many didn't really need them but used them because they turned out to be handy, and how many had no use for them at all. A similar scale might revolve around how many lost power for how long, how many lost their jobs, how many lost their bank accounts, etc.

To an economist, any drop in real GDP is serious indeed. A slowdown in growth of, say, 1% is 'significant'.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), August 02, 1999.


We're plotting the overthrow of this forum. Now if you put on the decoder rings, you too will know the truth.

-- realist (of@true.nature), August 02, 1999.

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