tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182962435875556601.post3413375656871296157..comments2023-09-24T08:04:06.909-04:00Comments on FSK's Guide to Reality: Reader Mail #23 - What is a Troll?FSKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11903396202330950362noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182962435875556601.post-54548728966642287502007-12-26T08:48:00.000-05:002007-12-26T08:48:00.000-05:00Hello FSK,Thank you for taking the time to respond...Hello FSK,<BR/><BR/>Thank you for taking the time to respond to what is a troll. <BR/><BR/>Let me get something out of the way first. I like and respect your blog. In fact, you can count me as a regular reader. Why? <BR/><BR/>We share a number of postulations that you put forth in your blog:<BR/><BR/>* The Fed is Evil - I came to the same conclusion about the Bank of Canada, where their ability to monetize debt instruments I found frightening at first.<BR/>* The Compound Interest Paradox - I never had a good term for this, but I know exactly what it was prior to reading your article.<BR/>* Income Tax is evil. - Absolutely a universal axiom to me.<BR/>* The US is a communist society - Years ago, I had read the "Communist Manifesto" and the 10 planks ... and was startled when I read that Canada scored somewhere between 9 and 9.5 on those 10 plank definitions.<BR/><BR/>In addition to the truths above, it flowed that the media corporations and the provincial education systems were duplicite and/or accomplices to ensure that you never learn about the truths stated above. The school system teaches you squat about finance, economics and monetary theory, right when you are prime to learn about such things. If they teach you calculus, finite math, and algebra, surely your mind can handle the "Compound Interest Paradox" - <I>but of course you are not meant to learn that.</I><BR/><BR/>Since I understand these things very clearly, I find that they have served me well in understanding what is going on in the world today. However, upon reading your blog, I realized the evolution of my thought process with respect to taking it to the next level had stalled.<BR/><BR/>Your blog entries crystallized a pathway into the next level. Years ago, in university, I too read Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead", followed by "Atlas Shrugged". These books inspired my understanding as well. I remember particularly resonating with Hank Reardon's speech in the courtroom where he refuses to recognize the right of the court to try him and Rand's "Hymn to Money" in AS.<BR/><BR/>I would like to respond to some of the comments you made about trolling here:<BR/><BR/><I>"If I say "By FSK standards, your comment is trolling", maybe you should reexamine your thinking."</I><BR/><BR/>That would have been fine, provided that the phrase, "FSK standards, your comment is trolling" was hyperlinked to point to said standards. However, there is a widely held understanding of what trolling is - don't try to redefine it local to your blog without giving the commenter a heads-up.<BR/><BR/>For example, if you left a comment on my blog and I said:<BR/><BR/>"Your comment is retarded" or "Parts of your comment are retarded", would that initially not bother you? You might write back to me saying that you were bothered by it. If I responded to you, "Oh, by retarded, I mean pro-State thinking.", does that make sense, FSK?<BR/><BR/>Even better, come up with your own term. Something like "SETing" = State Embedded Thinking. For example:<BR/><BR/>"Your comment is SETing" or "Parts of your comment are SETing" - with a hyperlink that links back to a blog entry explaining what that is...your readers will appreciate it and say, if they are intelligent, "Hey, FSK is right. I gotta work on that". <BR/><BR/>Isn't that the greatest compliment you can be paid on your writings is it not? That you actually are enlightening, educating, and informing your readers? That is why you write your blog, is it not? To share your thoughts and develop a distilled reader base? <BR/><BR/>W.r.t your comment: You attributed to me that I said (paraphrased) "Big government is needed to prevent people from hurting themselves." <BR/><BR/>I never said that in my previous comment. What I said was:<BR/>"Should the government ever legislate policy to prevent people from making choices that hurt the environment?". <BR/><BR/>People usually act their own self-interest. They can prevent themselves, in general, from hurting themselves just fine. Well, except for people who smoke, but they do it as they don't perceive it is a health problem, until it their doctor tells them they have cancer. Then they quit. <BR/><BR/>Certainly no government is needed to uselessly legislate anything to keep people from hurting themselves. And certainly, the government is a failure at enacting and enforcing legislation that prevents people from hurting the environment. What I should have said was, "How would conflict be resolved and punishment enforced in a stateless free market? Would an arbitrating body need to be instated? If so, how would that mechanism work?"<BR/><BR/>W.r.t your comment about CFLs being tossed in the garbage. I agree with you about the costs of people doing that being externalized to the state. You responded that, in a stateless free market, the garbage collector should get angry with you for doing so.<BR/><BR/>If the private garbage collector isn't held accountable for what he dumps in his privately owned land, will he care? If the garbage collector picks up 100s of tons of garbage a week, how does he process it to know who put what in what garbage bag? When he takes the garbage to his privately owned land and dumps toxic garbage on that land that might take years to seep into the water table and flow into his neighbors land, what forces mitigate that risk? In other words, in a stateless free market, how do you set up mechanisms to ensure that it becomes the private garbage collectors self-interest not to accept or dump toxic waste?<BR/><BR/>Next, When you say "People can't be trusted to individually make correct decisions." - I stand by that statement. However, that does not mean that I support the notion that there should be a government that enforces it. Essentially, what I know about most (not all) people is that (a) they will generally act in their own self interest and (b) in the absence of a strong moral and ethical value system, if they can get away with something that causes harm, without being held accountable for it, they will do it, driven by hedonistic tendencies.<BR/><BR/>Let me illustrate. Most of us would not kill a polar bear for laughs. That is a direct causal relationship most of us internalize and see as reality. However, most people (not me) would fly to Disney and mindlessly consume the entertainment there. Let's assume that doing so it creates a huge carbon footprint that causes polar icecaps to melt. Polar bears need ice to catch seals to survive. If the ice is gone, they starve and die. All of us, acting in concert, made a decision that caused the polar bears to die. However, since the cause/effect is so remote, no one takes responsibility for what they do, unless one has been (a) taught a strong moral and ethical sense with respect to their actions and (b) as a result, doesn't disregard that value system to indulge in the hedonistic urge to partake of the Disney experience.<BR/><BR/>Common tort law implies that (a) there is a body that will maintain the law book and continue it's evolution, and (b) a body that will enforce punishment. <BR/><BR/>How is this addressed in a stateless free market? The government certainly isn't doing it and should be abolished (for many reasons besides this one) so I don't look to that as a solution at all.<BR/><BR/>You ask: "This is a very difficult decision. Should I tell someone when they are thinking like a fool, or should I not?"<BR/><BR/>Define fool. Most people, even intelligencia, do not define fool as a "pro-State thinker". Common convention dictates fool is a derogatory term without any real specifics. This goes back to my troll suggestion. Invent your own terminology and post a glossary of terms on your blog.<BR/><BR/>My point is, if I comment on your posts and call you a fool without stating why, what are you to do with that other than be annoyed?<BR/><BR/>If you show your readership respect, they will return that a hundredfold to you. This comes from first hand experience.<BR/><BR/>I have taken "fools" that initially started out with inflammatory posts to my articles. I was patient with them and finally got them to concede to my points and state that they needed to review their thinking. As a result of treating that "troll" with respect and winning him over, a number of silent readers were impressed with that, said so, and were encouraged to ask me additional questions. <BR/><BR/>Guess what? I built a readership that way.<BR/><BR/>By the way, as I said, great blog!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182962435875556601.post-47106370225717681562007-12-25T22:40:00.000-05:002007-12-25T22:40:00.000-05:00If you're dissapointed by the submissions so far (...If you're dissapointed by the submissions so far (there are still three days left), then make an entry about it, asking people to submit their own entries. Only by making the Carnival known to the right people will we improve its quality.Francois Tremblayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04760072622693359795noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182962435875556601.post-59323441166451065022007-12-25T18:23:00.000-05:002007-12-25T18:23:00.000-05:00Full feeds, have been enabled. Apparently there i...Full feeds, have been enabled. <BR/><BR/>Apparently there is a glitch in wordpress that automatically inserts a 'more' tag into syndication feeds, even when "full text" is selected from the dashboard. Not previously a google-reader user, I had no idea. It has been amended with the applicable widget/plug-in.David_Zhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15219164522772093422noreply@blogger.com