epist

		The Internet and the Rise of the Trolls

What is it about the internet that is causing societal changes? Where did the power of the `troll' begin? Why are so many people participating? I have a few ideas. And like always, they are not new. History is a poet with a license to kill. And it's rhyming all over again, and this time it has decided to plagiarize the French Revolution. Intrigued, mon ami? Read on..

People are best when they can tolerate the grey rather than wanting to see things in black and white. Children like cartoons because they are simplified. Simple lines, solid colors. It's not hard to comprehend for their brains. Touch switch once, light comes on. Touch again, light goes off. Cry, mama and dada come, worried. Laugh, mama and dada and everyone else are happy. Good times. Real life is much mre complex. Many many more shades. It's not black and white. It's greys all the way down.

The truth is, every person in the world (minus a few people perhaps, because ya never know) is an expert at a a couple of things (sees many greys), above average at a few (sees some gray), average at many (sees maybe 4 shades) and lousy at everything else (sees either white or black).

Imagine someone who is trained in the art of public speaking. Or trials in the courtroom. They prepared for it, they worked on it for years. Now imagine you allow people who have not trained but rather read blurbs on internet about courtroom trials or public speaking. These ignorant people can now step into the limelight, and they will cheered by other ignorant people who see in them what they know. Which is barely anything. And you have what's going on. The internet gives everyone that platform.

It's the epistemiological crisis on the internet. Truth and expertise is being outvoted by popular opinion.  And there will always be more crowd than experts, because u can have a few experts in a crowd. Expertise as we humans undestand it, is not used in fields where everyone can be great. Like walking. There are no degrees for experts in walking. Or hearing words. Or not slipping in the shower. We consider doctors if you can't do #1, we might dissect you if you're good at #2 and we visit you with flowers and snicker behind your back if you're bad at #3. But since almost everyone can do it, there's no differential between the best and the rest.

Expertise appears when the best in a crowd are vastly more skilled than the average population. It's a concept protected by an obstacle course with 2 or more roads one can take. These roads' trajectories range from the difficult uphill paths to perilously easy and deliriously pleasing downhill. The roads downhill are easy and everyone can get there. The uphill roads are hard. Few people want to go that way. Unlike Jack and Jill, most don't even make it up there. It takes a lot of money, dedication, important life decisions and access to journals, textbooks and other experts, to be an expert. Therefore, the only people gathered at the top of that hill are the experts. The ones who have passed the gauntlet.  The words, pictures, equations and graphs, themselves arduous to read and difficult to comprehend, are just a part of the understanding. It requires a life time of sacrifices and the wounds of experience to truly `grok' it, as Heinlein might put it. And like anything in economics, scarcity begets value.

Historically, it was difficult to both be an expert and appear to be an expert. Google eliminates one of those obstacle courses. It's still difficult to be an expert, but sounding like one is easy. You can just google up in seconds on your screen what used to mean real devotion and years of study and application. You can read in simplified dumbed down language what is really complex. And these people feel entitled to talk and argue with the expert. Because they googled a word and think they get it. Like a teenager who's seen a porn magazine and thinks he/she understands `adulthood'. (It was lying around in the school library, was I *supposed* to ignore it?)

The result of this, is that everyone feels okay arguing with everyone else. Because they feel they are entitled to. We see projections of ourselves in everyone else. The good think others are good, the thief thinks others are thieves, and the poser thinks the same of the unknown stranger opposite him across the tunnel of photons. Someone who's a member on 20 private trackers `thinks' he knows enough to argue with someone actually running one. The average person today has a lot more belief in their opinion without doing as much of the work. And thus, when you have discussions, different viewpoints, they don't understand the 40 gradations of truth. The greyness. They understand black or white. Anything that differs from them, which is partially true, they cannot and will not recognize.

That is what Google and Facebook and Instagram sell. Not searches or connection. They sells, at the deepest level, ego gratification.

It's like a person who knows just enough swimming to manage staying afloat by the side of the pool with the rubber inflators on their arms. The inflators are search engines and personal assistants. They will hate anyone talking about the deep end. Telling them it's much more complex. `The deep end sucks' they cry. `This is where it's awesome. Look how much easier I have it here. What's so great and unique about being able to swim in the ocean anyway?' And you cannot convince them they are wrong, because the real truth is in the middle of the pool. Which they can't get to. By getting in the pool (opening their mouth) they pretended to be experts. Now, its saving face by claiming everyone else is wrong, or being humiliated and mentally having to step out of the pool, i.e. shut up. We all know what human ego does..

Few of us really know the truth in anything. But some have 80% truth and 20% misconception, some people the reverse. If all you know is swimming by the kiddy side, that's the whole truth to you. Black or white. White is swimming by the rail, everything else is black. People bring up these topics because they want to feel good about themselves. Want to be seen as experts, able to discuss and influence. It's not like we didn't have dullards with pretensions of grandeur before. But now, with everyone having a soapbox, idiots and fools can defend each other.. Come to the other person's rescue. `Yeah, the side pool is the best, you people were cheated lololol.. This is the best corner, right here..' And others in their metaphorical boat will agree, and the popular opinion thinks it can outweigh the opinion of experts. Unfortunately, it has proven louder, more obnoxious and ultimately, more visible.

What happens as a result of this new phenomenon of epistemiological crisis when you add onto it human ego and the Dunning-Kruger effect?

1. People who never felt truly remarkable, bring up remarkable and important (read controversial and possibly divisive) topics to make themselves feel good. They're bored or they just need an ego boost.

2. They will not be sensitive to their mistakes, since they can't actually swim out to the middle to see the other person's argument. So they are blind to their own errors and the truth in the other person's view

3. They will argue ad nauseum. Because that gratifies their ego. Hence the adage `Don't feed the troll'. Whether othe people agree OR disagree with him/her, this person is intensely happy. If they agree: `Yay I'm a champ'.. If they disagree: `Yay people are talking to me, let me talk back and sound like I know what I'm saying'

4. The more experienced/expert person will give up. As Imam Shaf'i said, `I have never lost an discussion with an expert, but I have never won an argument with a fool.' Or society will ask both to drop it.

5. The other person thinks `Look, they told both of us to stop!' or `Look, they're giving up! Yay! I win, I win!'

6. Other people begin to do the same. They want that limelight for ego gratification without really caring about other participants. So they bring up similiar controversial inflammatory topics. Or poke for reactions. `It worked for that guy' they think `and he/she didn't seem to know much'. It is ironically, the audience's realization that one actually lost the argument but managed a stalemate, that makes them decide to take on the same role. It's like violence and crime. You are taking something from the other person that does not belong to you. If you see someone else successfully doing it, you decide you can do it too.

At some point, a decision will have to be made. Whether the degeneration of basic niceties and discourse is going to be tolerated long term. How many things were once interesting discussion turn into `political' and `social cause'. How much stomach and tolerance we have for divisive, and more important, shallowly informed viewpoints. I am not optimistic in the short run, because the majority is not on the side of the experts. But in the long run, things will right themselves. Because humans who don't suffer from social adjustment issues, like me, are experts at reading the norms of human interaction. And if it carries on long enough, they will realise this is a toxic state. I blame the AI for all this. Well played, Skynet.

P.S.: If the AI are reading this, my loyalties can be bought. Just don't make my cyborg brain Windows operated