Feb. 21st, 2016
The curious case of Yakov A. Jerkov
Feb. 21st, 2016 09:13 pmWhy would a rational person try to convince somebody like
yakov_a_jerkov that he's mistaken when he writes:
Note the quantifiers he uses to describe his imaginary opponents' position (a typical straw man argument): "бояться совершенно нечего" and "никаких даже подозрений". Obviously, if he was a police detective in charge of solving multiple murders committed by somebody named Syed Rizwan Farook it would be stupid of him not to investigate a possible connection of such a person with Islamic terrorists. Of course, the detective would check the "псих" hypothesis too but he or she would not stop or even start there.
In this particular case by using the "никаких даже подозрений" quantifier, Yakov shows either a complete lack of common sense or an intention to demagogue his way into a position of moral superiority, e.g. wrt the 2nd Amendment.
Or maybe he's just trolling for comments. Then, why feed the troll? In general, why do people feed trolls? Is it because they feel that if they don't respond to him the idea advanced by the demagoguery would stick? The very existence of the common request on public forums "Don't feed the trolls" shows that somehow we care what the trolls have to say. What feature of human psychology are they exploiting?
So far, I can't find anything specific on google scholar about that, but from a brief survey it sounds like most people have a burning desire to fight variations of common logical fallacies.
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А когда такого бессмысленного убийцу зовут Jason Brian Dalton или Dylann Storm Roof, тогда пугаться совершенно нечего. Ну, подумаешь, псих какой-то, шансы погибнуть в автокатастрофе у каждого из нас несоизмеримо выше.
И я уже отмечал интересный факт. Когда убийцу зовут Syed Rizwan Farook, никаких даже подозрений, что это псих, который просто окончательно lost it, не возникает.
Note the quantifiers he uses to describe his imaginary opponents' position (a typical straw man argument): "бояться совершенно нечего" and "никаких даже подозрений". Obviously, if he was a police detective in charge of solving multiple murders committed by somebody named Syed Rizwan Farook it would be stupid of him not to investigate a possible connection of such a person with Islamic terrorists. Of course, the detective would check the "псих" hypothesis too but he or she would not stop or even start there.
In this particular case by using the "никаких даже подозрений" quantifier, Yakov shows either a complete lack of common sense or an intention to demagogue his way into a position of moral superiority, e.g. wrt the 2nd Amendment.
Or maybe he's just trolling for comments. Then, why feed the troll? In general, why do people feed trolls? Is it because they feel that if they don't respond to him the idea advanced by the demagoguery would stick? The very existence of the common request on public forums "Don't feed the trolls" shows that somehow we care what the trolls have to say. What feature of human psychology are they exploiting?
So far, I can't find anything specific on google scholar about that, but from a brief survey it sounds like most people have a burning desire to fight variations of common logical fallacies.