fling93 loves fishies

group·think n. The act or practice of reasoning or decision-making by a group, especially when characterized by uncritical acceptance or conformity to prevailing points of view. Decision making by a group (especially in a manner that discourages creativity or individual responsibility)

Sounds like groupthink to me! And the whole “groupstink” think was childish and petty. But, you can’t control other people’s behavior.

Oh, and while emails have no expectation of privacy, I think it just emphasizes the difference in maturity level between the two of you.

Thanks, honey! And I don’t think everybody writes e-mails with no expectation of privacy.

That doesn’t sound very trollish to me. I usually associate trolling with behavior that is intended to disturb the open exchange of thoughts and ideas. It sounded to me like you had a legitimate point and that you felt like you were making a positive contribution to their blog. Definitely not a troll.

Thanks, Brayden. I feel a little better about it.

Your comment was quite mild and, far from being critical, was hortatory. Without knowing the history of the blog in question it’s difficult to comment but they may have had some bad experiences.

But your comment wasn’t one of them.

Thanks, I do greatly appreciate it. Especially given how I had criticized your blog much more harshly a while back.

Or maybe that’s why you thought this one was so mild. :)

Anyway, I’m gonna chalk this one up to Newberry being easily angered, and will just forget about the whole thing. On the upside, my last comment there wasn’t deleted, so maybe I was unbanned (or maybe Newberry wasn’t paying attention and missed it). But it was also completely ignored.

Well, I know when I’m not wanted. If they don’t want my contributions, that’s their loss. Not that I expect them to miss me.

I’ve been watching that blog for awhile and this is the first time I’ve seen that happen.

This particular “Al” (I think it’s the same one) has been trolling for quite awhile. It looked to me like he didn’t present anything like a stable point of view, but said whatever he thought would help discredit the people he responded to. With oldman he had twice before taken some phrase that oldman used and he claimed that phrase had a specific meaning that oldman was violating, which proved oldman knew nothing about economics/banking/bonds/etc. Oldman however defined how he was using the word and Al didn’t. Oldman was making a claim about how economic reality worked and Al was not. Al was not a contributor, he was only a troll. If anything he added to the groupthink by presenting baseless attacks.

I like them banning Al, though he’ll be back under a new name etc immediately. I expect they got you mostly by mistake; they may have assumed you were an alter ego for Al or something. If it turns out you aren’t banned I expect they’ll pay attention to the substance of your posts — this one post that got deleted quickly won’t be enough to give you a reputation as a troll that people would just skip over.

No, I exchanged a few e-mails with Matt Stoller, Stirling Newberry, and Ian Welsh. It wasn’t by mistake. Stoller even suggested that I apologize to Newberry.

There’s no way they could have mistaken me as an alias for Al. I’ve been involved in long discussion threads there before (you probably remember the one on the Long Tail with Newberry).

[sigh] Sorry. They hadn’t seemed that way before. People surprise me sometimes.

Hi Fling93 - I remember being impressed when you stood up to the troika a month or so ago (was that Stirling’s nonsense about the Long Tail?) and have taken a look around here a few times since then. Good stuff.

I’m frankly sorry that you caught the back end of Stirling’s venom; it’s weird the things that set off the hornet’s nest over there. I can’t tell whether he was so blinded by whatever he was feeling that he lumped all evil dissenters together (as he did later when he attributed Solon’s original comment about his allocations to me) or whether it’s something in particular you said that flipped his switch. He might have also made a mistake in the “heat” of the moment and then refused to admit it.

Naturally, you know already that the comforting thing is that you can stay solvent longer than they can stay irrational over there, so to speak. But it’s true. And once you finish all these business courses, you’ll be in a better position to make a difference in the world if that’s what you want to do. They can make up their own definitions and speculate all they want back at BOP, but I’m not sure it’s going to convince anyone but the people who want very badly to be convinced.

Speaking of making things up, J Thomas, that’s my beef with Oldman in a nutshell. Every time I call him on something, it’s because his statements just don’t line up with what passes for reality anywhere outside his head. That’s fine if he can translate his vision into terms that the rest of us can look at and say “the evidence supports that, he might be right.” If he can’t, I worry about the vulnerable people who trust his advice with their financial futures. That’s all it is. I don’t care if someone’s an amateur or a pro or a man from Mars if they can back up their talk with hard facts. He has never managed to do that when I call him on it. I still think he’s making it all up - the top secret hints, the economic pretensions, the dire implications. You’ve seen what happens on his blog when the veil breaks down.

Meanwhile, we hate the Bush League because they stifle dissenting opinions. I think it’s deeper than that - it’s a pathological inability to recognize that informed dissent is possible. This cripples those of us who like to stay within the realm of quantifiable fact and consensus definitions. The condition apparently is no respecter of partisan loyalties. Best regards and prospects!

Al, you keep talking like those guys are running an investment advice blog. They aren’t. They’re interested in politics, and they mostly don’t give investment advice.

Your stand reminds me of an old econometrics joke. An economist was invited to visit a polish count in the 1920’s, to give him development advice. Their train slowed down at the polish border because the rails weren’t set up to allow fast traffic. They went from a dingy railroad depot in a carriage until the dirt road got too bad for the carriage and then went on horseback. Everywhere there were peasants in the fields doing hand labor. When they got to the castle burly peasants carried them through a courtyard with thigh-deep mud to reach the door. It turned out that the count could not legally teach his peasants to read.

After a royal dinner of venison etc with fine wines, the count asked the economist for his preliminary advice about how to develop his part of poland. The economist pursed his lips in thought, and then said, “The situation is difficult but not impossible. A bold and determined man can still snatch victory, even now. Here is my advice: Sell everything and invest in america.”

These guys are not talking about how investors can profit from the coming economic collapse. They’re talking about how the Democratic Party can profit from the coming economic collapse. It’s a completely different kind of advice. But you seem to have completely missed that.

I’ve seen Oldman shout people down repeatedly now, but it’s never been people who presented evidence. It’s consistently been people who simply disagreed with no evidence. Some of them were people who looked to me ignorant, who simply didn’t know what they were talking about. And some of them were trolls like you. I’d be fascinated to see someone actually argue with him on the basis of quantifiable fact. But so far no one who can do that has bothered to do that. I get the impression that the people who actually know what they’re doing and who disagree with Oldman are too busy dealing with their crisis to argue. It would certainly be interesting to see it happen, though.

I discount his secret information too. I can and do listen to fairly low-level government people who’re willing to tell me stuff, and I get the same sorts of hints he writes about. Like, we’re still busily looking at details of how to attack iran. The people whose job it is to figure that out are hard at work and haven’t let up at all. Does that mean the plan is to attack in August or December? No. It just means the topic is hot and they’re supposed to be ready with the best plan they can make, and the supplies are supposed to be stockpiled. Whether that plan (or some other plan Rumsfeld pulls out of his tonsils) actually gets done, might not be decided until the last minute.

It’s possible Oldman’s sources aren’t any better than mine, but he doesn’t discount them as much. That’s just him. It’s only natural for people who get the secret data third-hand to discount it more than people who only get it second-hand. So I naturally give his secrets less importance than he does. And I keep track of his predictions. In the time I’ve been watching he has one right, none wrong, and several pending. Is there a better way to evaluate secret information? The more he predicts things i wouldn’t have predicted and wins, the more weight I’ll give to his later predictions in the same areas.

So I look at your predictions…. And your data…. And your analysis…. And my conclusion is that so far, you’ve been only a troll. Are there some other blogs where you actually contribute?

Al: I remember being impressed when you stood up to the troika a month or so ago (was that Stirling’s nonsense about the Long Tail?)

Thanks. There were a number of times, including Ian Welsh on trade and Newberry on the Long Tail and the yield curve. One of the reasons I thought of groupthink was that Oldman argued with me on the yield curve saying things that directly disagreed with what Newberry had said. It was like Oldman was unwilling or afraid to disagree with him.

Al: I can’t tell whether he was so blinded by whatever he was feeling that he lumped all evil dissenters together…or whether it’s something in particular you said that flipped his switch. He might have also made a mistake in the “heat” of the moment and then refused to admit it.

Yeah, all of those occurred to me, and it could be a combination of all of the above. I do think it’s likely that “groupthink” struck a nerve of some sort, but that wasn’t my intent.

Al: Naturally, you know already that the comforting thing is that you can stay solvent longer than they can stay irrational over there, so to speak.

Um, I don’t understand what you mean by solvent. Also, I’m not taking any business courses. I took an introduction to macroeconomics course last semester and I’m taking a Political Science course right now. If I go back to school full-time, it’s likely to get a Masters in one of those subjects, and it’s highly likely that I’ll come out of it making a lot less money than I’m making now (embedded software engineer with 12 years of experience).

Al: I still think he’s making it all up - the top secret hints, the economic pretensions, the dire implications. You’ve seen what happens on his blog when the veil breaks down.

I used to think the world of Oldman, but I’ve been quite disillusioned. I still think he’s very intelligent and insightful, but he also seems pretty close-minded and easily angered. I wonder if he’s trying to emulate Newberry, who seems to attract a lot of traffic.

J Thomas: I’ve seen Oldman shout people down repeatedly now, but it’s never been people who presented evidence. It’s consistently been people who simply disagreed with no evidence.

When I’ve disagreed with him, he hasn’t shouted me down. But he has said things that were surprisingly inaccurate and then backed off them when I explained why.

But you shouldn’t shout down anybody. It’s unproductive, tends to escalate matters, and is just plain mean. If someone’s really being a troll, ignore them completely. If someone insults you, ignore it. If someone’s being unreasonable or using fallacies, point it out and ignore anything except the points that need addressing. A lot of the time, they’re only saying that stuff to bait you. I’ve debated plenty of unreasonable people, and taking the high ground tends to work pretty well. It makes them look bad, and if they’ve got any brains, they stop trying to goad you.

As for the substance of Al and Oldman’s debate, I didn’t really follow it much. I don’t know who was in the right there. But Al, you and Solon definitely didn’t take the high road and thus gave them plenty of ammunition to make it look like you were both trolls, whether or not you really were. Of course, the high road didn’t keep my comments from being deleted, so I don’t really know if it would have made a difference. But at least their deletion of a reasonable comment reflects badly on them. At least, I’d like to think so. Maybe none of their readers noticed.

Seems like our comments are not being deleted anymore, but I’m not sure if I should bother following their blog. I know that this is exactly what they want if my groupthink observation was accurate, but if they don’t try and change that, it’s a waste of my time to say things they refuse to listen to. Most blog readers don’t read the comments.

Oh, and J Thomas, thanks for sticking up for me over there. I do appreciate it.

“But you shouldn’t shout down anybody. It’s unproductive, tends to escalate matters, and is just plain mean. If someone’s really being a troll, ignore them completely. If someone insults you, ignore it. If someone’s being unreasonable or using fallacies, point it out and ignore anything except the points that need addressing.”

Horses for courses. It depends entirely on the audience you’re playing to.

I’ve seen audiences that strongly wanted their hero to shout down the bad guys, and if he wouldn’t do it they’d pick a new hero.

It isn’t a good way to run a highbrow debate society. But that isn’t always the goal. I don’t know that oldman even has a goal, he might be going on instinct, but it’s easier to wait and find out than try to get him to change his behavior.

fling93: But you shouldn’t shout down anybody. It’s unproductive, tends to escalate matters, and is just plain mean.

J Thomas: It depends entirely on the audience you’re playing to. I’ve seen audiences that strongly wanted their hero to shout down the bad guys, and if he wouldn’t do it they’d pick a new hero.

But I’d say that looking at it as good guys vs. bad guys is also counterproductive, and teaching audiences this does them a disservice. If they learn to view these discussions purely as an adversarial contest between good and evil, they are much less likely to learn from them (especially if the “evil” side has something insightful to say), and then the debates become little more than mindless entertainment.

Not to mention that this approach makes you a lot more susceptible to groupthink, where you stop voicing any disagreements with anybody on your “side.”

The main advantage of blogs over MSM is that it allows two-way communication. It makes no sense not to leverage that.

Fling, I agree with you 100%, but that’s because I agree strongly with your goals.

People who want a good-versus-evil WWF-type spectacle will want to do things their way. I’ve seen plenty of that in my short times on LGF and RedState etc. The people who set up the blog coule possibly change that around, but if they did they’d lose their audiences and they’d pick up a much smaller audience of people who want to think things out. And somebody else would get the groupthinkers, they wouldn’t just settle down and start questioning things.

There’s room for all sorts of blogs. I don’t like it that the sorts of blogs I like tend to be relatively unpopular, but them’s the breaks.

J Thomas: People who want a good-versus-evil WWF-type spectacle will want to do things their way.

Well, if BOP really wants that, they seem to be in denial about it. Instead, they make it sound like they wish to foster a community of open communication, and they get awfully prickly when it’s suggested that they stifle dissent.

In contrast, most blogs who offer spectacle are unabashed about it, making no apologies for being hostile to opposing views and asking dissenters to go elsewhere if they don’t feel welcome.

At least, that’s my impression. I tend not to frequent such blogs. Waste of time, because you won’t grow or learn from the experience.

Sure, but then if you want a productive discussion you have to do something about the trolls.

One approach that sometimes works well is to have a moderator who moves comments or parts of comments off to new threads, with the claim that they’re “off-topic” where they are. In the mess at BOPnews they could have moved most of Al and Solon’s posts to a thread titled “Why oldman would be a bad investment banker” and the discussion could go on without censorship and without interfering with the other discussions.

That might work, and there are other options as well.

But trying to shout down a troll is probably the absolute worst thing you could do.

Fling93, I agree. It might be quite workable to shout down people who’re willing to be shouted down. It might give one a reputation as a cantakerous old curmudgeon, or as a firm able leader, or something.

But when it’s a trained troll, or even worse a troll with one or more friends or alter egos, it’s stupid to try to shout them down. Better to establish that they have bad will and then simply ban them. Or ban them from each particular thread when they demonstrate that they’re trying to sidetrack the discussion.

Of course, some people simply enjoy arguing with trolls, and for them the optimal choices are much different.

Even worse is when you try to shout down someone you think is a troll, but it turns out that they’re merely somebody who disagrees with you. Then you just look rude and inconsiderate because… well… because you are being rude and inconsiderate.

It’s a bad way to deal with people and a bad way to deal with trolls. Deriving enjoyment from it is hardly an excuse. What if somebody deliberately feeds their readers misleading information? If they do it because they enjoy doing it, does that somehow let them off the hook?

Sorry, I was having a values-free moment.

Clearly, trying to shout down trolls will have the effect that they try to shout you down and the whole thing turns into a shouting match where the only way people can tell you from the trolls is that it’s your blog. Some people might enjoy that kind of thing, but personal enjoyment is the only obvious motive — it isn’t a winning strategy for any of the obvious goals.

Shouting down people who’re willing to be shouted down might win in various contexts. Truly ignorant people might recognise they’re ignorant and study up or go away. People who’re willing to be shouted down might join some (hypothetical) organisation as submissive members. Third parties might see what sort of disagreement is allowed and might adapt — they can go away if they can’t tolerate staying within the boundaries and they can explore the allowed range if they can tolerate it.

I don’t want to suggest that any of this is morally preferable. But we have a long evolutionary history where people have sometimes acted that way and gotten away with it, and so there are some contexts where it’s probably tolerable or even adaptive. One context where it works is the “personality cult” where the leader knows his followers are sincere when he can shout them down and they put up with it. Every now and then an outsider will shout back which proves he’s an outsider. I can’t say whether humanity would be better off without personality cults. I have no way to stop them from happening so it doesn’t exactly matter whether I think they’re a bad idea.

I think the most likely outcome is none of these. People who are shouted at become angry, and it’s extremely hard to get an angry person to change their mind on anything.

Of course, in a personality cult, convincing the world is not the goal. It’s all about the leader’s high degree of personal power over his group. And to achieve this, cults utilize the manipulative effects of groupthink to the max. Dissension is not tolerated at all, and cultists don’t notice this because the cult isolates them as much as possible from dissent. And for any that get through, they will tend to take their leader’s side over the dissenter’s side no matter what the dissenter says (especially if the leader is charismatic or if the cult played a large positive life-changing role for them in the past).

This sorta thing could be going on at BoP at a much lesser degree, but if they took offense at “groupthink”, I don’t think they’ll take too kindly to “cult,” so I wouldn’t recommend mentioning it to them!