DNFTT

Deleted · Post by **Deleted** » Thu Jun 28, 2001 8:57 pm

What does this mean?

Deleted · Post by **Deleted** » Thu Jun 28, 2001 8:58 pm

Originally posted by draven:
What does this mean?

Do Not Feed The Trolls.

In other Words, do not reply to trolls.

Michael

Deleted · Post by **Deleted** » Thu Jun 28, 2001 9:01 pm

I haven't been reading these that long, but from what I gather it means "do not feed the trolls"; In other words, when someone's posting something obnoxious and incendiary (possibly only to get a reaction) one is supposed to ignore them and not give them anything to repond to.
What I am unclear on is whether or not a "troll" is supposed to be faking whatever the obnoxious, incendiary opinion happens to be, or whether this more generally describes over-the-top behavior.
Others please also respond, as I'm kind of checking my own impression here.

Deleted · Post by **Deleted** » Thu Jun 28, 2001 9:02 pm

Originally posted by turtonm:
Do Not Feed The Trolls.

In other Words, do not reply to trolls.

Michael

Thanks. That was my guess but I'd never heard it until I joined II.

Deleted · Post by **Deleted** » Thu Jun 28, 2001 9:55 pm

Originally posted by 4thGenerationAtheist:
What I am unclear on is whether or not a "troll" is supposed to be faking whatever the obnoxious, incendiary opinion happens to be, or whether this more generally describes over-the-top behavior.

Depends who you ask. Based on this thread I would classify 6days as a complete (and utter) troll, based on the fact that he seems more interested in irritating people to get a rise out of them than in debating.

Others would reserve the word for atheists posting as Christians (or vice versa), either to make the other side look bad, or just to get attention. Examples; Sastan, JesusisGod, possibly Eternal.

Deleted · Post by **Deleted** » Fri Jun 29, 2001 3:49 pm

Possibly Eternal?! You must've missed his 10,000th regurgitation of Pascal's Wager.

Deleted · Post by **Deleted** » Fri Jun 29, 2001 3:52 pm

What is a "straw man?"

The term is used many times in this forum, and I've heard someone use it on a news show, but I don't know what it means. Can anyone help?

Thanks,

Brian

Deleted · Post by **Deleted** » Fri Jun 29, 2001 4:01 pm

Originally posted by Hoffma:
Possibly Eternal?! You must've missed his 10,000th regurgitation of Pascal's Wager.

I dunno whether Eternal is for real or not... there's a bloke on Creednet who claims to know someone from Eternal's school, who reckons that he talks like that in real life as well.

So it's just possible that Eternal is some sort of Christian in real life... though he must surely have been consciously playing the fool in at least some of his posts.

Oh and a straw-man is when you deliberatly caricature someone's arguments, and demolish the caricature instead of the real arguments. Like building a straw man, and knocking that over because it's easier than knocking down a real man.

For example "evolution says that the atoms in a patch of mud just happened to fly together in exactly the right way to form a human being. This is impossible, therefore God exists."

Deleted · Post by **Deleted** » Sat Jun 30, 2001 2:42 am

Originally posted by Brian63:
What is a "straw man?"

The term is used many times in this forum, and I've heard someone use it on a news show, but I don't know what it means. Can anyone help?

Thanks,

Brian

A strawman, I think, is saying something like "Bill Clinton had sex with his intern so I'm not gonna vote for Al Gore because he's immoral"
It's trying to make a relationship between two things in which a relationship doesn't exists. As above, the person saw that Clintion did something morally wrong and thus assumed that Al Gore is immoral too.
Another example can be pointing out a mistake a scientist made in a past study in order "prove" that the results of a current study are wrong even though the two studies have little to do with it.

Deleted · Post by **Deleted** » Sat Jun 30, 2001 3:07 am

trunks2k

That is not my understanding of "strawman".

Rather it would be saying something like "since Bill Clinton raped an intern at the point of a gun, I dont think he is worthy of being president".

The first half of the sentence set up a false assumption. If one were to believe that false assumption, then the argument would hold. But the initial assumption was false. I believe that "Strawman" arguments can generally be describes as putting words in your opponents mouth so that they can then be proved wrong.