And I think its more important to not engage in the act of trolling than it is to police language around trolling. When they engage in the activity of trolling, we need to do so. We can soften our language around it so things ‘seem’ nicer, but this is just fussing at the edges. Fundamentally, if we see or identify trolling behavior, people engaging in bad faith; simpering at the edges about who called what is to derail the point that someone is acting in bad faith (even if they aren’t aware of it).

We have a moral responsibility to not give charity to those in violation of good faith, and that is far more important than civility. A civil society isn’t possible when we fail to uphold the social contract.

So here is the original post again:

I think it would be good to put a definition for what trolling is that the community can agree upon. I also think there are many users who don’t recognize that the behavior they are engaged in is a form of bad faith trolling.

Because they have the agreement of the majority, they make a tacit assumption that they are acting in good faith. I think Bishop 2012, “This is why we can’t have nice things at scale” is a good starting point for understanding how this kind of group think bad behavior emerges.

For example, user is engaged in an almost permanent state of sealioning. Its like, actually a bit amazing how they do it. And I don’t think they are doing so in intentional bad faith (or at least, they don’t think of themselves as engaging in bad faith behavior), in spite of the fact that they are almost perpetually trolling. Its that a cultural norm of abuse and trolling has been established in an effort to diminish specific views people disagree with.

Because of this, I think there is only so far a “trolling” ban can take us, because fundamentally, to not be trolling (or engaged in some other kind of bad faith argument/ behavior), you actually have to engage with the points the other party is making, on their terms. If we want better discussions here, we have oblige a set of cultural norms that make that possible in the first place, the principal of which would be to attack the other persons argument and evidence, not their person. To stop the abusiveness and trolling, we actually have to shift the culture of the community, because right now, the majority of the community is not engaging in good faith, and and they probably don’t know that they aren’t. I think if we could come up with a short list of maybe 8-12 examples of the major fallacies and types of trolling to pin to the side bar, keeping in mind that most users probably aren’t aware they are engaged in them, call people out on them when we see it, and stand up a few points above the rules teaching people “how” to engage in good faith, we can try to reset the cultural norm to actually be make arguments that are grounded in fact and evidence based where possible, and that this would go a long way to increase the overall rate of civility.

At no point did I call them a troll. I said that they were engaged in trolling behavior.

Now when they gave us that nice example, I think at that point calling them a troll is fair game, because they now positively engaged in the behavior that was previously identified as trolling.

And yes, I did call them out as a troll in the second response, because, well, thats what they were doing. In doing so, they made the central thesis of my first point self-evident: They aren’t aware of their own behavior. They went right into their trolling behavior; as such they are a troll. There is nothing wrong with calling something by its name. If we’re going to be more concerned about the manner in-which we call out bad behavior than we are the bad behavior itself, well we’ve lost the thread entirely at that point.

If he can show me it, I’d be happy to address.

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We had that conversation. We were told to shut the fuck up and row; if you do we’ll give you the platform. We shutted the fuck up, and we rowed, and we got the platform and we got him into office. Everything that Joe Biden gets to take credit for is because to get the progressive caucus, he made a deal to clone the progressive platform. And it worked! It was a deal well made. Yes, they ratfucked our guy twice. Oh well. We plugged our noses and did what we had to do.

Biden also, at that time, said he was running as a 1 term “transition candidate”. It was how he was able to get commitment from people who really did think he was too old (and he was, but whatever, we needed to beat Trump).

But you couldn’t get MSM or CNN to remind people of that point if your life depended on it. This isn’t the election of 2020 and Biden is basically offering the voters jack fucking shit, because what he offered in 2020 wasn’t his to offer in the first place.

Like, I think we’re all still trying to figure out this weekend and what it does to the calculus, but…

By refusing to have a serious conversation about Bidens viability as candidate starting 8 months ago, the astroturfers/ mainstream media, RW democrats seem to have pretty much guaranteed us a Trump presidency.

By sticking with Biden, both before the debate and after, you’ve doomed us all.

Maybe the first time we wished a Republican would have leaned just a little more to the right.

Yeah I think the most difficult aspect of this prediction would be how polarization has impacted the ability for anyone to cross, say, a 45% threshold?

I just don’t think it matters to any likely Democratic voter that Trump improves his image or is gaining sympathy. Likewise, I still don’t think any Trump voter is going to ever go vote for Biden.

Its still all about turnout, which is what the ABWD crowd has never been able to understand: that its not about what they think, its about if people are interested or not interested in showing up the polls. And, interestingly, that kind of information won’t show up in polls of “likely voters”, because the people who are responsible for the departure between polling and elections aren’t likely voters. So its bad enough that Biden is polling as abysmally as he is, but its also an imperfect metric in that it doesn’t predict enthusiasm/ likelihood to actually register and vote.

I have Biden at a less than 5% probability of winning based on my date dependent polling-probability which uses the under/over polling performance metrics from last cycle. I haven’t updated it to Biden’s new, lower polling data, but if people are interested I can get around to it some time this week.

Bets on Trumps post convention/ Post ass. bump?

Biden and Harris both saw a 6 point bump post conv in 2020. Trumps polling that cycle stayed about the same (his approval then was about the same as Bidens current approval, in the 30s).

Another big one was Gore’s 2000’ bounce. 16 points.

Then of course there is the famous Clinton bounce of upwards of 30 points.

Of course we also have to consider the layer in the current news. Reagan, after the assassination attempt, saw a 20 point bump in approval, which was fairly sustained, for almost 3 months.

Its not unrealistic to think that Trump might walk out of this week into a 15-20, maybe even 25 point bump in approval/ polling after this week. Prior to this weekend, the entire was one of appealing to independents, undecideds, less likely to vote.

Dee oh double Gee

I’m very “first-hand” aware.

Did you even click the link?

Adam Smith. On record basically stating that party insiders rigged the nomination against Bernie because he was clearly running away with it in 2020. 2016, we have a literal supreme court decision telling us that the DNC rigged the 2016 primary against Bernie, and that its ok for parties to rig their nominations. He was polling at +15 against DJT and the DNC chose “middle path” pragmatism to their loss. You put idealistic candidates out there and you win elections.

The burden of evidence is on you at this point.

Yes, I agree with that. However, since then the success of that strategy has waned significantly.

I just don’t agree with this. The DNC has been waging a war against idealism and against progressives since it began in earnest in 2015. Idealism is the only thing that can save the Democrats right now, but core DNC, pro-business, neo-liberal Democrats don’t get their power from it, so they opposed it with more energy than they’ve ever been able to muster against the actual “right” in this country. This is them having “flipped” AOC from that which got her into power to that which gets them into power.

Bernie was polling at +15 to Trump in 2016. That was the power of idealism. Take this clip of Adam Smith from his recent CNN interview (timestamp 3:00). Adam Smith, one of the most corporate of the corporate Democrats making the point that they basically had to rat-fuck the primary to stop Bernie Sanders from winning. This is the quiet part outloud. Idealism works on the left. It takes the entire institution of the DNC working against an idealistic candidate to stop them.

Idealsim works and I see little to no evidence that middle path, pragmatic approaches to electoral-ism are effective on the left or the right ( for the period starting very early at 2008, getting its footing strongly in 2016, at least before 2024). Pragmatism is a weak political strategy in this political climate and I see no evidence to the contrary.

What you see from AOC is her capitulating to the party structure and internal party politics. This started in 2021 when she capitulated on internal party reform with Pelosi post DJT. AOC’s power has shifted from being primarily based in grass-roots organizing to being primarily based on the structure of the party. Any one who’s power extends from party structure is always going to tilt towards strategies that keep that structure in place. If you have data showing that moderation is winning elections (left or right), happy to discuss.

Maybe you just don’t get the relationships or understand how philosophy maps to effectiveness, but to be clear, idealistic organizations can and have been highly effective at making political changes. The DSA/ Our revolution/ JD are great examples of this. I know you think you are making a distinction here, but like, you are not fully correct in this. The idea of taking idealistic stance is an effective way to get things done, I mean, its how the DSA got AOC elected in the first place. She used the uncompromising idealism as an argument that helped get her elected. It really works.

AOC could never have won her 2018 election as a pragmatist. Time will tell if this ends up being an effective strategy.

You are making the assumption that pragmatism is inherently better or more effective at capturing political power, which I’m disagreeing with. All of the major power shifts in the previous decade (say, 2015 forward) have resulted as a direct extension of embracing idealism. Specifically, we did see a shake up within the DNC with progressives in 2016, 18, and 20: progressives expressing a clear and distinct idealistic vision of something very differently than what we have/ had.

Likewise, you saw it on the right with Trump, and the rise of the alt-right, where voters flocked to candidates who were “uncompromising” in their views. They’ve built a huge political movement around that idealism, misplaced, distorted, scary, white nationalist idealism. But an idealism none-the-lessor.

For both parties, you can go even further back to the Tea party, and Obama’s 2008 campaign for more examples of how a commitment to idealism gets you into power: this is a great example, because where the tea party stayed committed to their idealism, they continued to grow in terms of power and getting their agenda done (see project 2025); Obama abandoned the idealism of his campaign for what I would call the best modern example of political pragmatism, Obama’s governing style for his first and second terms.

For Obamas pragmatism, he barely got heath-care done. For the Tea Parties idealism, they were effectively able to shift the entire political hegemony of the entire right-wing political apparatus of the country.

The data suggest to me that in an age of populism, idealism as both campaigning and governing political philosophy is far more effective. And if AOC is retreating from her former identity as idealist, this will cost her. She doesn’t get power from being a moderate/ pragmatist. She gets power through idealism.

I’m not really arguing for or against DSA, but they were important for AOC’s first run. Critical even. I am making an argument in favor of idealism; that pragmatism is not effective at gathering or wielding power in the currently political hegemony we find ourselves in.

Its about weighting. You take in many many opinions and you weight those where the prior maps more correctly to the posterior, then take the average. Weights can be positive or negative, and might be useful in either case. Its why I stick with dunces like you. I can apply a negative multiplier to your expressed opinions about what will happen and it better informs my prediction of future states.

I can basically take your view, look at whatever the opposite of it is, and use that to predict the future.

Thats just not true. PugJesus is an ad-hominem machine and ya’ll are as dense as yesterdays oatmeal when it comes to politics.

I made a point about how both Bernie and AOC have shifted politically and @pugjesus couldn’t not do a personal attack. But once they does, gloves are off, because he’s actually a fucking idiot when it comes to politics. Like literally couldn’t distinguish his ass hole from a hole in the ground. Dont fucking hire them for your campaign: you will fucking lose. His opinions don’t predict future states of the world. And they knows that. If you want to do politics and do it well, you have to be on the right side of things to begin with. Being a jonny-come-lately gets you nothing.

Take it back to the article. The DSA is an organization of idealistic socialists. OF COURSE they would rescind their endorsement. She hasn’t show sufficient support, and so what if you think that doesn’t matter. Its fine that you think that doesn’t matter. But you aren’t DSA. The point is that it matters for the DSA, an organization that made a huge fucking difference in getting her elected when it mattered and she had no power: 2018.

This inability for people to separate their identity from what happens in the world around them is why you are all so fucking bad at this.

Its that your model of the universe is wrong and you dont seem to care. You only care if it predicts in reverse, which is functionally useless.