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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

There's a big prisoner's dilemma thing going on. If you're charitable, and the people you're discussing with are too, you can have better discussions.

If you're operating in an environment like the internet where you can more or less guarantee that there will be one comment based on the the worst possible interpretation of what you said, being charitable in advance just makes things worse for you. You're playing "cooperate" with an endless stream of "defectors". Trolling has always been "defect" in this environment.

Hence the value in having more closed environments for discussion. HN is open enough that people can make throwaway accounts and use them for valid points, and closed enough that the more obvious trolls get downvote-hammered quickly.

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I've found it to be pretty effective to simply not engage with those who keep taking the worst possible interpretations of your (or others) arguments. It sort of simulates an environment where everyone is charitable.

In other words, "Don't feed the trolls"

Tit for tat has always been the solution to prisoner's dilemma. The people who think "prisoner's dilemma" means "I should be wholly and utterly selfish, because it's the logical thing to do" are just idiots who don't understand how cooperation can work over time and repeated trials to build trust.

That's alright sometimes. But there's usually a 100 (or something) readers to 1 posters ratio. If none of the "trolls" are contested that leaves the impression that it's a legitimate opinion.

I don't think the option of "don't feed the trolls" really works in such scenarios.

In those cases you are talking to the audience, not to the trolls. It doesn't matter what the trolls meant; it matters what you say.

> There's a big prisoner's dilemma thing going on. If you're charitable, and the people you're discussing with are too, you can have better discussions.

Privately, I'd very much agree.

However Cardinal Richelieu's quote comes to mind when posting to the internet at large (yes, im counting HN in this):

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

And that is evermore so, with concern trolls and those in mind with being 'wronged' in some way. Because, no matter how charitable you are, there is someone who isn't and will assume the worst. And then you become the brunt of a social media campaign gone awry.

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