Posted: Mar 23, 2020 2:45 am
Keep It Real wrote:People get it wrong ALL THE FUCKING TIME in my experience, thus my coining of the term "another psychic in our midst." Objectively determining dead-cert intent, without a "confession" to that effect, is point blank impossible, and basically people should bear that in mind before continually waving the shitty end of the stick in people's faces at the drop of a hat. I'm not talking specifically about accusations of trolling here, btw, just imputing dead-cert intent in general. 2c
The likelihood of an assertion regarding intent being correct can be so high that we can safely invoke the "beyond reasonable doubt" dictum. In post #10 Thommo cited one example. If you want to persist in arguing people got it wrong in this particular case, I would like to hear your reasoning.
I can cite another example: A few years ago a new member trolled the fuck out of people at Rationalia. How can we be certain? Well, another member discovered him asking for advice about how to improve his trolling technique in a forum going by the name of "flamewarriors". He explained that he had just joined Rationalia and was not getting the amount of upset he hoped for. And yes, his alias was the same in both forums. I think you can agree that while 100% certainty is unobtainable, the amount it falls short of it can be safely ignored.
That said, I found that all too often accusations of trolling arise for no better reason than that the accused's opinions stink and refuses to give them up.