Why "troll"? (was Re: What's better about Ruby than Python?)

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Aahz wrote:
>
> Speaking as someone with a well-deserved reputation for abrasiveness
> (nothing approaching yours, but established over more than a decade
> on-line), when someone as obviously intelligent as you persists in
> writing in ways that piss people off, the only likely answers for
> "why?" are "troll" or "insane".
>
Frankly, your list of alternatives is insufficient.  It's never a good
policy to examine someone else's motives by saying, "If they don't fit into
this neat box of mine, they're insane."  Nor do statistics have any
relevancy, i.e. "likely answers."

I'm not going to try to explain things to you unless you can do better.
Meanwhile, I'd suggest looking up a Meyers-Briggs test.  FWIW I am an INTP.
Suggest you zero in on the "T," if you really are interested in explanations
rather than confirming your "insanity" world view.

> Since "troll" implies volition, it's actually less pejorative than the
> alternative.  One definition of insanity: performing the same action
> over and over again, expecting a different result each time.

That definition didn't show relevance the last time either.  Frankly, your
definition sucks rocks.  Get a better one.  It fails to explain all sorts of
insanities, although it might be ok for schizophrenia.  It also overlaps
with all sorts of phenoms that vary, but aren't insanity.

-- 
Cheers,                         www.3DProgrammer.com
Brandon Van Every               Seattle, WA

20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.