David Hume addresses the “trolls” of his time in the first section of his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals:
Disputes with men, pertinaciously obstinate in their principles, are, of all others, the most irksome; except, perhaps, those with persons, entirely disingenuous, who really do not believe the opinions they defend, but engage in the controversy, from affectation, from a spirit of opposition, or from a desire of showing wit and ingenuity, superior to the rest of mankind. The same blind adherence to their own arguments is to be expected in both; the same contempt of their antagonists; and the same passionate vehemence, in inforcing sophistry and falsehood. And as reasoning is not the source, whence either disputant derives his tenets; it is in vain to expect, that any logic, which speaks not to the affections, will ever engage him to embrace sounder principles.
Says Hume as he blindly adheres to his argument.
I have little respect for Hume, but this is a case where the blind pig, Hume, found an acorn.
The remedies to disingenuous argument include:
a) authenticated signaling,
and
b) argument diagrams.
Argument diagrams prevent total con men from subverting formal debate.
Authenticated signaling can be done by professional dedication to academic achievements.
E.g. I argue in favor of anti-realist philosophy of science.
Angry people on the Internet claim that I am not sincere because no intelligent could (they claim) believe in anti-realism.
And then I trot out a long list of the textbooks I have written, all of which are dedicated to showing that Feyerabend and Quine and Martin have convinced me of anti-realist philosophy.
That’s the theory, anyway. In fact I have not written even a single book, much less an academic textbook.
So at the moment, I am reduced to saying, “I can’t prove that I’m a sincere anti-realist, but here are books written by far more accomplished scholars, all of whom are sincere anti-realists.”