From: Lisa Williams lisa@eroicafans.org
That's about the size of it. Of course, both types are out there, and it can be difficult to distinguish the "willfully irrational" from the "involuntarily irrational" because the former often imitate the style of the latter, sometimes quite effectively. (After some 19 years online, I find that they all look very much alike anyway.) However, the best
response
is the same in either case, so there's no need to make extensive attempts at diagnosis unless you really like that sort of thing.
Furthermore, when one comes to suspect that the latter might well be the case, there develops an ethical imperative not to aggravate the situation further, no matter how great the degree of provocation, past, present or future.
Neil