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practical_romantic  1yr ago (text post)   3310 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 23, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Anybody else concerned about the amount of downvotes people are throwing around on the site?

Yeah, I don't know what's going on. If I didn't know better, I'd think we gained lurkers changing ships... could it be rdrama? Are they even interested in huge textwalls? Or does the visibility of downvotes encourage spite voting? Or is there a hostile actor with alts? Has JuliusBranson somehow returned?

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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

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