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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   3043 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 20, 2025

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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After trying for years, my wife is pregnant with our first. Any advice from the parents of the Motte? Books, bloggers, etc. I know about Emily Oster, but it is challenging to find solid advice for parenting.

Don't buy anything new. I assume you'll probably have family and friends that will gift/loan you a lot, but even if not it's so easy nowadays to find second hand stuff for way cheaper, and it's probably been used liked 10 times total.

I don't have the link, but in some ACX comments a few months back someone linked a blog series on back sleeping for babies. The conclusion was that the evidence for the benefits re:SIDS was extremely weak, while there was some good evidence that back sleeping has quite negative effects in other domains. We've slept our child on front, back and side, but she falls asleep really easily everyway so for us it's been less important, but could be useful when yours arrives

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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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