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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3232 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 6, 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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So, what are you reading?

I'm picking up With and Without Galton, an open access book on Vasilii Florinskii and Russian eugenics, or as the author calls it, 'eugamics' (ie. well-married), as distinguished from Galton's eugenics.

Finishing The Possibility of an Island, which has been mostly excellent. It’s plays with the ideas of Elementary Particles a bit less successfully, but it’s still Houellebecq and therefore still funny and romantic and sad. I’ll be officially finished with the œuvre and slightly heartbroken when I’m done.

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Why are you called The Motte?

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."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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