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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3191 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 14, 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 Kirilenko and Korshunova's What is Personality, from the USSR's Progress Publishers. It's a somewhat dizzying but fascinating application of dialectical materialism to individuals.

About to start Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, having previously enjoyed adored his novel Never Let Me Go.

In between reading full-length books I've been reading some of the Father Brown stories. So far I've read "The Blue Cross", "The Secret Garden" and "The Queer Feet". They're okay.

I think Remains of the Day is even better. One of my top 3 or 4 novels.

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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."

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


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