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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   2812 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.

Where did you find that book?

Here. Lots of Progress Publishers books are on the Internet Archive. As far as I know, they're not in print anymore.

Thank you. Is it any good? More insightful than the usual western psychology fare?

Too early to tell, but it's written well and looks effortful.

The main reason I'm reading it is because I want a sense of the ethos of a lost culture. Not really expecting to learn truths about the human condition.

Yes, that makes sense.

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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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