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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   3976 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.

Very little, truth be told.

Les Trois Mousquetaires, in public-domain audiobook format (librivox). Mostly just to keep my French from escaping me altogether, but also because I genuinely enjoy the genre. I think I get about half of what's being read. It'd probably be a better idea to actually read the text.

Mistress of Mistresses, by E.R. Eddison. It's slow going so far, very much unlike The Worm Ouroboros. I trust Eddison to know what he's doing, so I'll keep at it.

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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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