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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   2928 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 19, 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?

Still on The Eternal Dissident. Reattempting Isaiah Berlin's The Roots of Romanticism.

I just finished Beyond Cynical and I'm not sure why this isn't a bigger book. It's a great explanation of why we have negativity bias, and seeing it around us, and working against it to be happier. I also just finished Witch King (I love Murderbot and this is her other major series) and I liked it but it lacked the humor of Murderbot.

In lazy comfort food rereading I read Thief of Time (Terry Pratchett) for the first time in years, and it was great, and I'm rereading Scruples and Scruples 2. (70s/80s wealth porn, think Crazy Rich Asians but more episodic and fantasy fulfillment. The book equivalent of a bubble bath in a sunlit bathroom.)

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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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