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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   1230 thread views

Transnational Thursday for November 27, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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The configuration "Never fabricate for any reason" in my personal set of instructions (along with "Call me Loretta") doesn't seem to work very well.

Joking about the Loretta.

I put something like that in my custom prompt, and it helps to some measure. But I'm not sure it's introspection capacities are strong enough to even know it's fabricating.

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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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