Submission statement: This post was the outcome of a long debate on BlueSky about whether social isolation and the decay of in-person communities should be considered to be revealed preference or not. I decided that rather than continue to talk, I should just write the code and specify the model, which thankfully Gemini lowered the activation energy of to zero. This is a toy model that I'm intending to demonstrate that entertainment can have deadweight loss, especially in small communities.
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Why are you called The Motte?
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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Notes -
Submission statement: This post was the outcome of a long debate on BlueSky about whether social isolation and the decay of in-person communities should be considered to be revealed preference or not. I decided that rather than continue to talk, I should just write the code and specify the model, which thankfully Gemini lowered the activation energy of to zero. This is a toy model that I'm intending to demonstrate that entertainment can have deadweight loss, especially in small communities.
Apologies, this got stuck in the queue as other mods less familiar with your work assumed this was blogspam. I've let it through now!
Especially since there a lengthy gap between the post and the submission statement. I can understand that the others pattern matched in a bad way.
In the future, if you run into issues, please DM. I'll try and sort it out, since I value your presence here.
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