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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   740 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 1, 2026

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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ie “if you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” was a favorite discussion topic both on the SSC open thread and on this forum in the early days, and still comes up occasionally.

The problem with trying to profit off of being smart is that

(a) Prices are set by the marginal trader, not by the average. There's a lot of stupid people pushing prices every which-way. It's true that dumb people create what could be opportunity, but other dumb people also ruin the opportunity

(b) Related but different, is there often isn't enough liquidity to exploit your information.

Sort of tangentially, something that comes up a lot of the time in like, any real business I've looked into, is that local competition is crazy and desperate enough to disregard regulation. They get away with it most of the time, but I'm just not comfortable risking six figure fines (or worse) just to make a go at house flipping.

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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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