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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3332 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 10, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Yes I have mentioned before, its a difficult prompt. Especially if its not something you ever thought about before, like me.

There is also the onerous constraint of making it an effort post that the motte in particular will like. I can go on all day about various intuitions and their nitty gritty details and nuaces about my hobbies of choice, but that wouldnt suffice.

I do wish more people participated. There would have been more (definitelt better than mine) submissions to read and as you mentioned, more people realizing that its hard to write on command, and that might do some work against people thinking they are better writers than they are because they only write about what they like writing about.

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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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