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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1103 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 15, 2026

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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What fun thing are you doing with AI?

Had it do some research for me on the revolutionary war. Finding out how many people were in counties where a battle took place. One AI gave me a 40-50% of the population estimate. Another gave me 50-60%.

Then had it teaching me some physics, specifically what happens when you tweak the speed of light. I learned that the speed of light is tied in with a bunch of other things, so it probably mostly just breaks the universe as we know it. Or maybe doesn't change anything because everything scales up and down with it.

Years ago I read a comment somewhere (possibility on Reddit) which pointed out that light travels at different speeds depending on the medium through which it's travelling, and so when we talk about the physical constant c, we're not really talking about the speed of light so much as we're talking about the speed of causality. The use of the symbol c was thus a presciently apt one.

I don't know why, but the phrase "the speed of causality" inspires a Lovecraftian sensation of the sublime whenever I think of it.

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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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