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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   4675 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 26, 2023

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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I believe lying is quite effective, and there's no need to be consistent. On one of my longer-running Reddit alts, I've claimed to live in at least a dozen different cities, none of which I've ever actually been to. And made up a bunch of careers, family situations, hobbies, etc. Let any attacker read them all and try to guess which if any are real and which are fake. The bonus of being highly inconsistent is if you slip up once, there's no way for any attacker to know that that detail is real versus all the others.

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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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