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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3175 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 31, 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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How Rationalist (community) Are You survey. Kind of curious how y'all rank. Its an Aella survey of course.

I got "Highrat: 95-99th percentile" I think this is because I like all the blogs, but apparently there are some counterintuitive questions that I took the "rat" side of

75p light rat, I was wishing for it to be lower. I strongly disagreed to that poem and the physics and the nanotechnology question as well.

What’s wrong with the rats?

I don't like their Aesthetics. And on a personality level, they tend to be too neurotic.

I feel like could get along with Robin Hanson and Bryan Caplan not with Yudkowsky, Scott Alexander, and Scott Aaronson; the latter 3 are too neurotic.

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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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