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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2953 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 16, 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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Just noticed that there's a cool new mod, presumably a bot, posting these posts.

Anyway, I'm college-aged. As I'm imagining is generally the case on the motte, my strengths lie towards intellectual things.

Are there any good professions to look into, where I'll be doing things I'm good at, but where I also would be comparatively unlikely to struggle with job security due to AI in the near future?

Maybe engineering the stuff that humans still have to work on? Improving existing furnace or water heater designs, that kind of thing

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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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