site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  11mo ago (text post)   3995 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 30, 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.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

If you were able to meet your past selves with perfect recall of yourself at the time, how far back (what age) could you go without feeling cringe at and still be satisfied with your character/intellect/overall decision making?

To be honest I feel blessed that I figured out my moral calculus and wasn't an asshole pretty early on. The backbreakingly cringe moves stopped almost completely by 15, and I think I was decently cool from then onward. The only exception was taking one particular breakup really hard and is the only major change I'd make about what I've done since then.

Since you asked the question I think you should get an opportunity to answer it as well.

It's actually tough to answer for me. I had a very undeveloped sense of self, and vividly remember looking in the mirror when I was 8 and thinking I had no discernible features. It was only around the age of 10, I "woke up" and started taking agentic action and doing well in school (the academic part apparently mirrors my mom's development). I had multiple personality shifts over puberty and always thought past me to be naive, but current me doesn't consider that cringe, just slow learning, and to be fair I always craved for a mentor. If I could transchronal converse like @cae_jones imagines, past me would be highly impressionable and malleable until age 20, which is when I experienced depression and stopped thinking past me was strictly inferior.

I decided to ask here for largely unrelated reasons; someone I know is close to college age and I was wondering if he'd ever regret his cavalier attitude to everything, but then I started suspecting the age other people would respond with would be all over the place.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


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.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats