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naraburns  nihil supernum  11mo ago (text post)   3992 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.

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The motte is not contrarian enough or only on few or surface topics. I continuously see ad-nauseam people here be blind to many mainstream mental attractors that trap their mind and either distort their thinking process or even make them incousiously abandon the thinking process altogether, like a brain deactivation.

Besides the level of effort, caring, cognitive flexibility and most importantly intellectual genuine curiosity is appaling, I once wished this website to be the only place on the internet where I could meet my peers but alas I am long past this delusion.

Which mainstream mental attractors would those be?

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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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