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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   1864 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for June 14, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Talking with friends with whom you disagree can create understanding; talking with strangers on the internet creates strife and flame wars.

Yeah, this is really fair. And even with friends, speaking in person versus over the internet makes a difference—giving that extra context gives all sorts of signals that text can fail to convey, and really can help with charitable interpretations.

I've certainly learned all sorts of things on the internet, but it's much rarer to be persuaded when you don't want to be. And I've learned things on the motte as well—people discuss topics that I wouldn't have seen elsewhere. I think that's often what I'm looking for in a comment responding to me—insight, things I've missed, not takes that I could have predicted myself. I think the AAQCs are among the best things about the motte.

often just dismissive one-liners, low-effort commentary that half-makes a point while being maximally personal or inflammatory, without any empathy for other perspectives or attempt to try and understand where I'm coming from.

Have you considered reporting some of the worse comments when you get them? My understanding of the rules is that they would not meet them, and enforcement is probably a good way to improve the norm?

there are viewpoints represented here that I find even more repugnant than many of those that I dislike which are popular, and whose only saving grace is that they aren't popular…But I've become less interested in weird ideologies

Yeah, I can sympathize a lot with this.

It's more the general sense of pessimism and hopelessness that drips from almost every poster, the belief that wokeness or neoliberalism or socialism or right-wing extremism or China or Russia or immigration or Trump or AI will inevitably destroy the world.

Yeah, that's also fair. You seem to be a Christian, the proper response to any of this (well, except maybe AI, if that would actually destroy the world, though I don't know that that's compatible, really, with the second coming) isn't despondency, but the repeated testimony of the new testament is "we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." Recognize whatever difficulties may be coming all of our way (and accurately—neither exaggerating nor minimizing helps), do what you can, but know that this is really only a pilgrimage, not our home.

Anyway, I wish you well on your soft retirement, and hope that it is not a total one.

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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."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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