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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   3392 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 2, 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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So, what are you reading?

I'm picking up Kendi's How to Be an Antiracist. It has been on the backlog for a while as an influential book, but a careless thought has finally given me a reason to be interested: I wonder what impact wokeness has had on highly successful minorities.

Paper I'm reading: Thiele's Things Fall Apart: Integrity and Visibility in Democratic Liberal Education.

Recently read Blindsight and it's sequel Echopraxia, and was immediately struck with flashbacks to Eclipse Phase; apparently Blindsight was a big inspiration for the game.

Blindsight has aged incredibly well for sci-fi from pre-2010. I highly recommend reading it; it's freely available, the audiobook is good, and it even has a short film that functions as a trailer https://youtube.com/watch?v=VkR2hnXR0SM

(The events of the book are presented in reverse order in the trailer).

Blindsight was a bit tough for me to get into. I think Watts went a touch too abstract with his plot and it was something I felt I had to force myself to finish.

On the other hand, Solaris by Lem conveyed the same idea of the absolute alien nature of non-human intelligence in a very evocative and beautiful way.

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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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