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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3575 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 9, 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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I've been suffering from a weird kind of anxiety.

Everything I say, I find myself rephrasing 5 times to make sure it's factually correct. In that, all edge cases and interpretations are covered. And feel similar anxiety when others say things without much care. This has lately made it impossible for me to comment anything on the motte at all, or speaking rather difficult with most people except those who I can explain all the terms and conditions to, and have it understood by them.

I don't know if this is OCD or what.

For what it's worth, I find all your comments reasonable and often enough contain something I can grow from. Though I get the instinct to catastrophize about reception and struggle with it myself.

It's not a negative reception that deters me, it's failing some kind of commitment to the "truth".

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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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