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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   3226 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 10, 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 going through Milton's Paradise Lost. Has been on the backlog for a while.

Paper I'm reading: Quandt's Dark Participation.

I finished reading The Mossad by Eisenberg Landau that I picked up in a used book store. I’m not entirely sure how accurate it was, but it gave the impression of spy agencies being more like TV than I was expecting- with lots of honey pot traps, kidnapping targets off the street into a tinted van, clever heists to steal blue prints over the course of a year, etc.

I’ve also been listening to The Hail Mary Project and it’s been really good

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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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