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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   4744 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 24, 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 still on Paradise Lost. So far God isn't coming off well and Jesus sounds harebrained. On the other hand, Satan seems to have unfortunate ideas about what to do with humanity, which feels personal.

Paper I'm reading: Magnus' Science and Rationality for One and All.

Slowly working my way through McGilchrist's The Master and his Emissary. It's about the brain hemispheres, and how current Western society is very imbalanced. We use the left hemisphere too much, which inhibits the right hemisphere.

It's a pretty long/dense book. Enlightening though.

No, I'm not familiar with Jaynes or with the Debt book. Intriguing thought though.

There might also be a relation to the broad society swings of culture in terms of art, thinking and literature? From the enlightenment to romanticism, etc. New technologies might promote more analytical or rationalistic thinking (the printing press, the internet). I haven't looked into this at all, it just popped up in my head now.

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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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