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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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I think that there's an understated risk to reading a lot of fiction. Because it's all made up it can teach false lessons and prop up self serving narratives.

Non fiction has the advantage that you can learn true things from true events, even if the author is completely out to lunch.

With fiction, you know the author is making it up.

With nonfiction, nobody will believe you that the author is making it up unless they don't like the conclusions. There's no compulsion to report "true events" in nonfiction - compare Zinn's A People's History with A Patriot's History. Both chock full of "true events" narrowly defined, but which true things can you learn? Better never to begin.

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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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