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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   2397 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 3, 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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Maybe a cringe question but is there a place on the Internet that's like whitepills for nerds?

Like /r/wholesomememes is way too normie (and often even openly political, like "my side of this issue won, yay wholesomeness")

And I don't know what /r/whitepill, /r/whitepills/, and /r/thewhitepill were supposed to be but they're all private lmao

Basically just want a place where people worried about some form of doom (whether from WW3, internal takeover of USA, AI, what have you) share well reasoned arguments against doom and why WAGMI

Because my mind is so so biased toward doom, I think it would be healthy to spend a little time in such a place.

I watch youtube videos about yachts, nature and people building cool houses when I feel like that.

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Why are you called The Motte?

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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