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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   2369 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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So, what are you reading?

I'm picking up Hurewitz' The Struggle for Palestine. It's old but influential, and looks like it has a good reputation.

Also inching through von Braun's Project Mars - A Technical Tale, after the fictional Wernher's superb and subsequently disastrous hearing in For All Mankind.

Hume's Enquiries concerning Human Understanding to brush up on a book I've had a lot of second-hand exposure to but never actually read, and Costin Alamariu's Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy.

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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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