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EdenicFaithful  Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw  1yr ago (text post)   3139 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 23, 2022

Be advised; this thread is not for serious in depth discussion of weighty topics, this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Does anyone here have an idea how to make good male friends? Doesn’t have to be IRL, online is fine. I don’t feel a burning desire for socialization for its own sake, so going to a local X club would really be pointless. Ideally I would like motte-like friends, but for 1:1 discussion which I find much more interesting than subreddit style discussion. I have tried friend-making subreddits and /soc/. Soc users are generally seriously mentally defective, and redditors are well….redditors. Not to mention that any friend-making space online is really just repurposed as a dating space by horny men, ruining it for everyone. Does anyone have close motte-like friends? How did you make them?

I found a motte-like (almost certainly male) friend by doing a long-term programming project. Since it's online, we mostly talk, and it's mostly talking shop. But, we sometimes talk personal life. It just so happens the project is also a reverse-engineering project, which means the work is already more scientific-method than merely programming.

If you have male-dominated hobbies, are any of them tilted towards high verbal intelligence? Do you like reading a particular obscure philosophy? I recommend a Discord for any of these hobbies, and just start talking. Some individuals might stand out to you. Why does the person have to be male? Or did you specify that as a prediction of the kind of person you like?

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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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