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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2513 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 28, 2024

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?

Still on The Master and his Emissary, slow progress. This book has a way of making one reflect on things he's heard or seen in the past.

The right temporal region appears to be essential for the integration of two seemingly unrelated concepts into a meaningful metaphoric expression. Fascinatingly, however, cliched metaphorical or non-literal expressions are dealt with in the left hemisphere...

I recall George Orwell's (I think?) quip that people were forgetting how to make their own metaphors, and were just using ones that don't have any relation in themselves to the topic at hand or to each other.

Edit: There's a good book thread in the Fun Thread.

I just finished Project Hail Mary and it was excellent. A fun sci fi novel. I had worries at the beginning because "man wakes up on a spaceship with amnesia" isn't typcially a genere I enjoy, but the book really works.

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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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