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naraburns  nihil supernum  2mo ago (text post)   Edited 2mo ago   4459 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for February 2024

This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).

As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.

These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.

We also had the problem with the database earlier this month, so some of these comments aren't available in their original context. However I am reposting the comments themselves below; it's not a perfect solution, but in various ways it beats the alternatives I could think of. That said, if you find any errors in need of correction (misattributed comments, for example) please feel free to @ me. The number of copy/paste errors I made in the process of trying to put this together is... not small.

Contributions Outside the Main Motte

@gattsuru:

Contributions for the week of January 29, 2024

@Southkraut:

@Rov_Scam:

Contributions for the week of February 5, 2024

@TitaniumButterfly:

@Folamh3:

@FCfromSSC:

@RandomRanger:

@mitigatedchaos:

@felis-parenthesis:

@100ProofTollBooth:

@FarNearEverywhere:

Contributions for the week of February 19, 2024

@BoneDrained:

@ZRslashRIFLE:

@curious_straight_ca:

@Capital_Room:

@fishtwanger:

@cjet79:

@SecureSignals:

@RandomRanger:

@WhiningCoil:

@SlowBoy:

Contributions for the week of February 14, 2024

@cjet79:

@FCfromSSC:

@HlynkaCG:

@Walterodim:

@SaltCheck:

@screye:

@Shrike:

Contributions for the week of February 26, 2024

@DTulpa:

@Spookykou:

@ControlsFreak:

@gattsuru:

@Chrisprattalpharaptr:

@100ProofTollBooth:

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I prefer a zoomed in view of religious technology in which the details are subtle and difficult to get right. There are interesting thoughts in a post to /r/neology claiming that Islam and Marxism are both examples of a certain kind of thing, more specific than religion or ideology (and asking r/neology to invent a word for it)

The central text must hit

the sweet spot in the vague/clear trade-off for maxim memetic potentency.

Look at how revered and celebrated texts work socially. They need to be clear enough to provide rallying cries and ideals that are solid enough for people to get behind them. They need to be clear enough that it seems legitimate to punish people for breaking the rules or disputing the teachings. And yet such clarity is the other side of the coin from rigidity.

A revered and celebrated text can only live a long life if it has a certain amount of vagueness. When times change, society needs new meanings. If the text is amended, the process scrubs off the patina of age, and invites further amendment. The text should have enough wiggle room for re-interpretation without literal change. A text also need powerful defenders to promulgate it and censor rival texts. The text must meet their needs. Their varying needs. The text should have enough wiggle room for those with power to re-interpret it to their advantage.

So I agree with you that the religious technology works by insisting that the text is 100% true and cannot be altered. But that is a tricky constraint.

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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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