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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2431 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 24, 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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True Crime is popular predominantly among women because it is popular predominantly among women, the content creators are designing their products around their female audience.

Sorry but that explains nothing.

Evaporative cooling. You start with a population that is 55/45 F/M, podcasts that cater to women in various ways will do better but turn some men off, it drifts to 60/40, the process repeats with increasing speed.

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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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