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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   27665 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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After nearly a decade of commenting on this sort of stuff, I don't think there's a lot more to be said about any of it.

True. Which is why the people who comment about HBD are also the people who discovered it like last Tuesday and have all of the same bad takes.

Then random people on the other side pop up saying "my dude, all the races have the same IQ, it's science", apparently having missed the entire conversion or feigning ignorance.

It's Eternal September.

So it gets boring. At first HBD felt exciting because it was "forbidden" knowledge. Now, the HBD thesis seems so obvious and settled that it's not really worth debating. But every September more young rationalists will have to make that journey again, walking over well-worn footsteps.

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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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