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Why are you called The Motte?
A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
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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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Notes -
The Washington State Supreme Court did this with education funding in the McCleary case. They found that the legislature was failing in fulfilling the constitutional mandate to fund public education as the state’s “paramount duty” and so imposed fines on the legislature until they “fixed the bug.”
The court wouldn’t actually say what they wanted, just that the status quo was unacceptable. This resulted in many rounds of funding changes and court rejections until the last attempt, which largely removed local school funding, instead putting almost all of the funding into one statewide pot to be redistributed with equal funding per student.
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