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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   3335 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 21, 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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One of them went and bought an AR “before prices go up.” Not that he hadn’t been thinking about it anyway. But we chat about shooting, so we talked over the details here, too.

Do we work together? I'd been lollygagging on that purchase for years and finally pulled the trigger.

I suppose it's always possible, but if we had the same line of work, I suspect it would have come up by now.

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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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