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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3830 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 18, 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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...and for people who read way too much and who have worked through most of the backlog.

Nope not me.

Me neither, unironically. Got a little bored of swords and space ships and started with Russian literary fiction. Just Dostoevsky, Tolstoi and Chekhov seem to be a life-long project...

Yeah I read those guys in High School and College because it seemed like The Thing To Do and so on but these days I just switched to lowbrow book-crack since I have to read so much non-fiction for work.

Ideally later in my career I'll switch back.

Last week, a lady at work asked me to read The Brothers Karamazov with her. Perhaps we could get some Motte book club action going.

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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, 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."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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