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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   2655 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 27, 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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Terms that were popular only in small, socially ostracized circles of internet weirdos and incels are now mainstream.

I still have yet to see "Bayesian", "quokka", "defectbot", "epistemic status" or "toxoplasma" in the Washington Post. Heh.

"Bayesian" has been the hot new word in my (non-rat) part of the internet for the last few years! And now I'm starting to hear rationalist argot in real life, which feels surreal.

I will not be satisfied until young men leaving for the Hock each winter becomes a tradition.

Leaving, but turning around long before they get there. It will be an in-joke, and we get to make fun of the idiots who actually fly to Alaska.

Not gonna lie, gearing up on an absurd amount of survivalist gear for a long winter hike, only to head to the local bar and get shtifaced with the bros, does sound quite fun.

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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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