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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1704 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 19, 2025

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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Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

Especially if your problem parallelizes, the answer may be "whatever is easiest for you to write in" plus one or more honking cloud VMs. Consider also writing it in whatever is easiest for you, then having an LLM port it to something else.

If you don't need speed for iteratively developing, it really may be best to not care about speed, then let the thing run for a few weeks.

I've spent a good chunk of the last year running it. Speed actually is limiting, unless I were to rent OoMs more compute than what I own (which I'd rather not; it's for a hobby, not a job).

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This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

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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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