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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2730 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 7, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Disagree again then.

If the most interesting thing about you is a 'sales plan', you aren't interesting. Most work is brain dead easy because most people aren't in the top percent, by definition. There is usually nothing there of interest or of value; unless you are in the arts or the sciences. I'd much rather talk about something other than the rote and routine drudgery people have to do to not die. Almost anything other than that, really.

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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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