I think we live in time when even the most original ideas out there were probably already written by someone on the Internet. Especially if they make sense or are important.
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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."
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Notes -
I agreed with the gist of the article, but I can't help but wonder if this topic was 99% covered by LW at some point.
The Dark Arts post (and others like it) covers this topic pretty well.
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LW is so big that the odds are close to 1 that its been covered there
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I think we live in time when even the most original ideas out there were probably already written by someone on the Internet. Especially if they make sense or are important.
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I think this cluster of posts deals with it, though not from an endorsing perspective. There may still be more I haven't thought of.
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