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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   5546 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 24, 2023

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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What else do you not believe in the existence of?

To some degree some long COVID is psychosomatic. It correlates strongly with political ideology and a minority of people reporting long COVID have no COVID antibodies.

Being sick weakens you. So to some degree some portion of people have long COVID. But also I think many (most?) people suffering from long COVID are imagining it. They truthfully feel down or slow. And they blame it on COVID. But COVID is an unusually mild cold to most people and given that some of these long COVIDers never even had COVID, I think there is much hyperbolic doomerism about it decoupled from the facts.

At this point I doubt long COVID exists in any significant portion of the population, outside of some trivial sense that getting sick makes you feel worse for a while.

Plenty of things, what are you looking for?

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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."

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


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