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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   3642 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 7, 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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I…what? How are you here? Phone internet?

Yes, static, mostly text-only sites like this one don’t use much data, so it’s not a problem for me to participate here. If I want to stream anything or otherwise use the Internet more extensively, I either stay late at work or go to the library. It isn’t a huge imposition given my lifestyle, and it saves me hundreds of dollars per year.

It is funny, but I know people like you EXIST who live mostly 'unplugged,' but it is still pretty surprising to find one in the wild, happily outside of the angry egregore that most of us inhabit.

Eh, I’m here, aren’t I? I’m clearly not that happy.

I will say that I enjoy the absolute bafflement on some people’s faces and in their voices when they learn just how disconnected I am from large sections of modern life. I don’t have home Internet, I don’t have a TV, I refuse to download all but a very few mobile apps, I’m forever forgetting my phone at home or in the car, and these days, I’ve almost entirely given up radio as well. Other than news I pick up from IRL conversations, my connection to the modern outside world is mostly through a handful of websites, including this one.

There are some things I am not happy about in life, but my voluntary semi-seclusion from modern life isn’t one of them.

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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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