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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   3621 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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In what way? I don’t know of anyone who takes the idea literally in the sense that they think that there’s a literal perfect [object] in heaven that Al, similar things on Earth resemble. On the other hand the concept is used quite a lot in mathematics as mentioned below and in law. We have legal definitions of all sorts of things which is why tomatoes are vegetables in a legal sense. It probably happens in CS as well.

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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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