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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   2697 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 14, 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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Key search terms "stylometry" and "social media":

Using publicly available data, our best model, a combined temporal-linguistic one, was able to correctly match the accounts of 31% of 5,612 distinct users across Twitter and Facebook.

Does sub 50% accuracy impress (scare) you?

Yes, because the baseline for "randomly guessing" is 1/5612 ("twitter user @fluffyporcupine matches this specific one of the 5612 facebook users"), not 1/2 ("twitter user @fluffyporcupine is/is not the same user as facebook user Nancy Prickles").

Doesn't scare me for personal reasons -- I'm trivially identifiable, you don't need to resort to fancy ML techniques. But if you're actually trying to remain anonymous, and post under both your real name and a pseudonym, then perhaps it's worth paying attention to (e.g. spinning up separate throwaway accounts for anything you want to say that is likely to actually lead to significant damage to your real-world identity and doing the "translate to and from a foreign language to get changed phrasing without changed meaning" thing).

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This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


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."

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


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