In which Wolf opens day 22's door... Watch this episode on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/DOflKhAwqc8
Welcome to the Beware of Wolf Advent Calendar of Bad Thinking. To celebrate the holidays, I'm counting down the days until Christmas with a common type of bad thinking each day, described in 60 seconds. This holiday season, give the gift of good thinking by sharing these videos with your friends!
This is Day 22: "The Motte and Bailey Doctrine"
How do you defend the indefensible? In medieval times, a popular style of castle was to have a walled outer structure of city and farmland (the bailey) and a stronghold tower on a hill (the motte). When the bailey was invaded, the inhabitants would retreat to the motte where it was much easier to repel the invaders. Once that was done, they then reoccupied the bailey.
When used as a rhetorical tactic, someone makes a hard to defend claim (the bailey) like "Astrology is real and the day you were born affects your fate." but if challenged, the astrologer will retreat to their highly defensible motte by saying, "You can't deny that the moon affects the tides, right?" Of course you'd be silly to deny that it didn't-- that would be attacking their motte. So they then return to their bailey: "Well, then of course it makes sense that heavenly bodies influence human affairs."
Some organizations even have their motte built into their very name, like my new charity DON'T KICK PUPPIES. You'll want to donate of course, since you're against kicking puppies, aren't you? Of course, my web site used to openly discuss my radical animal rights agenda of ultimately ending all ownership of animals (my bailey) until all the puppy-kickers out there shamed me into taking it down.
See how it works?
Happy holidays!