I would highlight @FiveHourMarathon (I don't recall his reddit username) as a great representative of themotte's ability to attract intelligent right-wingers. We've had some strong disagreements, but I always appreciate his input. There are certainly ways he deviates from the conservative mainstream, but in most ways I think he's representative of who
It was an honor just to be nominated, but I can't help but feel that naming me as your favorite right-winger is rather like an MSNBC fan naming Joe Scarborough as her favorite Republican. That is to say, I can't fight off right-wing as an accusation, but I certainly couldn't claim it as a laurel either given my generally degenerate morals by right-wing standards.
Scott Alexander, for all his criticisms of the left's approach to the culture war, is a polyamorous atheist living in the Bay Area; of course his allegiance is to the blue tribe, even if by their standards he's a heretic.
What is widely perceived as right-wing tolerance of left-wing heretics is more just right-wing retreat. I recently attended a local Republican candidates event, and it is immediately obvious that the conservative morality police are in full retreat; orderly retreat to a greater or lesser extent for each issue or individual. One of the proposals being forwarded over and over was that all public school LGBTQWERTY issues should be shuffled into an elective course that students could take with parental permission. This is a reasonable, and fairly libertarian!, compromise position: people who want their kids to learn this stuff can have them take the class, people who don't want their kids in that class can avoid it. But I'm old enough to remember the Republicans on the school board when I was a young teen trying, repeatedly, to ban the Gay Straight Alliance club from the high school. Two decades ago the position was that students outside of class should not be allowed to talk about Gay issues on campus; now that the war has been lost, they're just hoping to keep it out of English class.
Out of the handful of people there, we had multiple open (married) homosexuals, and Hispanic candidates. If one has a longstanding commitment to a certain format of gay rights or racial tolerance, then as Chicano activists in Texas used to say: We didn't cross the border, the border crossed us.
There are definitely low-effort sneers and very silly comments full of uncharitable takes and extreme nonsense. I try to ignore those, but sometimes they do suck me in and I end up arguing for 3 hours over whether 6,000,000 +- 1,500,000 people dying in gas chambers and hard labor camps is still a genocide. It is.
This is what lends the critique of The Motte it's validity, I don't really enter the culture war roundup thread here, just check what the self posts have to say, because whenever I enter the culture war thread I get bogged down by someone who ardently holds a very controversial opinion, and lacks the eloquence or intelligence to properly defend that argument.
The smartest red tribe enclave on the internet still has a reason to exist, as someone on reddit said: "I would still go there just to see what the intelligent right-wing position on this issue is." The current Motte fails to live up to that standard.
The smartest red tribe enclave on the internet still has a reason to exist, as someone on reddit said: "I would still go there just to see what the intelligent right-wing position on this issue is." The current Motte fails to live up to that standard.
You might be right that it doesn't live up to that standard, but the example you quoted does not provide an argument for that. Just because a place allows some people to dabble in revisionism or denialism, doesn't mean you don't otherwise get good arguments from a particular side there.
Well just look how genuinly retarded the other two answers to my post are. I wrote that I no longer enter the culture war thread, because too often there are low quality shitflingers inside, i.e. the density of people who do not contribute to the discussion yet engage with it anyway is too high for my tastes. The two critiques to that? "The existance of low quality contributors does not exclude the existance of high quality contributors" (no shit, it is about how proportional they are, every page will have both) and "As I don't use the website my criticism of it is irrelevant." (I stopped using the bulk of the website because of the criticism...). In the spirit of good grace I have to add here that the second response is vastly more retarded than the first one.
I am not actually sure where I go nowadays if I want a smart right wing perspective, I used to lurk another forum where a few full blown nazis were around due to extremely lax moderation, but some of them were wicked smart, but I don't go there anymore for various reasons, mainly that it was too addicting. I guess I just read books of individual conservatives I respect now, I havn't found a place where their wheat accumulates, too much chaff everywhere.
Westernman.org is an interesting rabbithole I found on 4chan's /lit/, kind of a Platoist/Aristotelean new coat of paint for the alt right, but they don't seem to have a forum yet.
I know you are just trolling but for the peanut gallery here
I don't really enter the culture war roundup thread here
is different from
I no longer enter the culture war thread
so, good job on moving those goal posts there, but in general the Culture War thread is the bulk of the content on the site, even if you don't like it.
f3zinker
Its A/B testing all the way down
Etw0 1yr ago
Well just look how genuinly retarded the other two answers to my post are.
You would get responses just about as retarded as those anywhere else on the Internet. And infinitely more retarded ones as well.
The crux of the matter is the retardedness really stands out when you are in disagreement. Similarly weak arguments, missing the point, etc; are forgiven when they are committed by tribe members.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
Etw0 1yr ago
Well just look how genuinly retarded the other two answers to my post are.
Okay, so like, I just had a discussion with someone about the difference between saying "You're an idiot" and "Your argument is idiotic." Generally, the latter is just enough veneer of civility to let pass, even though we understand that functionally it pretty much means the same as the first statement.
Escalating to "genuinely retarded" is just dialing it up too much. Not because we prohibit the so-called "r-slur", as reddit calls it, but because you're making it as obvious as you possibly can that you're calling other posters retarded. You can criticize their answers as low quality, but don't take swipes like that.
No offence mate, but your username is unfamiliar. I don't remember seeing you getting bogged down arguing with anyone, and you don't have any links to evidence of your issue. Without a reason to believe that you know what you are talking about, people won't be able to empathise with you and they won't believe you know what you are talking about. Maybe you could link your reddit history? If it won't make you too easy to identify.
So blue tribers are retreating to their enclaves, and red tribers to theirs, while the grey folks (I love you, boo kiss) are rather being forced to pick a side. Scott Alexander, for all his criticisms of the left's approach to the culture war, is a polyamorous atheist living in the Bay Area; of course his allegiance is to the blue tribe, even if by their standards he's a heretic.
I grow increasingly confident about my claim that insofar as the color tribes exist, the gray tribe surely doesn't. It's just "blue tribe", expect, basically, super duper blue every which way. Not just urban, but chiefly concentrated in the citiest cities available. Not just secular but - as a rule - atheist/agnostic expect with a surprising interest in Eastern religions. Not just living in a post-Sexual-Revolution culture, but one big polyamorous cuddle pile. And so on.
The thing is, precisely, that the "gray tribe" is so super blue it actually alienates them from "regular" blue tribers, making them the folks that your regular middle class liberals can point to and laugh: "Whoa, look at those weirdoes!" Lots of commentary like that when people have discussed the FTX scandal, for instance. It's this alienation that frees them from the comfy social sphere that underlays the blue tribe attachment to general blue politics, taken as what all smart and moral people obviously believe as a matter of course, and leads them to potentially explore other political ideologies and avenues. (Of course, that's not the only necessary factor, there's plenty of weirdoes who largely stick with some version of more conventional blue politics.)
Sorry for late response, just finding this while reading quality contributions list.
I find it hard to believe grey tribe doesn't exist.
There might be some super blue tribe group, but I never thought of them as grey tribe.
To me the grey tribe is the anti-tribe, or the tribe-less outcasts. The Matt Parker and Trey Stones of the world. The serial contrarians that can't help but feel incorrect when they agree with everyone around them.
I don't want to laude then, I consider myself grey tribe, but not with any pride. Instead I think my brain might be broken, or I'm missing a fundamental part of human psychology. I can't have sports teams I cheer for, I can rarely feel the energy of a crowd, I can't connect with any tribe, and I have no loyalty to any group of people.
When shown divisive personas like Trump I just have to shrug and say "I don't get it". I don't get the love or the hate.
My mother and sister are blue tribe, my father and brother are red tribe. I know what both sides look like. Neither side would claim me, and I wouldn't fit in either way.
Maybe I'm not this "grey tribe" that people discuss, but I strongly believe that society is not fully divided into a binary red and blue tribe.
insofar as the color tribes exist, the gray tribe surely doesn't. It's just "blue tribe", expect, basically, super duper blue every which way.
Fully agreed. "Gray tribe" is like the cringey "Class X" chapter in Paul Fussell's book about the American class system; it's mostly a way for the people reading to feel smugly superior to the rabble who haven't broken free from their class origins/tribal behaviors. Fussell seemed concerned with separating himself from "uncultured" "embarrassing" middle classes while his supposed "Class X" was extraordinarily middle class, just like the people here who are embarrassed by Team Blue and say they are "Gray tribe". I am embarrassed by them too! But I don't pretend that I am something else just because I'm good at math or vote Republican.
The grey tribe is definitly more red-accomodating than the wider blue tribe. I am a Christian, and rationalist-adjacent spaces are pretty much the only space where I sometimes feel like fencing against atheists and doing a very mild form of proselytising, in other blue tribe circles that would be pearls before swine. (Matthew 7:6)
Yes, samharris and redscarepod have strong blue tribe identity at x63.78 and x17.64 respectively. But there is also truechristian (right wing christian sub) at x10.67, jordanpeterson at x8.58 and catholicism at x6.52. For not explicity Christian red tribe associated subs there are lockdownscepticism at x10.42 and goldandblack at x7.20. Also stuff like menslib at x11.54 and moderatepolitics at x8.54. Neoliberal at x10.00. Classical right wing reactionaries are underreprestented, but there seem to be quite a few conservative Christians, classical liberals, neoliberals and centrists around next to the blue tribers in the grey tribe (although neoliberals are probably blue tribe, hard to tell since left wingers hate them so much).
I tried listening to them. Besides listening to the very peak of urban millennial irony poisoned women, I don't get it. How do have a fan base? What's the point?
Neoliberal I wouldn’t include with red tribe spaces. That sub is full fledge Democrat establishment now. It’s not your Milton Friedman neoliberalism. It’s basically Hillary Clinton supporters who are online too much,
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
Etw0 1yr ago
The grey tribe is definitly more red-accomodating than the wider blue tribe. I am a Christian, and rationalist-adjacent spaces are pretty much the only space where I sometimes feel like fencing against atheists and doing a very mild form of proselytising, in other blue tribe circles that would be pearls before swine. (Matthew 7:6)
The barpershop pole theory of political tribalism?
That or it's the status totem pole rearing up again, super blues may not be afraid of having red assiciation rub off on them, while nominally blues are. Super high class can adopt low class dress and manners with less risk of being seen as low class, in many ways someone just rising out of the low class can't.
If you ever click through the profiles of the most obnoxiously progressive and ideologically rigid Redditors, you'll often find they are "lumpen-intelligentsia" of a sort--mostly people from small, irrelevant cities (nothing wrong with this!) who seem to be trying to emulate big-city liberals who read the New York Times. Actual big-city progressives don't seem to spend nearly as much time trying to prove their blue tribe bona fides on Reddit, they're busy in graduate school or at a climbing gym.
I grow increasingly confident about my claim that insofar as the color tribes exist, the gray tribe surely doesn't.
I feel it should be pointed out that this was Scott's original take as well. He mentioned the idea of the grey tribe, but then said they're basically a specific faction of the blue tribe and weren't really their own thing in his analysis.
Sure, though that makes it just one more instance in the list of Scott-originating concepts that have since mutated to something other than intended originally.
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.
New post guidelines
If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it.
A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts
such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a
submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).
Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or
significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
deleted
It was an honor just to be nominated, but I can't help but feel that naming me as your favorite right-winger is rather like an MSNBC fan naming Joe Scarborough as her favorite Republican. That is to say, I can't fight off right-wing as an accusation, but I certainly couldn't claim it as a laurel either given my generally degenerate morals by right-wing standards.
What is widely perceived as right-wing tolerance of left-wing heretics is more just right-wing retreat. I recently attended a local Republican candidates event, and it is immediately obvious that the conservative morality police are in full retreat; orderly retreat to a greater or lesser extent for each issue or individual. One of the proposals being forwarded over and over was that all public school LGBTQWERTY issues should be shuffled into an elective course that students could take with parental permission. This is a reasonable, and fairly libertarian!, compromise position: people who want their kids to learn this stuff can have them take the class, people who don't want their kids in that class can avoid it. But I'm old enough to remember the Republicans on the school board when I was a young teen trying, repeatedly, to ban the Gay Straight Alliance club from the high school. Two decades ago the position was that students outside of class should not be allowed to talk about Gay issues on campus; now that the war has been lost, they're just hoping to keep it out of English class.
Out of the handful of people there, we had multiple open (married) homosexuals, and Hispanic candidates. If one has a longstanding commitment to a certain format of gay rights or racial tolerance, then as Chicano activists in Texas used to say: We didn't cross the border, the border crossed us.
Considering the Canadian equivalents encourage 13yos to "explore their anus" and give them dildos, that was very much warranted.
Low effort and inflammatory partisan claims require proactively providing evidence.
Good point, added the link to original post.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is what lends the critique of The Motte it's validity, I don't really enter the culture war roundup thread here, just check what the self posts have to say, because whenever I enter the culture war thread I get bogged down by someone who ardently holds a very controversial opinion, and lacks the eloquence or intelligence to properly defend that argument.
The smartest red tribe enclave on the internet still has a reason to exist, as someone on reddit said: "I would still go there just to see what the intelligent right-wing position on this issue is." The current Motte fails to live up to that standard.
This is the part that removes all validity of your criticism. You ignore 95% of the content of the site, but one cherry-picked example is damning?
More options
Context Copy link
You might be right that it doesn't live up to that standard, but the example you quoted does not provide an argument for that. Just because a place allows some people to dabble in revisionism or denialism, doesn't mean you don't otherwise get good arguments from a particular side there.
More options
Context Copy link
deleted
Well just look how genuinly retarded the other two answers to my post are. I wrote that I no longer enter the culture war thread, because too often there are low quality shitflingers inside, i.e. the density of people who do not contribute to the discussion yet engage with it anyway is too high for my tastes. The two critiques to that? "The existance of low quality contributors does not exclude the existance of high quality contributors" (no shit, it is about how proportional they are, every page will have both) and "As I don't use the website my criticism of it is irrelevant." (I stopped using the bulk of the website because of the criticism...). In the spirit of good grace I have to add here that the second response is vastly more retarded than the first one.
I am not actually sure where I go nowadays if I want a smart right wing perspective, I used to lurk another forum where a few full blown nazis were around due to extremely lax moderation, but some of them were wicked smart, but I don't go there anymore for various reasons, mainly that it was too addicting. I guess I just read books of individual conservatives I respect now, I havn't found a place where their wheat accumulates, too much chaff everywhere.
Westernman.org is an interesting rabbithole I found on 4chan's /lit/, kind of a Platoist/Aristotelean new coat of paint for the alt right, but they don't seem to have a forum yet.
I know you are just trolling but for the peanut gallery here
is different from
so, good job on moving those goal posts there, but in general the Culture War thread is the bulk of the content on the site, even if you don't like it.
More options
Context Copy link
You would get responses just about as retarded as those anywhere else on the Internet. And infinitely more retarded ones as well.
The crux of the matter is the retardedness really stands out when you are in disagreement. Similarly weak arguments, missing the point, etc; are forgiven when they are committed by tribe members.
More options
Context Copy link
Okay, so like, I just had a discussion with someone about the difference between saying "You're an idiot" and "Your argument is idiotic." Generally, the latter is just enough veneer of civility to let pass, even though we understand that functionally it pretty much means the same as the first statement.
Escalating to "genuinely retarded" is just dialing it up too much. Not because we prohibit the so-called "r-slur", as reddit calls it, but because you're making it as obvious as you possibly can that you're calling other posters retarded. You can criticize their answers as low quality, but don't take swipes like that.
More options
Context Copy link
No offence mate, but your username is unfamiliar. I don't remember seeing you getting bogged down arguing with anyone, and you don't have any links to evidence of your issue. Without a reason to believe that you know what you are talking about, people won't be able to empathise with you and they won't believe you know what you are talking about. Maybe you could link your reddit history? If it won't make you too easy to identify.
More options
Context Copy link
The irony here is just delightful.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I grow increasingly confident about my claim that insofar as the color tribes exist, the gray tribe surely doesn't. It's just "blue tribe", expect, basically, super duper blue every which way. Not just urban, but chiefly concentrated in the citiest cities available. Not just secular but - as a rule - atheist/agnostic expect with a surprising interest in Eastern religions. Not just living in a post-Sexual-Revolution culture, but one big polyamorous cuddle pile. And so on.
The thing is, precisely, that the "gray tribe" is so super blue it actually alienates them from "regular" blue tribers, making them the folks that your regular middle class liberals can point to and laugh: "Whoa, look at those weirdoes!" Lots of commentary like that when people have discussed the FTX scandal, for instance. It's this alienation that frees them from the comfy social sphere that underlays the blue tribe attachment to general blue politics, taken as what all smart and moral people obviously believe as a matter of course, and leads them to potentially explore other political ideologies and avenues. (Of course, that's not the only necessary factor, there's plenty of weirdoes who largely stick with some version of more conventional blue politics.)
Sorry for late response, just finding this while reading quality contributions list.
I find it hard to believe grey tribe doesn't exist.
There might be some super blue tribe group, but I never thought of them as grey tribe.
To me the grey tribe is the anti-tribe, or the tribe-less outcasts. The Matt Parker and Trey Stones of the world. The serial contrarians that can't help but feel incorrect when they agree with everyone around them.
I don't want to laude then, I consider myself grey tribe, but not with any pride. Instead I think my brain might be broken, or I'm missing a fundamental part of human psychology. I can't have sports teams I cheer for, I can rarely feel the energy of a crowd, I can't connect with any tribe, and I have no loyalty to any group of people.
When shown divisive personas like Trump I just have to shrug and say "I don't get it". I don't get the love or the hate.
My mother and sister are blue tribe, my father and brother are red tribe. I know what both sides look like. Neither side would claim me, and I wouldn't fit in either way.
Maybe I'm not this "grey tribe" that people discuss, but I strongly believe that society is not fully divided into a binary red and blue tribe.
More options
Context Copy link
Fully agreed. "Gray tribe" is like the cringey "Class X" chapter in Paul Fussell's book about the American class system; it's mostly a way for the people reading to feel smugly superior to the rabble who haven't broken free from their class origins/tribal behaviors. Fussell seemed concerned with separating himself from "uncultured" "embarrassing" middle classes while his supposed "Class X" was extraordinarily middle class, just like the people here who are embarrassed by Team Blue and say they are "Gray tribe". I am embarrassed by them too! But I don't pretend that I am something else just because I'm good at math or vote Republican.
More options
Context Copy link
The grey tribe is definitly more red-accomodating than the wider blue tribe. I am a Christian, and rationalist-adjacent spaces are pretty much the only space where I sometimes feel like fencing against atheists and doing a very mild form of proselytising, in other blue tribe circles that would be pearls before swine. (Matthew 7:6)
take a look at the subredditoverlaps for SSC.
Yes, samharris and redscarepod have strong blue tribe identity at x63.78 and x17.64 respectively. But there is also truechristian (right wing christian sub) at x10.67, jordanpeterson at x8.58 and catholicism at x6.52. For not explicity Christian red tribe associated subs there are lockdownscepticism at x10.42 and goldandblack at x7.20. Also stuff like menslib at x11.54 and moderatepolitics at x8.54. Neoliberal at x10.00. Classical right wing reactionaries are underreprestented, but there seem to be quite a few conservative Christians, classical liberals, neoliberals and centrists around next to the blue tribers in the grey tribe (although neoliberals are probably blue tribe, hard to tell since left wingers hate them so much).
I tried listening to them. Besides listening to the very peak of urban millennial irony poisoned women, I don't get it. How do have a fan base? What's the point?
More options
Context Copy link
Neoliberal I wouldn’t include with red tribe spaces. That sub is full fledge Democrat establishment now. It’s not your Milton Friedman neoliberalism. It’s basically Hillary Clinton supporters who are online too much,
More options
Context Copy link
The barpershop pole theory of political tribalism?
That or it's the status totem pole rearing up again, super blues may not be afraid of having red assiciation rub off on them, while nominally blues are. Super high class can adopt low class dress and manners with less risk of being seen as low class, in many ways someone just rising out of the low class can't.
If you ever click through the profiles of the most obnoxiously progressive and ideologically rigid Redditors, you'll often find they are "lumpen-intelligentsia" of a sort--mostly people from small, irrelevant cities (nothing wrong with this!) who seem to be trying to emulate big-city liberals who read the New York Times. Actual big-city progressives don't seem to spend nearly as much time trying to prove their blue tribe bona fides on Reddit, they're busy in graduate school or at a climbing gym.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
As long as it is spinning fast enough noone can tell what colour it is from the outside haha
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I feel it should be pointed out that this was Scott's original take as well. He mentioned the idea of the grey tribe, but then said they're basically a specific faction of the blue tribe and weren't really their own thing in his analysis.
Sure, though that makes it just one more instance in the list of Scott-originating concepts that have since mutated to something other than intended originally.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link