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What is this place?

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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naraburns nihil supernum 5mo ago (text post) Edited 5mo ago 4405 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for May 2024

This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).

As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.

These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.

Quality Contributions in the Main Motte

"Some legislation made it easier..., but the grander problem is that you now had thousands of people who's job was to find discriminatory actors, who were trained to notice the most subtle hints of it, and in no small part who believed in the mission."

"I've heard stuff like this before, that Hispanic is a nonsense category. But I actually think it makes sense..."

"Short attempt to explain an upcoming Canadian constitutional snafu"

"There are a few extremely interesting nightlife entertainment options that are not commonly experienced by westerners, so I think it is worth sharing the mechanics of Southeast Asian seediness with the fine denizens of themotte."

"We need transformational leadership, and a positive identity."

"I was a Blue for a number of years, and the Blue habits of thought die hard."

Contributions for the week of April 29, 2024

@NullHypothesis:

"South Africa's Election"

@self_made_human:

"My personal working hypothesis is that therapy acts as a decent substitute for a friend, a non-judgemental and understanding one who has seemingly endless time to listen to your problems, and is forbidden, on the pain of losing the way they make a living, from disclosing your troubles."

"I recently heard of yaslighting, which is where instead of convincing someone their true beliefs are delusional, you affirm their delusional beliefs and convince them they're true."

Contributions for the week of May 6, 2024

"The Death of Trust in Bipartisan Lawmaking"

"Government Programs Should Have Legible Budgets"

"It's been a long time since we've discussed Trump, and there have been a number of developments in the court cases against him, and so I'm here to say that our long mottizan nightmare of peace and tranquility is finally over."

@Ben___Garrison:

"The time when Trump sabotaged immigration restrictions, and the alt-right cheered"

Contributions for the week of May 13, 2024

"Taylor, also known as CarbonMike, was both a CTRL-Pew 3d printing enthusiast and a New Yorker, a combination that Didn't Go Well."

@OliveTapenade:

"That is, here we have people immediately concluding that whites and Asians are both in the 'domesticated', Dragon category, but here's a Chinese voice utterly convinced that whites in the wild barbarian Wolf category."

@NelsonRushton:

"Identity Politics and the Russian Revolution"

"People should be able to be pleased with their children living normal, functional lives!"

"This occurred back in 2005-2006: hunting Somali pirates before hunting Somali pirates was cool."

"If you are demanding that men not interact with you, and the only men reading (or caring about) that demand are men who care about respecting your boundaries - it should come as no surprise when the only men who interact with you are men who don't care about respecting your boundaries."

"I think the main thing that boomers and even elder Millenials might be missing is that literally EVERYTHING in Zoomer culture is in a constant state of molochian hypercompetition/red queen races thanks to the influence of social media and algorithmic ranking of every aspect of their performance in life."

"To believe in an international rules-based order, you have to believe that there are actual rules, or else it's an arbitrary vibes-based order."

"So, simply saying 'The Palestinians have a clear moral case,' even if you're right, does not solve the current problem."

"Is private equity delivering the Georgist promise?"

Contributions for the week of May 20, 2024

"It's not possible to distinguish by merits, preference, difference, or interests if the top goal is to provide an inclusive environment to everyone in every place."

"I think most scissor shootings that do not involve cops (Zimmerman and Rittenhouse) are fighting situations and the scissor is that DRT and SYG are working from completely different moral frameworks."

@NelsonRushton:

"Censorship and Authoritarianism in the Russian Revolution"

"Police reform and accountability would be a winning issue in the US if the left would stop making it exclusively a racialized issue and the right would acknowledge that at least some police corruption hits black people worst."

"Every physician I know who doesn't have a financial stake in midlevels (and isn't in admin) tells their friends and family to only see doctors whenever possible. That's for a reason."

@coffee_enjoyer:

"Status in the progressive art scene"

Contributions for the week of May 27, 2024

"It's pretty amazing how today's Antifa members have nearly the exact same ideology as a Harvard professor or WaPo journalist."

"The case for space mining is a complete, unsalvageable disaster."

"Pittsburgh: An Urban Portrait"

@FiveHourMarathon:

"Naz Reid, Romance, and Regret"

"Since you can't separate yourself from criminals through law enforcement, you do so by proxy using price."

"I think once the Dominion CEO demonstrably perjured himself by claiming that Dominion voting systems don't have modems in them (photographically, demonstrably false) and then again by claiming they weren't connected to the internet (demonstrably false again per the dominion records leaked by Dar Leaf), I decided that voting machines are completely ridiculous and no one should ever assume an election in which a voting machine is involved is fair."

"But prosecuting high-level officials for technical crimes and gray-area crimes and crimes invented in the last 80 years gives far too much power to the bureaucracy."

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netstack Texas is freedom land 5mo ago

We love a good sea story. Or land story. I’m sure an air story would go over pretty well, too, but I guess those are a little more rare?

Also, your prose was really nice.

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Context

What is this place?

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.

If in doubt, please post it!

Rules

Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats

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