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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 4mo ago (text post) 4023 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for June 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.

Posting a bit early this month, as the week of America's Independence Day comes with some family obligations for me. AAQCs from June 29th and 30th will be included in July's roundup next month.

Quality Contributions in the Main Motte

@100ProofTollBooth:

"I wanted to add something related but tangential to @self_made_human 's post on therapists. The business model issue."

@felis-parenthesis:

"The Anasazi question reminds me that adults forget what it is like to be young and are oblivious to the social constructs of middle age..."

"So when I'm interviewing (for a junior position), I look for the curiosity, the trouble shooting ability, the engagement. This is particularly challenging because interviewing has become very scripted, at least where I work currently."

"Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: The Machine Politician Vs the Administrative State"

@Chrisprattalpharaptr:

"Nothing would make me happier than some godlike AI oracle that could satisfy my curiosity, I'm just skeptical that even the ASIs pitched by proponents like Aschenbrenner will be as omnipotent as advertised."

"The value of AI in robotics is that it can help plan motion in uncontrolled environments."

Contributions for the week of June 3, 2024

@NelsonRushton:

@FiveHourMarathon:

"What the Fuck Do We Know Anyway: Nobody Knows Why They Broke Into the Watergate"

@coffee_enjoyer:

"Our civilizations did not always have superstimuli available to young people."

"Has there been a UK election post yet? I suppose there's not much room for culture war when all the main parties are slightly different flavours of neoliberal Blairites, but still..."

"There's a name for moralizing women who enforce the social consensus: it's called culture, and we need it."

"The WPATH To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions"

@confuciuscorndog:

"It's not about actually improving the world, protecting anyone, or anyone's safety; it's about punishing people for being morally impure as considered by the privileged classes."

@100ProofTollBooth:

"The higher level of analysis, however, is; should police departments be setup for this? I'd actually argue they should not. Complex investigations are rare."

Contributions for the week of June 10, 2024

"Oregon Goes To The Purge"

"So my problem with the sex recession is not that I think promiscuity is great and I lament its decline, it's that the problem with the sex recession isn't actually about sex at all -- it's an underlying intimate relationship recession and a loneliness crisis."

"It's that we, the voters, have no single coherent thing that we want or can demand."

@FiveHourMarathon:

"There's a saying I've seen in the Manosphere that women are human beings and men are human doings."

"Chaos in French Politics"

Contributions for the week of June 17, 2024

@OracleOutlook:

"Do Democrat leaders support violent action against federal buildings, such as the Oregon courthouse siege? Yes they do!"

@FiveHourMarathon:

"Path Lit By Lightning Thoughts and Review: A Hero's Life, Long Obscured by One Set of Politically Correct Myths, Now Obscured by Another"

"So I guess the US government is pretty consistent in flipping-the-fuck-out if you harm birds."

@theCircusWeakman:

"Can someone help me understand the continuing opposition to Citizens United?"

"One of them argued at length and quite explicitly that it was better for people like myself and my family to accept beatings at the hands of a mob rather than defend ourselves with lethal force, because criminal mob beatings were statistically less likely to kill people than lawfully justified gunfire. That's the sort of conversation that leaves an impression."

Contributions for the week of June 24, 2024

"The other four cases I didn't get to before..."

"Various downstream knowledge and pragmatic matters made 'gay mentor' a thing, and while a majority were genuinely in the 'leave a pamphlet and pretend the question never came up' side, it left a massive space for abuse among people who by definition would not be able to readily recognize abuses."

"Another batch of documents from Boe v. Marshall shines light on the buried systemic review commissioned by WPATH"

"Thinking about these policy wonk ideas isn't a more elevated form of politics stripped from emotion and chance. It's actually a degeneration."

@FiveHourMarathon:

"So, that's my call: if Newsom were offered the job, he'd probably take it. And he'd probably be smart to take it."

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Felagund 4mo ago

Hey, thanks for the work in putting these together. The note was a good reminder that these involve human effort; it doesn't just fall from the sky.

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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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