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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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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.

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naraburns nihil supernum 2mo ago (text post) 3681 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for August 2024 - Happy 2nd Birthday to the Motte!

Happy birthday to us! Hard to believe we've been the Internet's leading (possibly only?) independent user-funded (ad-free!) open political speech forum for two whole years. @ZorbaTHut, what a remarkable framework you've constructed; everyone else, what remarkable things you've constructed on that framework. Thanks for hanging out with us and getting into very kind, respectful, politely-worded fistfights about anything and everything under the sun.

As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.

(Proverbs 27:17)

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 to the Main Motte

"There are times when I might have been tempted to claim that I was smarter than my wife."

"I recently went on a road trip from Halifax to Boston. I thought an outsider's perspective might be interesting."

"I generally agree with the effort to preserve games. If you also agree I think you should do the following things:"

"I built a gaming table."

@100ProofTollBooth:

"Opportunity cost and compound interest - they're a real bitch."

Contributions for the week of July 29, 2024

"The more accurate way of looking at things probably isn't 'Men's sports vs Women's sports', it's 'Sports' without any qualifiers for biological advantage (this is where all the men compete, and have always competed), vs 'Women's Sports' (which has qualifiers)."

"Sunderland, UK, is on fire."

@Tophattingson:

"Further context on this is that criticism of Two-Tier policing began with the difference in how anti-Lockdown protesters were treated by the police compared to BLM protesters in 2020."

"Moody v. Netchoice and Netchoice v. Paxton"

Contributions for the week of August 5, 2024

"The elites have indeed been mashing 'defect' as hard as they can and are clutching pearls the moment their subjects begin to retaliate."

"Supreme Court Term Limits"

"No, the reality of Blackness is that Black is a voting bloc."

"To recap, to the progressive movement Kamala is black and Black, but to many Black people themselves, she is merely black."

"In the Presidential campaign Kerry cast himself as a proud veteran. Meanwhile other swift boat veterans were still pissed off at him."

"Bianchi v. Frosh's en banc opinion has dropped."

@100ProofTollBooth:

"Finally, one of them pipes up and says, 'Dude .... you got "guy angry" for the first time.'"

"Women are concerned about victims, men about perpetrators."

"So the phrase 'immigration is a net positive' can be true in a broad sense but still not accurately describe how the actual citizenry experience it in their day-to-day lives."

@felis-parenthesis:

"They want the junkies gone before their children grow up and reach the age to be at risk."

Contributions for the week of August 12, 2024

@CrispyFriedBarnacles:

"Back in the 2016 election, I remember being struck by the fact that Trump lies like a used car salesman, and most other politicians lie the way that lawyers lie..."

"What the Ukrainian offensive has done is force the Russians into a very awkward position of taking forces that would otherwise be supporting the attacks further south, and bringing them around to Kursk."

@MonkeyWithAMachinegun:

"Yes my friends, I lived and worked in Charm City. You know it from The Wire, and from the 7-o'clock news. Baltimore."

@DirtyWaterHotDog:

"Joblessness and fatherlessness problems are the main cultural problems contributing to crime."

"My father runs (well, ran) a business remodeling homes in and around a city where such adjacency to reality is the default disposition, and the cost and time difference between projects in this county and projects in the neighboring farmland county would make your head spin."

Contributions for the week of August 19, 2024

"This doesn't concern 'where do you draw the line,' but one aspect of what I consider 'cancel culture' is diffusion of responsibility."

@Grant_us_eyes:

"Funny, despite the prevalence of glock switches displayed on public forums like, say, youtube, you never hear about the ATF raiding and confiscating them."

"Elden Ring is positively dripping with north germanic vibes and tropes both in and out of the Ring Cycle."

"Chinese pop culture is crippled by government diktats."

"Meet the Little-Known Activist Group That Has Tens of Thousands of Doctors Registering Patients To Vote"

Several nominated posts on the intertwining of activist politics and medical practice

Contributions for the week of August 26, 2024

"[A] scientist erred/falsified results in heart disease treatments, up to 800,000 died."

"I am no Republican, but at this point I also cannot imagine myself voting for a Democrat."

"Yes, everyone knows the caveats to the statement 'men and women are the same'. But it's hardly my fault that we continually allow some people to turn the ratchet in one direction until we're now arguing about men in women's sports."

"Now, I don't particularly trust DailyCaller reporting. But it'd be real nice to have a way to tell."

"If there was a point where you can point to in Brazil's history and say 'only downhill from here', it's the 'Proclamation of The Brazilian Republic'."

"These 'woke' writers everyone complains about aren't inventing anything new, is the problem..."

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urquan 2mo ago

functor, raakaa, DTulpa, and urquan each have 1.

Not to toot my own horn, but I believe I have more than just one.

5

Context

cjet79 urquan 2mo ago

Lol ya I was way off. Sorry got you mixed up in a different tab. I'll fix it above

5

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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