Thought this would be useful
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
- Courtesy
- Content
- Engagement
- When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
- Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.
- Accept temporary bans as a time-out, and don't attempt to rejoin the conversation until it's lifted.
- Don't attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity.
- Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
- The Wildcard Rule
- The Metarule
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I only watched a few minutes, I'm more interested in the reactions than the actual debate.
If the NYT says Trump did ok Trump won.
If Pod Save America gets conspicuously upset about fact checking, Trump is winning the election.
If certain mottizens get conspicuously upset about debate formatting and moderation, Trump lost.
If certain DSL folks say Kamala won, she filleted Trump live on camera.
I'm better at judging other people's reactions than I am at actually reading the debate myself.
What's DSL?
Data Secrets Lox, another SSC spinoff forum (which also leans right, although perhaps less heavily than theMotte).
Why are there multiple SSC culture war spin-offs? If even SSC readers can’t avoid political polarization to this extent, I don’t see any hope for the rest of the population
I've got a summary of some of the history here, if you're interested. That post skipped over DataSecretLox, but it formed in Summer 2020, mostly from the SlateStarCodex open thread and subreddit readers (w/ a bit of tumblrsphere).
Most of these splits weren't on the matters of politics, at least directly. The tumblrsphere was leftish by ratsphere and SSC standards, but mostly bifurcated to allow more informal and scattershot discussion in a more person-oriented view. TheMotte subreddit split from the SSC subreddit because people were harassing Scott enough that he had a nervous breakdown, and the compromise was that any political discussion needed to be several steps away from his identity.
The CultureWarRoundup, as much as it favored righter-wing viewpoints, was more about different takes on what engagement styles people were going after. Probably still political, but not as much as it seems in retrospect. I think there was one or two explicitly right-wing one-person schisms, but I can't even find them now. TheSchism was meant as an explicit political schism in the aftermath of the Rittenhouse stuff, and a naive experiment, so I guess that makes two relevant ones?
So I guess, yes, that is a lot of bad signs for the general population, but more for how the explicit efforts went than by their existence.
Thanks for the context, I really enjoyed the summary!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
"Why" is that Data Secrets Lox was founded in the time between SSC's closure and ACX's opening, and not everybody suddenly evicted from SSC's comments wanted to move to the subreddits (this was before theMotte left Reddit). I was a member on DSL before I was a Motte member, for instance, because I didn't have (and didn't want to get) a Reddit account. It's not a "Motte for different politics".
It's also not specifically for culture war, although it allows it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
NYT thinks it was a narrow victory for Harris, which points to roughly a draw.
More options
Context Copy link
Well, there you have it.
Dunno which DSL commenters you have in mind, but I don’t see much evidence of filleting. Moderation complaints, on the other hand…
We should have made debate bingo.
Yeah I'm reading narrow Trump loss.
What surprised me is reliance by Trump on high variance plays. I'd think he'd be trying to run the ball and make Kamala beat him.
I’m not convinced Trump knows how to run the ball.
Arguably, that’s his strongest suit. The 2016 field was unprepared for air raid offense. No huddles, no depth of roster, just a series of passing plays. Trump zeroed in on a weak defender.
Hmm. I wonder if he ran similar strategies in his earlier bids. It was a different time.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link