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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 1mo ago (text post) 6236 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for September 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 Subreddit

"All you and your wife can decide is whether you collectively regard the project of raising children as intrinsically worthy, regardless of how it turns out."

@Highpopalorum:

"With Alzheimer's, pretend the victim's normal personality and mindset is like a radio station one is driving away from."

"Hezbollahs destruction is a good thing, but whether the Lebanese can capitalize on it is a different issue."

Contributions for the week of September 2, 2024

"The Supreme Court judge can ban X and demand fines on people who use VPNs on it, but that's a separate matter from an electorally-sensitive administration actually enforcing such things."

@KolmogorovComplicity:

"Point out that capitalism is, in fact, actually doing a very good job of delivering the kind of outcomes they probably desire from communism."

@ControlsFreak:

"That means, aside from having to deal with short-term issues such as a terrible working vs dependent/unemployed ratio for the next decade, the primary question should be: Who do we currently select for and who ought we select for?"

Special Issue: Babies Everywhere!

@Hoffmeister25:

"I think we really need to grapple with the fact that the revealed preference of nearly every intelligent and high-quality woman is for having few if any children."

"Living an authentically good and virtuous life requires sacrifice of yourself in the service of greater things."

"Make note; the system didn't just have convince women that having children was negative, but it also had to convince them that this belief came from within..."

"While you can definitely fuck your kids up, there’s minimal difference on children’s outcomes between good and great parenting..."

"No, Susan, your corgi is not your son, and you're doing a disservice to both yourself and your dog if you treat them like a member of a species that they're not."

"I think it's almost impossible for a forum full of autistic men to understand just how mimetic young women are."

Contributions for the week of September 9, 2024

@CrispyFriedBarnacles:

"But wealthy, civically-minded people from specific backgrounds and specific worldviews have absolutely used giant amounts of money to push this stuff to try to shape demographics."

@FiveHourMarathon:

...was wrong about a bunch of stuff, apparently.

@ControlsFreak:

"Suddenly, he has the power of distribution and can use it to build his status, favor people who will favor him, and he can screw anyone else for basically zero reason at all; it costs him nothing if he doesn't give you a coupon because he doesn't like your face."

"Legalizing gay marriage was not just 'allow different people to do their own thing' it was, 'change the basic way every child is taught about the basic institutions and building blocks of life.'"

"In 2001 West Virginia legalized traditional slot and video poker machines at racetracks."

Contributions for the week of September 16, 2024

"The Thucydides Trap paradigm is a way of modeling behavior between two potential hegemons, but by the nature of the historical allusion . . . and general proposer propensities . . . it's really, really bad at recognizing or accounting for other relevant actors."

"So the headline could literally have been, 'woman in Georgia killed by abortion pills' with no noticeable loss of information?"

@100ProofTollBooth:

"Americans are notoriously self-contradictory in their opinions on abortion."

"I make credible allegations, you offer unproven claims, he asserts without evidence."

@CrispyFriedBarnacles:

"I think there's a very, very strong case to be made that the birth of the entire New Deal state and its subsequent massive growth . . . relied intensely on real time, overwhelming broadcast media."

"What’s causing the divide is the utter failure of the current system of delivering anything the people want from their leaders."

On An Ideology With No Name

"I think the 'Cultural Marxism' discourse on the Motte tends to go down rabbit holes due to arguments about the meaning of words."

@Hoffmeister25:

"Just as the end goal of communism is a world in which no person or group can possess and selfishly hoard more economic capital than another, crits want a world in which no group has more prestige than another."

"It seems obvious to me that the various branches of Social Justice theory are, to a first approximation, direct descendants of Marxism."

@Supah_Schmendrick:

" So yes, its 'Marxist'...but there's an awful lot of elaboration in there, to the point that it's really unclear what Marx himself would think of it, or whether he would even recognize it if you could unearth and revive him."

Contributions for the week of September 23, 2024

"NYT has released an article about unmarked graves in Canada."

"Turns out that there is a fair bit of evidence and testimony that Matthew Shepard probably wasn't murdered for being gay."

@FiveHourMarathon:

"On The Edge of Glory Disconnected Thoughts on Nate Silver’s New Book"

@Hoffmeister25:

"Why on earth would blacks accept the same “return to colorblindness” when it manifestly did not produce tangible results for them? It was built on a lie."

"All I would like to do is point out some of us overweight people don't fall into how you are observing a reality TV show."

You're a Villain All Right

"On Communist Supervillains, Cognitive Dissonance, and IQ."

@DirtyWaterHotDog:

"Read what Paul has to say about Sam, and you'll see a carefully worded pattern. Paul admires Sam, but Sam scares him."

"I just have an seemingly inborn 'disgust' reaction to those persons who have fought up to the top of some social hierarchy while NOT having some grounded, external reason for doing so!"

Contributions for the week of September 30, 2024

@self_made_human:

"I disagree that the death sentence is a qualitatively different punishment from the usual."

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George_E_Hale insufferable blowhard 1mo ago

I wonder what your definition of "remotely okay" here is. I do not have the same perspective as you at all here, and I would hardly call my current situation that of a churchgoer.

2

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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