site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  16d ago (text post)   26866 thread views

U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread

With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.

If you're a U.S. citizen with voting rights, your polling place can reportedly be located here.

If you're still researching issues, Ballotpedia is usually reasonably helpful.

Any other reasonably neutral election resources you'd like me to add to this notification, I'm happy to add.

15
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Nobody is saying that the similarity of colors to each other is socially constructed (or at least I've never heard this claim).

Ok, well I'm pretty sure that if ask people to pair up objects of the same color, they'll also do that regardless of their language or culture.

If you're going to say that no one claimed that the sameness of colors is not socially constructed, then I don't know what content is the sentence "color is socially constructed" even carrying.

Ok, well I'm pretty sure that if ask people to pair up objects of the same color, they'll also do that regardless of their language or culture.

Except for the Chinese combining 青 with 青, or the Russians separating синий from голубой....

You're talking about language, I'm talking "sort these according to how hard they are to separate with your eyes".

what content is the sentence "color is socially constructed" even carrying.

That the assortment of bands of the electromagnetic spectrum into color words is socially constructed.

Maybe I'm pedantic, but I'd call that "language is a social construct".

If you read Foucault and his descendants, all "scientific knowledge" is socially constructed. Think of Power as an OSI layer between "reality" and "our understanding of reality", with the actual existence of immutable reality left deliberately ambiguous.

It's not that some things are "socially constructed" and others are "real", even if it's used that way tactically ("Science Is Real! No, your science is a socially constructed artifact of the cisheteropatriarchy"). It's that all our methods of understanding go through a filter of social power/biopower/whatever.

It's a very clever definitional superweapon.

Okay, I guess I should have known that there are people making that claim. However, I'm not trying to steelman it because I think it's dumb.

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