Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
- 114
- 1
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 -
Now that Canada is finally rid of Justin Trudeau, we can critically examine the most important issue that he faced during his long reign.
Was it immigration? How about the housing crisis? Economic stagnation?
No. I am of course referring to the rumor that Justin Trudeau's father is actually none other than Fidel Castro.
Whether the rumors are true or not, Trudeau brought this on himself when he gave the Communist dictator a bizzare, glowing eulogy after his death in 2016.
But is Justin Trudeau really Castro's son? Certainly the physical similarity between the two is striking. And it's well known that Trudeau's mother was sexual promiscuous and that the Trudeaus were close friends with Castro, himself a notorious libertine. Furthermore, the Trudeaus just happened to be touring the Carribbean around the time of Justin's conception. This article does a good job of making the case that, of course, Justin is Castro's son.
Naturally, this has all been deboonked by Snopes, who rates the rumors as "unfounded". Nevertheless, I don't find Snopes' take very convincing, as it seems quite possible that Castro and Trudeau's mother did indeed tryst, either via the Trudeaus visiting Cuba (which of course they may have been desirous to cover up) or via Castro leaving Cuba.
So where does that leave us?
Since I doubt Trudeau will submit to DNA testing anytime soon, we would need to find another way to establish paternity. Enter AI. Did you know that AI is able to tell the sex of a person with high accuracy simply by looking at their retina, something that trained opthamologists are not able to do? What if we employed similar techniques to detect parental relations?
I make the following modest proposal. We should train a deep learning algorithm based on hundreds of thousands of labeled father/son pairs. Then we ask the AI whether Castro or Pierre Trudeau is the true father of Justin. It's the only way to be sure. Canada demands the truth!
If it’s true I assume the CIA knows. Castro had/has living relatives in Florida, it would presumably be easy to pull DNA from a drinking glass or laundry at the White House after a diplomatic visit. Doesn’t mean we would know, but if it’s true I expect the public will find out sooner or later.
In the US the secret service will always have one or two people assigned to collect and destroy all DNA left behind on napkins or glasses by the president. I'm assuming it's the same for other western heads of state.
If definitely isn’t. Perhaps for Russia and China, but leaders of second/third tier countries don’t have security teams capable or willing to do that kind of cleanup.
More options
Context Copy link
I would give long, looong odds that CSIS is not doing this and never will -- basic functionality as an intelligence service seems pretty far beyond them, there's just no way that they are worried about somebody going CSI on the PM.
I could 100% imagine starting that program just to have somewhere to shove the dead weight career-climbers any high prestige organization has to deal with. Same reason spec-ops has a bunch of do-nothing posts for officers checking "did a stint in spec-ops" off the list.
Let them wipe forks for a year and put "personal bio-data security lead for PoTUS" on their resumes for when they go into corporate security.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Why would they care, and why would they ever make it public if they knew?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm a Trudeau truther. I think there is seriously a significant likelihood that he is Castro's son. Looking at photos of his mother shortly before getting pregnant and hanging out with Castro, they might have been fucking.
Surely someone could get some of his DNA to verify.
More options
Context Copy link
I also do not accept for a moment that Ronan Farrow is Woody Allen's biological son, when Mia Farrow was known to have been close and physically intimate with Frank Sinatra for years following their divorce.
More options
Context Copy link
The AI idea is intriguing, but surely DNA testing is a realistic possibility in the future even without Justin's personal consent, right? He's got three children, and DNA testing often outs this sort of thing indirectly when people are simply curious about their ancestry and get it cross-compared with a massive database.
It's unlikely that Castro's kids would be in the database and it's unlikely that a match would become public knowledge, barring a data breach.
Castro had relatives in Spain.
More options
Context Copy link
Castro probably has 5th cousins or something in Florida. Genetic testing can pick up on relatives that close
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link