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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   31960 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025

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Consider this a warning; keep posting AI slop and I'll have to put on my mod hat and punish you.

Boo. Boo. Boo. Your mod hat should be for keeping the forum civil, not winning arguments. In a huge content-filled human-written post, he merely linked to an example of a current AI talking about how it might Kill All Humans. It was an on-topic and relevant external reference (most of us here happen to like evidence, yanno?). He did nothing wrong.

That was a joke man

Watch your tone or I'll ban you too.

The joke is that I'm not a mod. He is.

Apologies. I guess the joke was on me!

how do you even tell who's a mod here and who isn't?

Just hang around for over half a decade.

Or, there's this page.

A certain someone reported you for impersonating a mod. Unlike him, most of the mods have a sense of humor about such things.

[User was banned for this post]

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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!

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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."

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