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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 1yr ago (text post) 2519 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for November 2022

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.

Quality Contributions in Culture Peace

"It's ironic that so many folks in the movement will tell you to your face they don't care about credentials, only impact, and yet the entire leadership is nothing but blue-blooded Ivy League grads and other well-connected elites."

@FiveHourMarathon:

"The subset of American men who self-consciously dislike football is tiny, it's not accurate to equate that subset with the entire Blue Tribe or the entire Upper Class."

Contributions for the week of October 24, 2022

@DaseindustriesLtd:

"By all means, do promote statistical literacy and demand intellectual honesty among HBDers, do shame us for our sloppiness. Keep discussing this in terms of phenotypic null hypothesis, if you must. But do not gaslight."

Contributions for the week of October 31, 2022

@self_made_human:

"An Indian Abroad in the UK"

"Back in September a commenter here on the TheMotte posted an argument about fertility trends claiming that among rich countries fertility actually increases with feminism.... so I wanted to make an effort post explaining why I don't believe the claim."
"Forming a bond with someone who is bad for you is very damaging."

"It seems to me that American hegemony has created such a prosperous peace in the remainder of the West that many non-American westerners have come to hold false beliefs about the nature of their prosperity and the quality of their societies, laws and governments."

"But that's a very different sort of criticism than my broader criticism of feminism -- that it is a lobbying movement pretending it isn't one."

Contributions for the week of November 7, 2022

@problem_redditor:

"The UN has a history of gender-discriminatory policy favouring women, and justifying these policies with sophistry and extremely flimsy arguments."

"I think the biggest takeaway here is exactly how little evidence is required for WPATH to declare something a 'gender identity' requiring 'medically necessary gender-affirming care'."

"Sorry, I have to say it. This is good for crypto."

@DaseindustriesLtd:

"This is how evil looks historically. Not generic cruelty, callousness, petty narcissism and even psychopathy we are used to, not mere weakness of will or intellect, but well-functioning people with actually hazardous moral convictions."

"No, violence is the failure mode of all politics."

"There's actually a rather long history of Christians debating what sins should and should not be made illegal by the state."

Contributions for the week of November 14, 2022

@YE_GUILTY:

"I don't think it's an accident that utilitarian altruists start out with hypothetical scenarios about bodily harm to children."

@Supah_Schmendrick:

"Better to focus positive efforts on the things close by, to which I am already bound."

"I like to categorize the patterns of discourse as 'n-dimentional social chess'."

"The Finnish government has spent most of the last weeks squabbling

about a topic that is obscure even in Finland – Sámi issues."

"This latest bout of examining SBF and his crew just fills me with a sense of absolute disgust and contempt."

"If the idea is that we have to shift our transportation off fossil fuels (and we do), and that a good chunk of the transition to electric transport means new transit (and it does), then we have to get much better at getting bang for our buck, because right now it is downright pathetic."

@FiveHourMarathon:

"Thoughts on Shifting Definitions and Models of Religious Liberty"

@FarNearEverywhere:

"This is flogging the FTX crash horse, which if not expired yet is certainly not in the best of health, but I'm currently reading the Chapter 11 declaration by the guy put in charge of putting Humpty Dumpty back together again, and it is prime entertainment."

"No other media that existed before or after twitter is as bad as twitter."

"Categorizing society into oppressors and oppressed and relentlessly framing all social issues according to these categories, on the other hand, is actually how both the Marxist and Wokeist systems work."

"Violence is always an option. And as an option, it often sucks, even when you win."

Contributions for the week of November 21, 2022

"You alluded to this in your last paragraph, but I want to stress that Gacha games have penetrated the Western market and are here to stay barring legislative changes."

"I'm not a Qatari Muslim, but I think I can take a stab at how they'd reply..."

@Supah_Schmendrick:

"For example: no-one suppresses the speech of Ibram X. Kendi, Ta-Nahesi Coates, or thinks about reining in the legion of diversocrats who make a profession out of demonizing 'whiteness,' when radicalized black racialists kill white people, or torture white people, or assault random white people because they are white."

"I take public transit a lot, often in New Zealand, but also a little bit back when I lived in Los Angeles. I have not been harassed as far as I can remember, although if the incident was minor then I might easily have forgotten it."

"We have no idea what we want, men and women both."

@you-get-an-upvote:

"Now that something smells fishy, we can look up Qatar's GDP and realize that CNBC is claiming that Qatar has spent at least 120% of their GDP on the World Cup."

@thomasThePaineEngine:

"As a naturalized American, and out of curiosity about recurring public rituals, I decided to spend some time this morning to research this holiday."

@FiveHourMarathon:

"A conservative boycott of liberal companies would fail because in competitive industries the top talent is all blue tribe, or such a strong majority that it is doubtful red tribe talent can even man a ship together."

"There's still a lot of alpha in being skeptical and googling shit. Be safe out there."

Contributions for the week of November 28, 2022

"If you have a sudden windfall and you save or invest it responsibly, then from that point until the point when you're broke again, any time a friend or family member asks if you can spare some cash, you have to choose between lying to them, telling the truth but then being seen as a heartless monster who won't share with them, or sharing and getting your savings drained away by them."

"A very small subset of cultures give us the modern world, the first and only time in human history in which the vast majority of people were not poverty-stricken peasants on the edge of starvation, disease and predation."

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Lewyn I am at the center of everything that happens to me 1yr ago

Wow, I didn’t expect my first QC to be about Genshin Impact of all things. TY to whoever nominated it

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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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