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 -
Excellent article, there is always need for some unpleasant facts to remind people how big miracle was the Industrial Revolution, an how delusionary are all "trad" dreams about old times, regardless whether from "left" or "right".
And there is another fact unpleasant to OP and his ideology - fact that Industrial Revolution began, after people like OP were massacred, hanged, beheaded, burned alive in their huts and deported to West Indies to die.
Fact that industrial and technological development and life of unlimited freedoom of wild tribal rider/raider are two great tastes, that, unfortunately, do not go well together.
You are wrong sir, they in fact are extremely related. As cowboys and indians, as sailors and pirates, as zulu and tommy. The man of the frontier is the man of the frontier. An unrivaled pragmatist who will use the most advanced technology in the pursuit of his primal unconstrained ends. And thus, Freedomâ„¢.
He is a tragic figure destined to be tamed and ultimately destroyed by society and civilization, through his own work, but it is slander to say that primal raider and sophisticated technologist don't go together when art and history are brimming with examples of the paradoxical merger between these two.
Geronimo used top of the line Browning designs.
Exactly my point. Using, not creating.
Who was creating these top of the line designs? People standing behind machines 12+ hours/day, doing exactly what they were told to the tiniest detail, watched by boss and foremen all the time - life that people like Geronimo would see as much worse than death.
John Moses Browning, whom I'm not sure I'd call so detached from the frontier given he was raised in Utah and spent years as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
I do take your point, the frontier only exists because it's being propped up by civilization and its surplus. Though I do not see that as a contradiction.
Freedom in itself, as Burnham's Machiavellians point out, is a transitory state we only occupy when the inevitable lust of power for more of itself hasn't yet been satiated. A state that is always fated to come back as power saps itself in a doomed bid for control.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link