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
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if in doubt, post!
Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts.
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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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Notes -
Richard Nixon also very rarely lied as president. And according to all available evidence, my former neighbor's ex-fiancee who was cheered on by her "friends" to get drunker than usual and swallow a stripper's cock at her bachelorette party (guiltily admitting it a few days later) very rarely lied in her relationship. 5-10 HIPAA violations in a 10 or 20 year medical career is a rare pattern of lying. (And to jump categories, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold only very rarely shot people.)
Of course I actually read the article and realize that the above is not the point of it at all, but I just thought it'd be worth pointing out that it often does not practically exonerate a liar at all for them to have lied (explicitly or otherwise as the article highlights) only "very rarely".
NYT only doesn't lie so that when they do it has the maximum chance of being believed when they do - a problem which is not unique to NYT but is shared by everyone who explicitly or implicitly has a utilitarian ethical framework.
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