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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   7822 thread views

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Has the community already discussed whether Substack would work as a more sustainable permanent home? If so, apologies for the repeat question.

My basic logic is, ACX is thriving as far as I can tell, and its comment section reads fairly similar to The Motte. Scott is probably a higher quality poster than any individual poster here, but collectively the community likely generates a higher total sum of interesting material. Given Substack allows multiple contributors with tiers of privileges, would it be crazy to have a The Motte Substack where pretty much anyone can sign up to be a contributor, and in essence the single culture war thread gets subdivided into something like 20-30 individual posts each week, and then comments can continue in the Substack comment section?

I'm sure there are various minor logistical issues that make this imperfect. But if this site seems to stagnate or even decline from a peak a few months from now due to a lack of new users from Reddit, maybe Substack would be worth a try, given the platform could potentially yield an ongoing stream of new users/subscribers?

I like the basic idea. The problem is curation; we don't really want to just make it a free-for-all where anyone can write under The Motte's name, we'd want to make it a best-of-The-Motte deal. That's basically "the quality contributions and the Vault", and while I don't mind mirroring stuff further onto Substack, we just don't have the personpower for it at the moment.

If I understand Substack's user tiers correctly, contributors wouldn't be posting as The Motte, but rather under their own usernames (as contributor "VPN", for example), albeit to the same subdomain.

Definitely recognize it'd be juggling too many balls at once to pursue this right now. Just wanted to put out there in case a standalone site here that's unaffiliated with Reddit or an alternative like Substack means problems of long-term sustainability.

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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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.

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