Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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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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Notes -
I have a much less favorable feel for SomethingAwful than most of its advocates. The site sometimes had good stuff -- most notably, its Let's Play sections predicted a lot of creative and transformative New Media works, along with being a great way for smaller-visibility indies to get attention -- but the site's claimed observation-only focus never really survived the actual people involved being people, and original flavor General Bullshit was very far from being this innocent land free of bullying, spam, and insults. I tried to avoid anything coming from that whole hellsite, and I still heard too much about it. For all the successes it may have had, the more unique and memorable "mark" on internet culture from Goons was and is not that far removed from being dunked in phosphoric acid.
More broadly, I think people are a little too dismissive of culture from other sites. Reddit as a whole doesn't have (much of) a culture, but individual subreddits do. Tumblr culture is a wasteland in a lot of ways, but that deOnclerization is even a coherent concept means something.
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