site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   4175 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for May 2023

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.

These are mostly chronologically ordered. Here we go:

Quality Contributions in the Main Motte

@ControlsFreak:

@OracleOutlook:

@DaseindustriesLtd:

@Ethan:

@gattsuru:

@Unsaying:

@netstack:

@ymeskhout:

Contributions for the week of May 1, 2023

@Quantumfreakonomics:

@ApplesauceIrishCream:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@RandomRanger:

@Primaprimaprima:

@raggedy_anthem:

@Goodguy:

@Felipe:

@coffee_enjoyer:

Contributions for the week of May 8, 2023

@self_made_human:

@Folamh3:

@naraburns:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@MadMonzer:

@ymeskhout:

@cjet79:

Contributions for the week of May 15, 2023

@Pasha:

@huadpe:

@Primaprimaprima:

@Soriek:

@FCfromSSC:

@FarNearEverywhere:

@raggedy_anthem:

Contributions for the week of May 22, 2023

@ymeskhout:

@cjet79:

@DaseindustriesLtd:

@SecureSignals:

@Soriek:

@hydroacetylene:

@urquan:

@erwgv3g34:

@felis-parenthesis:

@HlynkaCG:

@FCfromSSC:

Contributions for the week of May 29, 2023

@ryandv:

8
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

"Our legal system increasingly resembles a system of 'might makes right' if you have enough powerful people on your side then the law can literally be what you want it to be."

I don't think I feel this way anymore after the discussion. I think I was just having a bad moment of availability bias where the worst aspects of the court system were in my face, but the everyday minor successes weren't apparent.

I also had a degree of frustration over the discussion, because I felt misinterpreted. When I get misinterpreted around here I usually feel like its more my fault then the reader's fault. At the time, the effort to clear up the misinterpretation didn't feel worth it. @netstack and @Rov_Scam had responses that attached my meta points to the object level discussion of Trump's particular court case. But I had mostly stopped thinking about Trump by the time I was done with the second sentence.

I'm like an old man with new technology when it comes to Trump and politics. I don't get the obsession with it, I mostly ignore it, and even when its shoved in my face it quickly exits my memory a few minutes later. I'm still living in the mindset of 2008 and Ron Paul's run for president. My fondest memories of Trump are when he 'got back' at parts of the military industrial complex war hawks that I feel snubbed Ron Paul back in 2008. Most of the rest of his presidency is forgotten and foggy in my mind.

This memory hole of mine gets a little awkward when I want to get involved in the culture war discussions that have spun up around Trump. I'm probably the only person in the world that hears the name "Trump" and first thinks "oh the guy that publicly humiliated John Bolton". So when an issue comes up like "Trump is being tried on a novel legal theory", or "The law was changed to allow the formerly immune Trump to be retroactively prosecuted for this law". I might be one of the rare people that is just subbing in the word "person/people" for "Trump".

It is not entirely honest for me to say "I don't care about Trump", after all, he had the great zinger on John Bolton. But my level of caring about him is obviously at such a different level then everyone else around me. It leads to situations where I can get heavily misinterpreted, and I will be genuinely surprised and confused by that misinterpretation for a few seconds before I remember "oh yeah, people care about Trump a lot more than I do".

I wonder if I'd be better served by having some tag next to my name: "No, I'm not talking about Trump" or "I'm talking about Ron Paul, not Trump".

Anyways, I got a quality contribution for a post that I now mostly disagree with, and was heavily misinterpreted. At least I had two this month and I feel good about the other one.

How did Trump "get back" at the military-industrial complex? Some of his campaign rhetoric suggested he would, but I thought any hopes were dashed when he ordered the Syria airstrikes in 2017, which resulted in an increase in the stock price of Raytheon and other defence companies and 2017 ended up being "a Year to Remember for Raytheon" and the defence sector. He kept this up with the constant sabre rattling at Iran and the assassination of Soleimani.

Ugh, this is exactly how I felt when I wrote the original post.

Did you read the rest of my post? I spent multiple paragraphs talking about how I'm vaguely aware of the man and his presidency.

I went back and edited the wording. It says war-hawks instead of military industrial complex. If you feel this is wrong too, I don't care. I'd beg you not to tell me if I thought that would work.

Have you ever been dragged along to a social event that you have no interest in? Maybe its a church event for a religion you are not a part of. Or maybe its a sport that you don't care about. Or maybe a political rally with the wrong team. Anyways, you try to make the best of things and spark up conversations with people. You always start the conversation NOT about the thing you don't care for. You avoid the topic as much as possible. But it doesn't matter. In the end you are screwed, because everyone else is here for that one thing. And the conversation will ALWAYS go back to it. Now imagine you finally get out of the event and you are outside with your friends. You are complaining "ugh it always comes back around to that topic, I just want to talk about other things with people, I only sort of care about the topic because of this one minor [thing x]". Some stranger overhears "Did you just say [thing x]!? Let me tell you what i think of [thing x]..."

Yikes, now I feel bad. Sorry.

My first QC! Thank you for the nomination; I think Mead's framework does a good job of capturing the competing strains of thought that inform American foreign policy. Congratulations to all of the nominees!

Several of the ones I wanted to read appear to have been immediately deleted by their authors.

Can you be more specific? I just went through and mod-noted everyone's accounts (we keep track of AAQCs) and none of the current crop appear to be deleted. However I am logged in as a moderator so perhaps you are seeing something I don't.

@Felipe's comment is gone.

Ah. Thanks for letting me know; it doesn't show as "deleted" for me when I follow the context link; I have go to their user page to see that. @ZorbaTHut, this is a very minor issue and I know you're very busy with important things, but I'm pinging you in case this is site behavior you're not aware of.

@Felipe, if you're out there, given that it was a burner account I'd love for you to restore the comment! But I won't reprint it here since it I will assume you took the affirmative step of making it unavailable for good reason.

Wild, you're right. I'll go put in a bug, thanks!

Thanks for the nomination! For the full experience, I recommend reading the article on my newsletter: https://firsttoilthenthegrave.substack.com/p/american-cultural-exports

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