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AnotherSiteAnotherName  2yr ago (text post)   3943 thread views

The Motte and the future

So the move has been made. Potential shut down by Reddit has been avoided. Huzzah!

But people are still worrying about where new members are going to come from. And things are still being organized in the same terrible way as /r/ssc when they were trying to quarantine the culture war from the rest of the sub. And sprinkles around you have a few small threads for other weekly topics or talking about the new site.

A dedicated site deserves a nu start. Rather than purposely making quality writing harder to find, it should be highlighted. (I know the quality contributions roundup exists, but it certainly isn't exhaustive.) Seriously, have you ever gone back and tried to read an old weekly culture war thread with its thousands, potentially tens of thousands of comments? It is an unnecessary slog if you are looking for something and don't have a link. And sometimes you 'continue reading' and go back only to find that you've lost your place. It just makes you say, "I blue myself."

I do have some suggestions on some of the changes I'd like to see more that there is a dedicated website. First, I'd like to see a webpage highlighting quality contributions and other content from the forum. Something that I can easily link a friend to rather than a nested comment in response to some insane person ranting "There's a man inside me!" Or whatever.

Secondly, I think some editorial prompts for content for the sure would be good. Adversarial collaborations and whatever else. Just easier ways to find good writing from the site.

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I just want to let you know that I have joined the forum. I never joined reddit and virtually never use or post on any platform (we are talking 3-4 times in 15 years)... Nor have I ever commented on a substack page or the old slatestarcodex site.

Thank you for doing this and thank you to everyone that moves over to themotte.org. The forum functions as an experiment of ideas where dozens of different scenarios can be run. When I go back to read news or popular science articles it is appalling how narrow and uninformed the information is. You don't even need to read reddit for news or politics anymore. The conclusions are prepackaged like a refrozen microwave dinners.

The single most destructive cultural change on the internet was removal of comments sections from news sites. A large fraction of current culture war issues are downstream of this. It completely eliminated accountability, openness, and perspective from modern media. And, even more destructive was the loss of dialog between people (I remember places like NPR used to have excellent comment sections). The only thing worse than having assholes disagree with you is having no one disagree. Question the assumptions! Question my assumptions!

I will point out one culture blind spot I have often read in themotte. Not to say this point is always missed of course, just *often missed.

    "Factually wrong but emotionally right"   or the corollary "Emotionally wrong but factually right"

Many of the people around you are not going to understand the details, many people outside this forum. You will meet people less keen, less knowledgeable, and less experienced. But what does it really say? If someone lacks the metacognition or general information do they always lack explanation? What of the wisdom of the elders? If people of an older era believed there were ship destroying monsters in the ocean, did it matter that they were wrong? Or was it not an emotionally succinct way to convey the danger and helplessness of a ship in a storm?

In a dichotomous way... seeing things from a more modern perspective... We know the moon goes around the earth 12 times each time the earth goes around the sun. And all the other planets also go around the sun. and earth is a sphere and the moon has mountains and NASA says the tallest mountain on Titan is 10,948 feet and... and... and ... But at that point we no longer feel what these things mean. Maybe the full moon could have meant walking on wet tottering rocks collecting clams as a coastal villager with the neap tide. Or maybe the stars told stories of greater beings or beings of the past you could never meant and only imagine.

So if someone says "these people are completely wrong" because... this is the information and its correct and clear and logical and science... I often like to ask... Are the emotions behind that belief also wrong? Or is there a reason such an emotion has formed in someone else? Even if we know what is true I am sometimes scared of not seeing the forest for the trees. More and more I am filled with dread. When our natural human instincts and emotions were trained by the natural world the feedback was always real. Today our emotions are often trained by the virtual so even if the facts are right, have we lost touch with something more?

Regardless, thank you to all the posters here who made open discussions possible.

Seriously, have you ever gone back and tried to read an old weekly culture war thread with its thousands, potentially tens of thousands of comments? It is an unnecessary slog if you are looking for something and don't have a link. And sometimes you 'continue reading' and go back only to find that you've lost your place. It just makes you say, "I blue myself."

I actually do this sometimes when the new stuff is coming too slow and I want to look at the old stuff with fresh eyes for a new perspective. The trick I use is to ctrl click "context" on the parent threads that look interesting and collapse all parents as I go down the thread. An older CW thread usually has ~3-5 parents I'd like to revisit and then when each parent on its own manageable page it's a simple to use them like they were their own submissions.

My request is a ban on direct links from Substack. It was getting kind of bad in the former subreddit but I've seen a lot of people posting their substacks to this website and I don't want this to be a repository of wanna be SCC-types trying to promote their hobby. It removes integration from the community and creates a division of members from integrating and interacting with the community instead of posting pre-baked blogs for views or hits.

Seriously, have you ever gone back and tried to read an old weekly culture war thread with its thousands, potentially tens of thousands of comments? It is an unnecessary slog if you are looking for something and don't have a link. And sometimes you 'continue reading' and go back only to find that you've lost your place. It just makes you say, "I blue myself."

How much of old stuff is worth reading? Do we want to be reminded of coivd and lockdowns again or Russia takes which aged poorly? I want to move on.

There is a wealth of interesting ideas to read through, and I sometimes go back through these threads to find new arguments (because the rest of the internet always repeats the same shit ad nauseam). For what it's worth, I don't look for Covid or lockdown or Russia takes, I weakly agree that those are tired subjects. But there's a lot more than those.

I think there's a surprising amount of useful information, even beyond the QCs. ((Indeed, one of my complaints about the QC roundup is how mediocre a QC can be and still get awarded, while some very good posts in the same time frame either weren't nominated or didn't pass the cut, and I'm not just or even mostly talking about my own posts.))

I think there are benefits to making continuing an older interaction difficult, given what happens to fora without rules against necroing, but I'm very much against the Eternal Now.

And, on the flip side, I do think it's useful to notice when people are very confident but wrong, myself included. It's good to not have it be easily visible, but it's also helpful to notice when someone makes a big crux of their argument about a generalized position they've violated in the past, or base their knowledge on personal experience or 'friends' that they would require them to be The Most Interesting Person In The World.

((Indeed, one of my complaints about the QC roundup is how mediocre a QC can be and still get awarded, while some very good posts in the same time frame either weren't nominated or didn't pass the cut, and I'm not just or even mostly talking about my own posts.))

I'm curious what this means beyond "I have different taste from the person putting together the QC list." I'm sometimes side-eyeing some QCs, but that's just a difference of opinion isn't it?

To some extent, it does mean that.

But I've also had one of my own posts QC'd which I'd requested to be removed from the QC lineup, and there's other pieces like this that were QC'd but basically a news link with a bit of context. I've also got mixed feelings at best about this one.

It's not that they aren't insight porn; it's that whether QCs are about 'posts that are good for the community', 'posts that present unusual perspectives or expertise or viewpoints', good effort-posts, or just 'things we want more', regardless of the merits of them as standalone posts, they weren't that.

Now, I'm not filtering QCs, nor would anyone want me to be, nor am I writing a surfeit of outstanding posts that need to be elevated instead. I've reported a few QC submissions, but not many. It's probable not possible to consistently get the best results on whatever metric, no implemented system can be perfect, and the actual project is still worthwhile.

But it's also worthwhile to keep in mind its limitations.

I want to be reminded of who has historically made bad/good takes.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/07/yes-we-have-noticed-the-skulls/

This is a problem that has been discussed ad infinitum for years. I've been seeing it for the 2 years I have been browsing the subreddit.

And things are still being organized in the same terrible way as /r/ssc when they were trying to quarantine the culture war from the rest of the sub.

This is at least semi-intentional. Explained by Zorba

It is an unnecessary slog if you are looking for something and don't have a link

Yes it is hard to find something you don't have link for. I've done that many times and sometimes even successfully . I think the solution is to have some good personal way of saving stuff you liked. Even if you had the thread split into posts the ammount of content you would have to search through would not change. So I doubt it would make things easier to find.

First, I'd like to see a webpage highlighting quality contributions and other content from the forum. Something that I can easily link a friend to rather than a nested comment in response to some insane person ranting "There's a man inside me!"

It alredy exist for AAQC. And has existed for quite some time. It could be more integrated into the new site I suppose. But for linking purposes it is great.

I really need to find a place to put a Vault link on our front page.

I didn't want to make a separate thread for this, so I'll leave it as a comment: I think we have a serious issue with diversity of opinion. This was already pretty bad on Reddit, but there seems to have been a step change for the worse in the few days this new site has been up. I'm not against people sharing reactionary or anti-woke points of view but when there's nothing to counterbalance them it feels less like a forum for debate and more like the world's highest effort Daily Mail comments section. I foresee this being an increasing issue, since now the Motte is moored in the digital equivalent of international waters, there is a far lower chance that progressive voices will chance upon the community by accident. Moreover, lack of diverse perspectives induces a harmful feedback cycle, since if someone sees at least some representation of their viewpoints they are more likely to pitch in, while if they just see a load of right-wingers competing to be the most critical of 'wokeism', in all likelihood, they will leave as quickly as they entered.

I accept that I'm not the first to raise this point (I believe this was a motivating factor for the removal of the bare-links repository) but since this isn't a problem that looks likely to solve itself I feel obliged to raise it again in the hope that we can work towards a solution.

I think showing up- and downvotes separately would encourage diversity of opinion.

The reason why there aren't more left-wing posters here is because they tend to have trouble playing by the rules. I want a place where we can talk in a reasonable logical way about any topic ranging from video games to genocide, both in terms of the pros and cons. A lot of Leftists seem to have trouble disassociating their emotions from their intellect. The second somebody makes a reasonable point that emotionally disturbs them or makes them feel threatened, they tend to get angry. The solution to this is not to coddle them and indulge their emotional temper tantrums, it is to punish them until they learn that they need to change their behavior, not us.

I agree with you that it would be nice to see more diversity of thought here, but not by giving Leftists a pass to break the rules every time they get emotionally triggered. We simply need to enforce the rules and gather more power until we are the dominant narrative, at which point Leftists will be forced to change their behavior if they want to participate in the dominant online discourse instead of being marginalized in their echo chambers. How is this unfair? We're not shutting them out, we're simply preventing them from shutting down other people's discourse with emotional appeals.

The reason why there aren't more left-wing posters here is because they tend to have trouble playing by the rules.

FWIW, in my experience left-wingers and right-wingers are about equally incapable of playing by the rules and regulating their emotions. We have had plenty of righties flame out because they couldn't handle being told that they aren't allowed to just boo, boo, boo the left.

Speaking of which, this post is pretty borderline, with an awful lot of very broad "Theys" referring to the left and lots of loaded language. Less boo, please.

Then why aren't there more left wing posters here?

Because most people put in the amount of work they need to to find a space where they can talk, and no more.

If you're an SJer, you are deluged in places where you can speak your mind. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, SpaceBattles.

If you're not an SJer, but have no particular interest in politics, then again, the deluge.

If you're interested in politics and oppose SJ, then none of those sites are open to you, because they all ban you for criticising SJ (Twitter less than average, I hear, but still somewhat). So you put in more work, find smaller spaces.

It's like the no-name-university-admissions problem: you aren't picking from the whole cohort, you're picking from Harvard's discards.

Any small space is going to get a substantial chunk of its members from the crowd that can't get into the titan sites but can get into the small space. You can pick to some degree what that differential is - allow stalking and you'll get a lot of stalkers; allow heresy and you'll get a lot of heretics. But the titans pick first, so there's an unavoidable hole where people who are (not trolls ∩ polite ∩ not stalkers ∩ not heretics ∩...) will be massively underrepresented because the titans didn't kick them out.

You can get a somewhat-better representation on any one issue by loosening up the tolerances on other issues - if you allow stalkers and allow anti-SJers, then you'll get large populations of SJW stalkers, anti-SJ non-stalkers, and anti-SJ stalkers (giving less bias on each issue than if you'd only allowed that issue). But this cure does, of course, come with its own downsides.

(I didn't use the word "left-wing" here because it really mostly is SJ the cultural phenomenon that's being filtered on; I don't see people being kicked off Twitter because they want lower taxes, and non-SJ left views do get kicked off.)

Probably for the reason I already mentioned - left-wing posters didn't feel as much of a need to go off reddit to have conversations. As for why there were fewer on TheMotte to begin with, because this place has trended rightward over time, for much the same reason.

We have obviously not collected statistics about warnings and bans, but it's my opinion, based on the warnings and bans I've seen handed out in my time as a mod and all the ban reports I've compiled, that it really does fall pretty evenly, proportionately, on left-wing posters and right-wing posters, and as a corollary to that, if I had to divide regulars into "People who are intelligent and reasonable commenters capable of engaging with their opponents in good faith" and "People who are mostly here to wage culture war and sneer at their outgroup," that also divides pretty much the same among righties and lefties.

Every time (every time) someone from either pole accuses us of favoritism, or makes some grandiose observation about the general conduct of the other side, it's because they notice what they are most interested in noticing. If you think lefties get the stick more, you will vividly recall every time you saw a leftie get modded, while all the righties getting modded are indistinguishable background noise to you. If you think we are biased against righties and let lefties get away with shit, you'll remember every time a rightie got modded and every time a leftie said something you found objectionable and didn't get modded. You aren't counting (or seeing behind the scenes) all the times it goes the other way.

Socioeconomic factors

Self-segregation of communities. This one has ongoing spiral into right-side witchery. Many left wing posters ended on forums with left-side death spiral.

No idea how to solve this.

I didn't want to make a separate thread for this, so I'll leave it as a comment: I think we have a serious issue with diversity of opinion.

Let's be clear here, what we mean primarily is that we don't have enough people taking a stance that defends modern left-wing social activism - trying to get certain groups to higher percentages in professional settings, trying to defend race-swapping in media/having inherently diverse movies (based on physical appearance), and declaring that self-identification is the only requirement for society to be obligated to treat you as it would another of your supposed gender. As for economics, the discussions around that are infrequent and not as engaging (or should I say enraging?) for people of different views to interact.

There's a joke on the badeconomics subreddit sideboard along the lines of "Everyone has an opinion on the economy". While that's true, I'd caveat that everyone has three opinions on any social issue. No amount of discussion of inflation will generate as much discussion/heated argument as when something trans-related comes up.

My pessimistic take is there is no solution to increasing diversity of opinion here. This space is now twice removed from its original SSC community, and the evolution has selected for people willing to argue under relatively high standards who felt they couldn't get what they got elsewhere. Its founding father is a man who is critical of modern social progressivism and his audience is thus composed of people who aren't said progressives (because who else is going to stay on a blog/community if you know the main man himself think you're wrong or just outright evil?)

I'm not that right-wing, I think. I count myself among the leftward posters here. But a sense of exhaustion has set into me whenever I see another comment that isn't as charitable as it could be towards a left-wing position. Because no matter how much I argue that assuming the worst of others needs proof, there are always 10 more comments I saw but didn't have the time to respond to.

It gets old and tiresome fast.

Because no matter how much I argue that assuming the worst of others needs proof, there are always 10 more comments I saw but didn't have the time to respond to.

This is the key. Political diversity of opinion and quality of opinion are orthogonal to each other. A discussion place can be a place for learning and intellectual growth without contributors uniformly across the political spectrum to maintain an ideal measure of political diversity. It can't survive a flood of commenters who won't check each other's sources. The moment when there are nobody left but people who congratulate each other for correctness of their opinions is when a forum has become distinctly uninteresting.

I'll chime in here that I'm one of the few libs to have stuck it out on TheMotte and, yeah, it does feel like it's taken a bit of an echoey turn with the site switch. I do think it's a mix of people finally being able to go mask off and rdrama folks trolling.

I don't think Joe Average Liberal will have the same experience I'm having, since I've spent most of my life enjoying back and forth with Cons and have my own weird ideosyncretic takes I like to ride around hobby-horse style.

I also don't have a great fix for this. Are there things libs want to say that they can't say on reddit? Abso-goddamn-lutely, but they're also things that left-wing spaces discourage saying as a taboo, so even unleashed in a place like this we hold our tongues.

Are there things libs want to say that they can't say on reddit? Abso-goddamn-lutely, but they're also things that left-wing spaces discourage saying as a taboo

Like what?

One thing that occurs to me is anti-GMO / anti-vaccine discussion, which has historically been equally if not more left-coded than right-coded, however is extremely taboo outside of quite fringe subreddits.

anti-GMO

Care to expand? From my understanding of the subject anti-GMO opinions are barely an order of magnitude more supported by evidence than flat earth unless you are using it for a catch all including monocultures and other agriculture issues that aren't nearly as controversial to criticize.

I don't think GMO is bad, but I think there are some principled reasons to be opposed to it. You know how tomatoes are worse than they used to be because they optimised for redness? I feel like GMO makes that sort of trap easier to fall into.

Or openly admitting that you consider antivax folks so repugnant that you'd consider otherwise unfair measures to hassle them.

Basically any discussion of violence as a political tool, even just like 'yeah, we should probably have some number of liberal gun owners otherwise the Accelerationists will win because they think they're running unopposed.'

That was what I was coyly pointing out, but I'm sure there are other taboos, probably that I've become so good at avoiding I don't even notice.

Huh? Liberal gun owners have their very own subreddit, which, as of now, isn't quarantined. And that's just one subreddit among many.

But the vast majority of libs won't touch it with a ten foot poll.

But they won't touch it primarily because they disagree with it, not because they are suppressing their feelings.

That's hardly something anyone besides themselves can do anything about. As far as I can tell, it's a completely normie-friendly subreddit.

I feel it's worth pointing out that "ideological diversity" means a whole lot more than just "a balance of woke [or whatever it's called] and not-woke viewpoints;" after all, the latter is a veritable wastebasket taxon whose members need have nothing else in common than this one thing that they are not.

Now, it meaning more certainly doesn't translate to not including any "woke-unwoke balance" at all - deliberately excluding any categorical viewpoint from this space would run counter to its mission - but there's still plenty more to talk about (and disagree about!) than just that.

I'm not against people sharing reactionary or anti-woke points of view but when there's nothing to counterbalance them

I have not been able to have many rational discussions with a woke activist. I usually get accused of something along the lines of blasphemy and get called something silly (like a trump supported or an 'ist... I'm not).

If most of reddit is a woke echo chamber; why would anyone go to a place where there is push back on their views?

Woke Activist isn't the opposite of Mottizen though, any more than Daily Mail Commenter is equal to Mottizen.

I agree. I feel like 'Mottizen' should encapsulate many view points... Just be open minded to others.

My point is why would they come here? They pretty much won and can control the narrative on their platform. Why then go to a place where you have no control and can be challenged?

I honestly think this is the problem with that kind of censorship. At first it kind of made sense... The reddit alts were awful (remember voat) but it kept going. And now I feel like it flipped, to the point where reddit is getting pretty awful.

Also, when you live in an echo chamber, your arguments get weak... How many people really seek out being challenged?

A) Well, I'm here, aren't I?

B) Not every lefty is a Woke Activist but all lefties will be driven away if every post's unjustified base assumption is that there's a global woke conspiracy seeking to Harrison Burgeron the white people into submission.

...every post's unjustified base assumption is that there's a global woke conspiracy seeking to Harrison Burgeron the white people into submission.

Isn't this an unjustified assumption? I mean, every post? I think the grey area here is how many posts are there actually like this? Or do you want to see these removed? If so, please see my echo chamber point above.

I feel like you're missing my point... So allow me an analogy.

I was a atheist since I was a teenager... and I grew up in a very religious community and most people knew I was a nonbeliever (to the embarrassment of my parents). Now, a lot of people would test me. They would hear things along the lines of, "Atheists think but what about ". Then would try to 'save me' with these silly arguments.

This led to me learning how to debate, learning (usually the hard way) about logical fallacies, actually studying religion, creating my own version of the Jeffersonian bible, etc.

Most people who tried to 'save me', got very angry when I pushed back at all. They wanted to be righteous! Not have their ideas questioned... How dare I not be the strawman they were told I was. They came in thinking they had all the answers, and I was able to show them they didn't.

That said, some of the people who tried to 'save me' were very thoughtful and over coffee or beers, we had some great debates (and some great friendships too).

My point: I either had to get really good at defending myself or always keep my mouth shut. And (most) evangelicals got intellectually lazy because of their echo chamber.

So, the point I've been trying to make this whole time... The woke on reddit have had it easy for a while now. It's great that you're here (I seriously respect it) but you're asking people who've rarely been challenged to come to a rationalist community and try to make arguments... And they're going to have a hard time because they've become ideologically soft. And really, a lot of people react negatively to finding out they don't know as much as they think they do.

Isn't this an unjustified assumption? I mean, every post? I think the grey area here is how many posts are there actually like this? Or do you want to see these removed? If so, please see my echo chamber point above

Prediction, not assumption. It's not every post right now, but it's certainly trending upwards. I don't want to see them removed. It would be neat to fork then CWR thread into that vs everything else, but really I'd just settle for more... everything else posts.

Because the everything else posts are just plain more interesting! Look at the thread right now; healthy discussion on that NYT article, and much less on the NFL livery.

Maybe it's a losing battle-maybe I'm some sort of rare lib who doesn't screech. But I too have had lively debates over beer with people who I totally disagreed with and I think it's a good experience more people ought to have.

I think we have a serious issue with diversity of opinion.

Any forum that discusses pretty much anything will tend to develop consensus viewpoints over time. It's especially bad with the culture war, because leftists will mostly self-select out of participating in any forum where people are allowed to express reactionary viewpoints.

I wish we had more diversity of opinion, but there's only so much we can do to foster that, unfortunately.

Diversity of opinion?

Be careful what you wish for.

This place was not exactly friendly to something as mainstream and sane as holocaust revisionism, would you really welcome here unironic believers in gnomes, fairies, vampires and lizard people?

but there's only so much we can do to foster that, unfortunately.

Foster that? It would be easy - just promote this site in obscure corners of the web as place where all opinions are respected and given fair hearing, and you will be surprised who will come.

https://i.imgur.com/bCddAvk.jpg

mainstream and sane as holocaust revisionism

Since when it is mainstream or sane or fact based?

there's only so much we can do to foster that

I would like to see a higher standard of charitability for criticisms of progressive leftism. I would like all posts criticising progressivism to be required to start from the sincere premise that the progressive actors are acting with the earnestly held belief that they are making the world a better place, and for any subsequent argumentation that rejects this idea to be required to explicitly demonstrate it. Far too many posts here are along the lines of 'as we all know, the woke progressive left are trying to force their ideology down our throats and the throats of our children to achieve cultural hegemony, and here's the new way that they're doing it'.

I make this request in the interests of the medium-to-long-term ability of this website to live up to its stated raison d'être. I definitely don't consider myself woke, but I'm not a reactionary either, and my most common response to reading Motte threads is a vague mix of annoyance at the monotonality of the know-it-all-white-stem-guy vibe and a creeping suspicion that most of the posts I'm reading are by fascists hiding their power level. Please forgive the lack of charity in this admission: I share it only to demonstrate that if this is my response to reading these threads, as a know-it-all-white-stem-guy with the habitual chan-browser's acquired tolerance for edgy politics, I worry that most visitors here would be far more strongly repulsed.

As much as it winds me up, some of the best long-form effortposting I've ever read on the internet has been on The Motte and I would be sad to see that end. Any moderator who cares to check can see that I have made source code contributions to the site, so I hope readers of this post do not assume I don't have its best interests in mind. I would appreciate any responses from anyone else who has had a similar experience to me, or (for that matter) from anyone who feels I am misrepresenting things.

I would like all posts criticising progressivism to be required to start from the sincere premise that the progressive actors are acting with the earnestly held belief that they are making the world a better place, and for any subsequent argumentation that rejects this idea to be required to explicitly demonstrate it. Far too many posts here are along the lines of 'as we all know, the woke progressive left are trying to force their ideology down our throats and the throats of our children to achieve cultural hegemony, and here's the new way that they're doing it'.

I think your first sentence and the quote in your second sentence are not actually mutually exclusive and significantly coexist. "Conservatives as Moral Mutants" (https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2018/06/25/conservatives-as-moral-mutants/) is probably the most obvious example I know of both descriptions being 100% true.

I'd certainly agree with "the core SJ movement >99.9% believes SJ is good and conservatism is evil" (this is slightly weaker than your statement to address a couple of boring loopholes; I'll post about those in the CW thread). I just think you picked a bad example of a statement that ignores this.

Edit: Elaboration is here https://www.themotte.org/post/56/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/5640?context=8#context

This is a fair point. Let me amend my grievance: many posts here take it as a given that progressives are intent on enforcing their worldview not on altruistic grounds of morality, but rather out of a self-serving desire to further their own prospects and those of their in-group, composited with a wanton and nihilistic urge to destroy tradition and structure.

I would like all posts criticising progressivism to be required to start from the sincere premise that the progressive actors are acting with the earnestly held belief that they are making the world a better place

Absolutely agreed and I find the posts that fail at building a theory of mind for their political opponents to be frustrating and boring, albeit far less frequent of an occurrence than criticism of this place would imply. I think these are more a result of just weak posts than anything systemic.

this seems to be going too far though,

as we all know, the woke progressive left are trying to force their ideology down our throats and the throats of our children to achieve cultural hegemony

Isn't this just a maximally uncharitable way to describe activism of any type? What is teaching anti-racism, or patriotism/religion, in schools if not an attempt to force ideology down the throats of our children?

I would like all posts criticising progressivism to be required to start from the sincere premise that the progressive actors are acting with the earnestly held belief that they are making the world a better place

Why?

Rules -> Courtesy -> Be charitable, for one. Also Rules -> Engagement -> Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

I'm very OK with including progressives / wokes / anti-anti-wokes in the discussion and being charitable to them. I just think that "to be required to start from the sincere premise that the progressive actors are acting with the earnestly held belief that they are making the world a better place" goes beyond charity.

What is charity, if not that? I assume "progressive actors" refers to the everyday people, not the big name activists and politicians.

According to Merriam-Webster, charity means lenient judgment, benevolent goodwill and generosity. In my view, one can treat progressives in such ways without accepting the claim that their actions are always driven by the earnestly held belief that they are making the world a better place, because to have that attitude is not charity but political sympathy, which goes beyond charity. I find that to be a rather high bar. That'd mean that progressives should only have discussions with other progressives, or people who aren't progressives but nevertheless believe that the worst thing progressives ever do is to be misguided/mistaken in their actions.

Even holding the assumption that progressives in general mostly earnestly believe that they're making the world a better place would be cutting down on "so here's all the new madness of the week They did", I think.

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I worry that most visitors here would be far more strongly repulsed.

It might be good to take a moment to consider why TheMotte even exists before demanding more charity for progressives around here. This website is by my count the third exile for those of us with views that are widely seen, primarily by progressives, as repulsive. I think it behooves you to explicitly address that history before making such an argument yet again.

If the same consideration was to be extended to all groups, I'm afraid there wouldn't be anyone at all extended charity here. I don't see "optimize for light instead of heat, but except from progressives, anything goes against them" in the founding principles.

Please provide evidence that it is not extended to all groups. EDIT: Evidence that attacks on progressives are uniquely tolerated at a level beyond that of any other group.

I would like to see a higher standard of charitability for criticisms of progressive leftism.

The standards that are currently enforced here are the standards that I would be happy to apply to anyone, friend and foe alike. So I don't feel that the current standards are deficient or unfair, and I don't feel any need to change them. If people feel that the current standards aren't fair to leftism, well, that's on them. I think that rigorously enforced absolute neutrality in every post would just stifle discussion and make it more cumbersome to write effortposts.

I want leftists to come here and start posts with "so we all know that Trump supporters are on the verge of a full fascist takeover of the US, and here are their latest moves on that front". I would then explain to them why I think they're wrong. That's how I think the forum should work.

And what would you say to people like me, who have enough experience with the woke that we've concluded progressives are not coming from that position? I absolutely refuse to lie for your feelings. If that means that you're less likely to participate, that is unfortunate but not really a problem; I'm not vulnerable to threats of taking your toys and going home.

There are certain tonal requirements per the rules, sure. But 'polite' does not demand deference to woke's self-image in contradiction of its actions.

Personally, I'd say that you might be on the wrong community.

Ideological diversity is the entire point of this place, and that's not hyperbole, we have a Foundation that defines the point:

The purpose of this community is to be a working discussion ground for people who may hold dramatically different beliefs. It is to be a place for people to examine the beliefs of others as well as their own beliefs; it is to be a place where strange or abnormal opinions and ideas can be generated and discussed fairly, with consideration and insight instead of kneejerk responses.

All of the community's rules must be justified by this foundation.

If you feel so negatively about left-wing people that you're not able to discuss things with them then you're in the wrong place.

I disagree with your interpretation of your Foundation. The entire point of this place is to have a «working discussion ground», that's the first item on the agenda and the value of diversity is contingent on satisfying this criterion.

Some beliefs can be genuinely irreconcilable with that, for example any sincerely held and practiced belief in the utility of shitting up the discussion for most of the people here. Some beliefs are just so epistemologically alien and uncharitable that they don't lend themselves to a productive discussion. Some are plain dumb.

We must not become an echo chamber, but it is perfectly expected that some beliefs, even expressed with formal respect to our tone standards, are in fact not conductive to having a working discussion ground, and the community would be wise to reject them and their adherents precisely to protect its value and purpose. It may be the case that the standard issue Twitter/nu-Reddit militant wokism is grounded in beliefs of this kind.

Ideally, it would be a small sector of the left-wing spectrum, tucked between some dissident post-trotskyism and 4th wave anarcho-feminism. Philosophically, that's roughly what it is. Demographically, it happens to be a big deal.

Some beliefs can be genuinely irreconcilable with that, for example any sincerely held and practiced belief in the utility of shitting up the discussion for most of the people here.

Sure, and we boot people for that.

Some beliefs are just so epistemologically alien and uncharitable that they don't lend themselves to a productive discussion. Some are plain dumb.

This, however, I disagree with. "Their opinions are too uncharitable to be tolerated" is a classic way to shut down differing opinions. So is "their opinions are dumb". It may be true that there are opinions that are thoroughly incompatible with what we're going for here, but so far I haven't seen any; honestly, the general idea that people with differing opinions are unable to have good discussions is the closest I've seen.

This, however, I disagree with. "Their opinions are too uncharitable to be tolerated" is a classic way to shut down differing opinions.

Doesn't this just as easily apply to the earlier post? How do you escape the circle of uncharitability to the supposedly uncharitable? With enough charity in interpretation nearly nothing is uncharitable and the level of charity necessary to apply to social justice posts is the entire question here.

Far too many posts here are along the lines of 'as we all know, the woke progressive left are trying to force their ideology down our throats and the throats of our children to achieve cultural hegemony, and here's the new way that they're doing it'.

Is not a charitable way to interpret the posts in question.

It's not very honest to make me the bad guy here by focusing on meta level ideas about abstract interaction of opinions. In practice, when a Guy comes in with guns blazing and, brandishing his great and novel Beliefs, revives some discussion about, say, Trump supporters being covert Nazis, or people interested in genetics of intelligence being deeply dishonest fascists who need fraudulent science to justify an apartheid state – it... just doesn't matter how eloquent and polite and effortful he is. Because we know how it goes, I do, at least: no amount of good faith argument will achieve anything more than the guy disappearing without conceding a single point; were he honest and as intelligent as the quality of writing indicates, he'd have found all that before anyway. So there'll be some tired snarky response or not even that, he'll leave and/or get baited into a bannable offense, and you'll shake your head about evaporation of dissent.

But I think it's normal that such «dissent» evaporates. If we need new people, we need new people, from similarly niche but different intellectual traditions, people who can take the heat... the light, if you prefer, and keep defending and counterattacking and creating sparks.

I really don't care for a spar with Impassionata, even when she doesn't overstep the bounds of polite discourse. I know how it goes with her. You do too, which is why she had been banned on the sub. But when a newbie comes in with Impassionata-style attitude, is it really our fault that he finds the reception cold?

I didn't say I couldn't discuss things with them. I said I wouldn't lie to them. Interesting that you consider those things equivalent.

When all you have to say to someone is (or should be reasonably interpreted as) psyopping - that's not a discussion in my books. Explicitly declaring total war on the portion of the population you're attempting to converse with does that.

You're free to decide there's no discussion to be had with me. We don't even need to have this discussion about it, you can just stop without trying to convince me to care.

If you think the rules are about tone then you have misunderstood them. The rules have always been about sincerely assuming the best of your ideological opposites, not assuming whatever you like and then applying a varnish of decorum.

Just being honest, it is pretty well known that you can post any uncharitable thing you want as long as you bury it in 500 words and don't descend into slurs.

Yeah and I think it's a shortcoming of the site. It sometimes feels like you can say anything you like so long as you avoid pithiness at all costs and use enough rationalist jargon.

The rules are about tone because they can only be about tone. It is not actually possible to police internal states.

The idea that it is impossible to discern the personally held feelings of posters here towards progressivism because everyone's so level-headed and decorous is frankly risible.

Indeed, the rules are largely ridiculous, as they exist to tone police people whose feelings are not ambiguous. I've criticized them for years.

The rules have always been about sincerely assuming the best of your ideological opposites,

This is not an unlimited line of credit, and this community is not new. This is ground we have trod countless times before; of course there are grooves. For a similar example, claims about the 2020 election being stolen don't get unlimited intellectual charity; we had a more-or-less fair hearing and the stronger claims mostly failed to justify themselves.

Hmm.

I’m not sure if it’s significantly worse than it was on reddit, though I have to agree that the potential consequences are bigger. The worst excesses of troll posting seem to be under control (and the rules are still enforced), but yeah, that’s not going to prevent the selection bias.

Scott’s reign of terror back in the SSC days seemed reasonably effective, but the influx of users was powered by his essays. Meanwhile I don’t think I’m ever going to share an effortpost from this site in the same way I would an established Scott piece. It’s charged in a way the SSC comments tried not to be.

Yeah, I'm definitely interested in any ideas that people have to amp up ideological diversity. It's a hard problem.

Once the visual revamp is done I plan to start reaching out to other communities and see if we can get crosslinks going, and maybe that'll help. (Right now I'm sick, so that's getting delayed a bit.) But I'm not sure that'll do it, even if I can convince people to crosslink.

If you insist on diversity for diversity's sake, can you at least make it interesting and try to recruit off-compass weirdos, and various high-quality schizos?

If diversity is when more hegemonic ideology supporters, I'll jump off a cliff.

If you can figure out a good place to get them, yeah, I'd love to have 'em here. Seriously, suggestions welcomed.

You could have two separate CWR threads: one specifically about woke vs anti woke, and another for everything else.

Consider proselytizing at /r/stupidpol. They're anti-woke Marxists.

PoliticalCompassMemes is probably your best bet, though half of it is trolling.

PCM was already given their own independent website on the exact same rdrama/ruqqus base as this one yet almost their entire community refused to move across. If they wont bother to have discussions on their own website then I highly doubt they'd ever give this one a chance. Last time I checked their site it was completely taken over by the ip2 community.

yet almost their entire community refused to move across.

This is unsurprising for people who refuse to close the original site. Gotta do that to actually move.

If they wont bother to have discussions on their own website then I highly doubt they'd ever give this one a chance.

The goal here isn't "get the politicalcompassmemes community moving over", it would be "find the people within that community who want to have more serious discussions and make them aware of a place where that can happen". It'd be a subset of that community and that's totally fine.

Gotta do that to actually move.

Fair.

find the people within that community who want to have more serious discussions and make them aware of a place where that can happen

I was initially going to say I'm skeptical of finding users compatible with the motte since the main point of their community is misrepresenting other views, but I suppose doing that for laughs doesn't necessarily mean some users wouldn't be willing to talk srs bsns in a more serious community like ours.

It's worth noting that we actually picked up a few new users from rDrama. I suspect just about every major community has some people who would like to be here, it's just a matter of signal and noise, and of being able to make a big enough splash to actually find those users.

There is also at least one person who wanted to join theMotte for years but wasn't willing to break his "no large social media platforms" rule over it. Hi!

It's a problem, agreed. I suspect liberal-leaning posters felt less need to move off of reddit, while people who want to talk about things that would get them banned on reddit obviously were more interested in doing so. So the filtering process unfortunately is having the effect you are observing.

The best we can do is try to attract people genuinely interested in discussing, not booing their outgroup and talking about how horrible the wokes are being this week.

Hence, our insistence that we are not rdrama, or the next KiwiFarms.

Let me indulge in a bit of repetition here: the right leaning things that will get you kicked off reddit won't get you in trouble with rightwing circles. The left leaning ideas that you aren't allowed to say on reddit you're also not really allowed to say anywhere lefty, so you're dealing with a lot of self-censorship.

I can’t imagine that you’re talking about anything except direct calls to action, in which case: no shit you’re not allowed to say that. That’s frowned upon everywhere, right-wing circles included.

Except it's not frowned on in right wing circles. Right wing circles meme about 2a and different sorts of boxes (ballot, ammo, etc) and 'what would happen if they tried to ban guns' constantly. Then they share tips for where you can get a CC licence. Lefty circles just smugly assume that righties are all talk, or cower in fear when it's clear that they aren't.

There are equivalents to the sort of shady content you note in the more-radicalised SJ circles (i.e. small boards, not the giant social media platforms). I haven't seen obvious "shoot this specific guy please" stuff, but that's a level beyond anything you've mentioned.

I think your last sentence is only partially correct, but my impression from the rules list (I'm new here) is that I shouldn't really go into it outside the CW thread.

First, I'd like to see a webpage highlighting quality contributions and other content from the forum.

Done!

The big problem is that posts require some extra editing to get them up there. Ideally we also need to do more filtering on what works in website form instead of in discussion forum form.

We've got a list of posts pending for editing here, if you wanted to put some time in to do them, and I hope to wire up Paperclip Perfecter more directly once I link it to the new site.

Secondly, I think some editorial prompts for content for the sure would be good. Adversarial collaborations and whatever else. Just easier ways to find good writing from the site.

I absolutely encourage people to set stuff like this up. Right now I don't have time, I'm afraid. But it's a good idea!

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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