This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
- 1849
- 20
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
- Courtesy
- Content
- Engagement
- When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
- Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.
- Accept temporary bans as a time-out, and don't attempt to rejoin the conversation until it's lifted.
- Don't attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity.
- Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
- The Wildcard Rule
- The Metarule
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Sure, I remember it differently - same place we were in at the start of this conversation. I'm more than happy to agree to disagree, but you're not going to convince to me by linking to some random comment from somebody else. I don't think that comment is good. There are lots of comments I see here regularly that I don't think are good, or in good faith, but I don't publicly call users out or complain about them the way I see people do for him.
If there were a user who made a whole lot of bad posts and refused to engage in good faith, to the point that a lot of people trying to engage with them got frustrated to the point of eating a ban, is it reasonable to take note of this and point it out, both to discourage them from doing it and to warn the people who haven't figured out the schtick?
Again, I don't expect to convince you that Darwin is bad. It's enough for me to establish the nature and boundaries of our disagreement: is it that there's no such thing as a bad post, or there is but noticing patterns of bad posting is unproductive, or that some posts are bad and some posters are bad but Darwin wasn't one of the bad ones, or something else. Even if we agree to disagree, it seems useful to me to be clear on what we disagree about.
I’m sorry, I’m not sure what the source of confusion is. We both think making bad posts is bad, but I think his posts were good, so it doesn’t apply.
His input was a genuine loss imo. He made some of the only well argued pieces from points of view we never get here, and people would dogpile him, personally insult him, and bring up everything he ever said that they ideologically disagreed with. If people were regularly as shitty to me as they were to him I’m sure I would get in more verbal scuffles as well. Part of why I don’t have conversations about American culture war issues is because people have been shitty to me the times I tried, here and in DMs, and I have limited patience for that.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link