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.
- 158
- 2
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 -
While I like (and sometimes exploit!) this trait, a lot of settings on both generation and upscaling (especially with latent upscalers) will result in visual clutter that a normal artist would not use.
This is most noticable and obvious on the PMC brutalist logo: the scattered white pixels around the 'shoulder' and well outside of the logo's boundaries are just not what you'd expect to see. Maybe as some sort of deep-fried jpg artifact, were the rest of the image busier? But they're not actually those things, or even human interpretations of those things.
The wave-face image is the one where clear errors are most human-like -- anatomy and cloth flow mistakes, overpronounced foreshortening, slightly jank perspective are all totally things even good artists do, sometimes intentionally! -- but separately it's also got some weird distractions. Why are there blue highlights on his abs? If the flow of the image is supposed to be toward his face, why are so many lines going to his shoulders?
The ARMA one is the closest to human-like (there's a few physics/layout errors, but they're absolutely ones humans would make), though the genre it's coming from tends to be cluttered and intentionally disorienting to start with.
You can work around and stop these sort of issues, but you have to really heavily ride and push it toward specific low-clutter styles, and even then it takes some futzing with SD parameters to avoid the image coming out overdone or undercooked.
/images/17023968095808215.webp is prompted by meta at the FurryDiffusion discord, but outside of the hands/paws (and... subject matter), it's as close to human-created art as you'll get.
More options
Context Copy link