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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   25097 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023

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I don't understand you point at the end:

I wish I could say I have rejected vegetarianism because I engaged with their best arguments and found them wanting. Instead, I found their argumentation so annoying I ceased to engage with them.

Maybe because their arguments aren't that good? Whatever...

What these groups all have in common is a strong ability to signal these things emotionally to people similar to them and form a consensus, but also a generally terrible ability to discuss these things reasonably.

OK...

We don't have many vegans, anti-car people, or socialists here at The Motte - but that's not because their arguments are invalid, it's because the people attracted to those ideologies don't fit well with our particular discursive style.

Huh? Is your point that unreasonable arguments are valid arguments?

:marseyshrug: If you want me to take you argument seriously, don't attack me. Or, if you start from a place of 'I am 100% right' you're not trying to have a conversation (or debate), you're just preaching... What's the point? Are you trying to convince people or are you just making yourself feel righteous?

So many conversations boil down to this: Someone is better because they do (or don't do) 'X'. If I bring up a counter-point, the response is along the lines of 'Ew, you're one of those people'. Now, I can try to prove I'm not what I'm being accused of (it's funny how easily things like white nationalist is thrown around) or I can respond with a similar personal attack. Neither one is effective but one makes me feel better...

I don't owe my time or energy to anyone. Why would I give it to someone that starts off attacking me?

I think that's a blind spot for The Motte.

I think you doing the thing...

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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."

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