site banner
PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   3318 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for February 21, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I can get thoughtless good faith responses from reddit or Facebook or a million billion other places.

Your actions here, simply put, come across like you were setting out to pick on people from the beginning.

Really? Which ones? The action where I mentioned being a fan of two of the posters who misunderstood? The action where I said I don't think people are actually less intelligent, but behaving less intelligently? The action where I said the problem is people are retreating from their humanity out of fear and complacency? Or is it just the action in the op where I impugned people's intelligence?

I genuinely can't see it. I expected people to be upset with me, but I didn't expect this level of upset, with cjets mantra of mod vengeance and so on - it genuinely looks to me like narcissistic injury (as in identity injuring, not implying narcissism). The conflict I was expecting was for people to bring up examples of times I have been guilty of using semantics and passive aggression to avoid actually engaging, because they absolutely exist. Is any critical comment a gotcha now? Can we not just say "yeah that was dumb, we need to get our act together" Not to mention if I brought it up without an example it would have been immediately dismissed as a strawman.

For what it's worth I agree, some people were made a fool of and aren't taking it well. I don't see why your statements should be modded here or there. I responded as though the question were a serious premise, though if it were the question under discussion I would have argued the premise.

Part of the problem might be people getting used to truly insane posters, who have become legendary around here in some cases, and as a result responses were tough to nail down tone for. Is believing Fight Club might brainwash your teenager more or less crazy than any other aspect of American politics at this point, though it may represent a decline for this particular board?

Not to pile in, but people are trying to give you thoughtful good-faith responses. The expectation of good faith is one of the things that separates the Motte from most of the rest of the internet; I really don't want to try and dissect exactly which bits of people's posts are truthful and which bits are jokes, ironies, or falsities for the purpose of eliciting a reaction. Especially when many of us come from quite different cultures.

people are retreating from their humanity out of fear and complacency

I really think this is just a cultural expectation that's being violated. Maybe as we move off reddit our demographics have changed? Personally I value sincerity and prefer to be straightforward when discussing things; a friend enjoys being gratuitously rude in order (he says) to shock out a reaction and that doesn't sit well with me at all.

I would have appreciated the pile in earlier, I don't know why anyone would think I wasn't expecting pushback, if everyone agreed with me there wouldn't be a problem because everyone would have also decided to make an effort to understand every post they reply to at the start of the year.

But I have learned my lesson now. I was picking on people and no I don't get to find out how I should just shut up already. This is fine.

For what it’s worth, I have caught myself deleting posts a couple of times because I responded to what I thought someone was saying rather than reading their post properly. I’ll try to be more careful.

I'm not really interested in hearing your defenses. What I said is how your post came across to me, regardless of whether you think it should have come across that way. I can't speak for others, but you certainly rubbed them the wrong way and I would guess it's for similar reasons. If I were you, I would walk away from this one and simply accept that it didn't go over how you thought it would, rather than trying to defend yourself.

Yes, less engagement is what this place needs.

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