justawoman's profile

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!

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justawoman

I was Bernie Sanders’ personal gimp

Once upon a time I was a Republican and then I went to college and turned into the leftist liberal progressive Democrat that hid under your bed and no I was not a man and yes I was addicted to downvotes, every time I got one it was like a bump of that sweet smoking gun. Also I did 99% of this on mobile in my bathtub, so if I didn't respond to someone it’s because my screen was too tiny to read everything before I got out of the bath. I'm not active on this site anymore because the current mod team is not being consistent in enforcement when it comes to moderation and it's causing a brain drain which isn't making it fun to debate here anymore, so I'm voting with my proverbial wallet. But apparently I can't stop hate-reading this site, so maybe that previous sentence was a little false.

User ID: 2254