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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   37034 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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Trump renaming stuff is good, actually.

My initial reaction to Trump renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and reverting Denali to Mount McKinley was "this is dumb and childish".

I've changed my mind.

If you're a white man under 50, then you've experienced things being renamed as something that is done to your people, for the benefit of others.

Statues of Jefferson and Washington are taken down and statues of civil rights leaders go up. Columbus Day is referred to as "Indigenous People's Day". Robert E. Lee, once the namesake of so many things, is gradually being erased from the map. Since the 1960's, nearly every sizeable town has acquired an MLK Boulevard (usually ridden with crime). And King County, Washington recently did a "name change" in which it discarded its former namesake, former Vice President William R. King, to honor (who else) Martin Luther King.

Countries in the third world have employed this power play as well. Bombay becomes Mumbai, Madras becomes Chennai. Cape Verde becomes Cabo Verde, the Ivory Coast becomes Cote d'Ivoire, and Turkey becomes Türkiye. How long until China insists that foreigners uses its rightful name: 中国.

The indigenous names are worse. Barrow, Alaska is now Utqiagvik. Port Elizabeth, South Africa, has become Gqeberha. Apparently, the citizens of these places don't even use the new and unpronouncable names – which seem to exist only as a way to flex on white people.

Since the 1960s, name changes are one of those things that the left just took complete control over while no one was paying attention. But why should should the left get the exclusive right to rename things?

Trump is now upsetting this forgone conclusion. You rename stuff, we'll rename stuff too. And if you want control over names, you're going to have to give up something else in return. I think it's a good move.

Denali is a pretty good name. Right number of syllables, pronounceable, memorable, and been around long enough now that it's stuck. Mount McKinley is fine and all, but there are already so many mountains named after people with European last names due to.. well, history. There's nothing wrong with that, but if we've managed to have a few that are more unique, I'd rather they remain.

Fort Bragg -> Fort Liberty -> Fort Bragg : Approve. Fort Liberty sounds like a dumb action movie screenwriter's half-assed working title for their generic military base. Bragg is better, and it hasn't been Liberty long enough to warrant keeping that.

Gulf of America: Oppose because it's new, but I will grudgingly accept that it is a large enough geographic feature to deserve it. Gulf of North America, maybe? Also pretty generic.

It looks like very soon Denali will go back to just being a river in Africa...

I'm on board with returning to Mount McKinley - big fan of mountains having Mount in their name in the first place, Denali could be anything (as someone else said, it sounds more like a festival than it does a mountain). I'd be okay with Mount Denali but there was no good reason to rename it to just Denali imo.

Gulf of America is dumb. It's not returning to the previous name, like Mount McKinley - it's been the Gulf of Mexico since the birth of the nation. And more importantly, it doesn't flow as well imo. The Gulf of Mexico even describes it much better, seeing as it encompasses so much of the Mexican coastline compared to American. Seems like an unnecessary and counterintuitive change.

I agree with you, McKinley rename good, “Gulf of America” dumb, freedom fries, etc.

I'd be okay with Mount Denali but there was no good reason to rename it to just Denali imo.

Wait, I always thought that it was changed to Mt. Denali, or Denali Mountain, or something.

Nope, they went to just Denali. Which doesn't give much insight into what Denali is, considering I'd put conversational knowledge of the particular Inuit language it's called that in at... what, .001% of Americans?

the particular Inuit language it's called that in

Koyukon Athabaskan, not Inuit. It's related to Navajo.

"Gulf of America" is some freedom fries-tier petulant nationalism and everyone who supports it deserves to be mocked relentlessly for their lack of dignity.

If you're a white man under 50, then you've experienced things being renamed as something that is done to your people

Speak for yourself.

Renaming thing can be good or it can be bad, because who and what we choose to honor says something about ourselves. Nor are we bound for eternity by the preferences of those who came before us. We don't expect Latvians to keep up Soviet monuments or Germans to preserve the aesthetic decisions of the Third Reich.

Renaming things that bear the names of Confederates is good, because it is a repudiation of tyranny and white supremacy. The best you can say about these men were that they were good generals (usually not even that), and we're not lacking for pillars of martial excellence that weren't traitors. Renaming things named after, say, Jefferson is bad, because while Jefferson had many less-than-admirable qualities, they're not why we honor him. I'm pretty mixed on Columbus Day, because while Columbus was pretty terrible even by the standards of the time, it's meant to be a celebration of Italian American heritage, not exploitation and genocide (though, as above, I think we could probably dredge up a less notorious alternative who was also actually American).

The Right is, of course, free to rename things, but of late the people and things they seem to want to honor have a tendency to vindicate their critics.

Also, Denali is a vastly superior name name to Mt. McKinley.

I think it's a good move

Has Trump ever done anything you didn't consider a good move?

Columbus was an exaggerated evil. Most of what went badly happened under other men’s watch. He certainly is not guilty of genocide. This sort of blood libel from the left is why Trump won (again)

Re: confederate generals - I could very well say the same thing about the Indian leaders that are today honoured. Why should we? They were bloodlustful savages that tortured children and POWs, and engaged in actual genocide against each other constantly …. And were our enemies! But leftists can’t seem to see why that should stop them from venerating them. Curious indeed

Columbus was an exaggerated evil

I don't know what you mean by 'exaggerated'. He's not personally responsible for every atrocity committed in the name of the Spanish Empire, but he dealt brutally with both his subordinates and the indigenous people under his authority to a degree that was notorious during his life. He also bears at least partial responsibility for the violent and deliberate destruction of several Caribbean indigenous cultures (i.e. genocide).

This sort of blood libel from the left is why Trump won

a) that's not what blood libel means b) insofar as puncturing myths of a romanticized past is a reason Trump won, it mostly speaks poorly of his supporters.

I could very well say the same thing about the Indian leaders that are today honoured

You certainly could. Depending on who you're talking about, I might even agree, though the whataboutism misses the point. Nobody is building statues of Native American leaders as a celebration of scalping anymore than people are building statues of George Washington as a celebration of slavery. (And if they are, they shouldn't). Native American war leaders are honored as icons of resistance against wars of conquest. The veneration of Confederate generals is at best a veneration of an ultra-sanitized version of the Confederate cause.

Stonewall Jackson was a good man. Robert E Lee was a conflicted man — he wouldn’t have seen himself as a traitor but as a localist. And he conducted himself exemplary post bellum.

That doesn’t mean the CSA was good.

Confederate heroes day has been a thing for a while. It has meant nothing. I think renaming Denali is more of the same.

I'm very much not "woke", but I disagree with you on a couple of points. First, in my opinion "Denali" sounds much more awesome than "Mount McKinley". "Denali" sounds imposing, almost Himalayan. And "Utqiagvik", although I don't know how to pronounce it, at least looks better on the page than "Barrow". I don't see the benefit of replacing cool, exotic-looking foreign names for such places with Anglo names.

Also, I don't really mind getting rid of using Robert E. Lee's name on anything that is run by the government. I would be annoyed if the government was naming things after a man who fought to keep my ancestors literally enslaved just 160 years ago. Of course there's a slippery slope, because then one can argue we should also stop naming things after Washington and so on... but in any case, I don't think that it's unreasonable for blacks to ask that we stop naming public things after literally Bobby Lee, the top general in the Confederacy, just like it was not unreasonable for Latvians to want to get rid of Lenin statues after the USSR fell apart.

"Denali" sounds much more awesome than "Mount McKinley".

Denali sounds like an Indian festival.

Denali sounds like an Indian festival.

You're thinking of Diwali. Denali are a kind of Roman coin.

No, you're thinking of Denarii. Denali were an ancient Irish dynasty.

I can't tell which one you're talking about, but Denali is a kind of anti-cheat software.

No, that's Denuvo, Denali were actually an early modern Afghan Empire.

"Gulf of America" is kind of silly, though. The US borders many bodies of water. The Gulf of Mexico is the one that has Mexico on the other side.

The Gulf of California doesn't border (non-Baja) California.

*Sea of Cortez

So, actually, Gulf of America is the less chauvenistic and more Latinx-perspective-friendly name?

Got to find a left-winger and try that one out.

What?

It's the gulf of America the continent.

Gulf of Mexico is named from the implicit perspective of America. Gulf of America would be named from the implicit perspective of Mexico. Therefore, "Gulf of America" is actually highlighting a non-Amero-centric viewpoint.

Another example of a similar phenomenon:

In Vietnam, the Vietnam War is known as the American War.

Gulf of Mexico is named from the implicit perspective of America.

French Jesuits called the gulf the Gulf of Mexico (Golphe du Mexique) as early as 1672.

There you go, ruining a perfectly good theoretical construct with your vulgar facts.

Might be silly if we trued to rename an ocean to the American Ocean. But as of now we only have one big gulf

It'd be silly to rename one ocean as the American ocean. But two? Now we're getting interesting. But we'd have to decide which is the East American Ocean and which is the West. Not for sensitivity reasons really, it'd be goofy to have the easternmost places on earth in the West American ocean.

Three, the Arctic ocean is clearly American as well.

Not for sensitivity reasons really, it'd be goofy to have the easternmost places on earth in the West American ocean.

Just change the name and location of the Prime Meridian to the American Meridian, problem solved

No need to change the location once Airstrip One becomes a minor outlying possesion.

I understand the sentiment, and I even sympathize with it, but I feel the need to take the opposite position.

People renaming stuff for ideological reasons is bad actually.

First, it's confusing and a waste of time, since everyone has to contextualize and relearn common concepts that did not meaningfully change, update maps, and generally give thought to something that wasn't an issue before. It's a problem that arises out of nothing.

Second, it doesn't convey any new information other than who is in charge, so it's a waste of time when that can be demonstrated through other means. Worse, like all symbolic wins it actually is a disincentive to doing practical good. All the ressources spent on words are ressources not spent on making whatever you care about great again. If the vanities of language are what you care about, fine and dandy, but that's unlikely to top the list.

Third, it erases our tether to the past, the names of things can often come from ancient sources that remind us of useful and interesting history, the more ancient the name, the more culture one is vandalizing by venerating their new gods.

Fourth, it's ultimately futile and amounts to suggestion, as do all attempts at linguistic prescriptivism. The ultimate judges of the quality of a new rule are the speakers, and they organically decide to adopt it. Changes imposed by fiat can sometimes be adopted, but all the rejected ones only end up as political shibboleth. Unless there is a groundswell of support to rename the Gulf, it'll end up as yet another tell like "inclusive" terminology and "democrat" vs "democratic" as relating to the party. A further marker of division instead of unity.

So ultimately, I don't even think it's a bad kind of suggestion, but it doesn't belong in policy, and the power to name things rests either in creators, discoverers, achievers, or coiners of beautiful language.

As much as I think of Trump's linguistic acumen, the man did change American English with his speech in a way people don't always realize, I don't see this particular attempt at gaudy jingoism as anything more than that. He's free to make me wrong by being so successful people call it as he wishes in his honor.

Instead of pointing at landmarks, why not create all those new cities he talked about, those would be worthy of the honor.

Fifth (or kind of, since it's related to both 2 and 4), this is going to really rile up the other side, and for nothing. This will convince everyone that Trump's next step is to do <insert batshit thing people somehow think Trump will do> and that this is the chance he's been waiting for to tear down the world and rebuild it in his own image. I think I'm never gonna hear the end of this one from the people I know.

Putting on the 4D-chess-tinfoil-hat, riling up the other side over nonsense, being loudly foolish if we want to put it that way, can be an effective distraction. Waste enough of their energy on getting outraged about renaming things, and there's less energy for opposing things you care about. Of course, there's always the risk of wasting your own energy on it too and you don't get around to the things that matter, either.

I think I'm never gonna hear the end of this one from the people I know.

Are these people potential Trump voters? Will they ever be allies? If not, then who cares?

That's the downside of polarization. There's no benefit to reaching across the aisle. Trump can't be shamed by these people because they will hate him no matter what he does. He could be the second coming of FDR and they would still reflexively hate him. They compared him to Hitler.

That's why riling them up about "Gulf of America" is smart politics. It makes his critics look a little crazy and it distracts them from things that matter.

You can't appease people who can't be appeased, but you can troll them.

The weird thing is Trump actually is pretty nice to people once they show a little niceness to him in kind.

This is exactly the reason Elon did the nazi salute, and I'm amazed no one else is picking up on that.

Are these people potential Trump voters? Will they ever be allies? If not, then who cares?

Well, I mean I'm sure you and I have different values and end goals. Suffice it to say, whether someone is a Trump supporter is not what I care about in my life. I'd say that even filtering people on that isn't even an option for me. If I did try to break ties with every person I know who is a TDS leftist... I'm pretty sure I'd have almost no one left in my life.

I've made the friends I've made and have the family I was born with and for whatever reason, they almost universally think differently from me regarding politics. I've tried, but failed to make new friends. I've found that when I try to specifically find local people who are anti leftist like me, they end up going too far in the other direction, and get annoyingly complainy with lack of adherence to truth, nuance, and values I like (e.g. they've often been strong followers of Ben Shapiro and others I deem to be grifting pundits).

At some point, I've had to make peace with this to avoid driving myself crazy, and just move on with my life, with the people I organically have found to be my community, while just praying people don't talk about politics too much. So the stuff I hate the most, from either side, is the stuff that will cause people to start interjecting their political opinions into my everyday life.

You'd know who'd be a good friend for you better than I would, and no one's entitled to your friendship; your friendships, your choice.

However, if scaled up this bodes poorly for the anti-leftist side, if anti-leftists are more willing to police and cutoff other anti-leftists for "going too far" or following the wrong kinds of people, whereas leftists are more willing to take a "no enemies to the left" approach. That means anti-leftists will be more fractured, with fewer allies and support networks, with a more constrained Overton window than leftists. Who knows, maybe you've unwittingly encountered potential anti-leftist friends, but they kept you at arms length and eventually quietly quit you because they found you went too far and followed the wrong people (like known scientific racist Scott Alexander).

That's fair. But I don't personally think that's the case. Most anti-leftists I have known have no scruples or even much higher level thought other than an extreme hatred of the left, and an arguments-as-soldiers kind of approach. For whenever reason, I've become different from that over time (and I believe many people in the motte, and anti-leftists in the rationalist community as well are more like me than other anti-leftists). I am anti leftist because I care about the truth, not in spite of the truth. It's just hard to meet other anti-leftists like that. Rationalists are rare to meet (where I am), anti-leftists are rare to meet, anti-leftist rationalists are really rare to meet.

I am anti leftist because I care about the truth, not in spite of the truth.

Meanwhile, I've been trying to train myself to give zero consideration for the truth for years, and haven't achieved any success. Any pointers from anybody?

Oh sure dude, just write things. Write whatever. I didn't think about what was true for even a second before I started writing this post, I have no idea if it will work or not, but I guarantee it's what you need to do.

I'm guessing you're being sarcastic, but truly, I have had so many experiences where I go to meet people on some conservative or libertarian meetup, and I'm excited to meet them, but then I find they're just extremely confrontational mindless drones who will jump on board any conspiracy theory, parrot anything they heard no matter how little sense it makes or how likely it is, or champion anyone who likewise wants to own the libs. Whatever it takes to convince themselves just a little more that leftists totally suck. That's not the sort of person I want to be or care to be around anymore.

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If I did try to break ties with every person I know who is a TDS leftist... I'm pretty sure I'd have almost no one left in my life.

Are these people aware that you're right-adjacent?

Some of them. Some of them I haven't told, some may have forgotten, some may have assumed that I've moved back (and I have moved back to some degree, but probably not as much as they think), one accepts and understands our differences, and some maybe just don't care to bring it up with me.

Yeah, that sounds about right. I do have a set of friends with MDS (though I have some other friends who are from somewhat to far to the right of me, to balance), and as long as you don't have to constantly hide who you are around them, it's fine to just let them complain for a while. Best of luck in these four years (maybe more?)!

Thanks, you too.

It took me a few minutes to put together "MDS". It is another insidious and rapidly growing variant that may overtake and outlive the initial TDS strain.

I have TDS friends too, I don’t think anyone is saying you should drop them. But failing to capitalise on victory so that your friends don’t get mad at you is tactically foolish and IMO sends your friends and mine entirely the wrong message: that the louder they get, the more everyone will acquiesce.

If they were potential political allies it might be different. But right now they lost and that means it’s their turn to learn some humility. We can still be friends but their TDS is their problem not mine, and it’s time for them to learn to reign themselves in the way I did.

Are these people potential Trump voters? Will they ever be allies? If not, then who cares?

Yeah, that's been my issue in this conversation. As far as I can tell, the loudest voices against the pardons wouldn't be caught dead voting for Trump.

EDIT: Oops - I'm in the wrong thread, but the point stands.

These all seem like good reasons to restore McKinley.

People renaming stuff for ideological reasons is bad actually.

Right. This community knows this progression. neutral rules are best, but once someone defects then trying to uphold the neutral rule is basically the same thing as unilateral disarmament.

To echo the discussion on the pardons below..

If we want less stuff getting renamed for political reasons, armed neutrality is our best bet. To reduce defection, tit for tat works better than unilateral surrender.

If you just give the other side the W, they have no incentive to stop. There's a reason that the left LOVES to name/rename stuff. It glories their ideology and pisses on the heroes of their enemy. And until now there was little pushback. In fact, most of the worst woke excesses happened when there was essentially no organized opposition.

That said, renaming things is highly correlated with tyranny. During the French revolution, the revolutionaries renamed all the months of the year. Commodus (of Gladiator fame) renamed the city of Rome to Colonia Commodiana in his own honor. Then he renamed all the months of the year in his own honor for good measure.

So if Trump starts talking about renaming Washington DC to Trumptown, I'm officially out.

You are correct about the first three, and wrong about the fourth (renaming obviously works, failed attempts are exceptions, not the rule). But so what? My enemies keep doing it. How do you propose to get them to stop it? Tit for tat is the only strategy I can think of that has any chance of success. Got any better ideas? Unless you do, I support renaming, and I think Trump should keep doing it.

Not only should he keep doing it, he should start dismantling their stupid monuments like that giant floating turd.

Rename Martin Luther King Boulevard to Martin Luther Boulevard :-)

Martin Luther (1483 - 1546)

How does Trump renaming things disincentivize your enemies from doing so when they get power? I don't see it. If anything, you're making the job (of plundering the budget) easier for them as now there are more things to rename back.

For a person who values the status quo historical names, political renaming looks like the two sides pulling things into the orthogonal directions, not opposite ones. Just because I wouldn't want Putin renaming Moscow to Vladgrad doesn't mean I should accept "New Kyiv" instead (or vice versa).

A better move would be to find something they care about that hasn't been renamed recently, and rename that. That's more tit for tat than reversal is, but requires that they actually care about something.

Though imagining a sign splitting the difference by saying "Denali (D)/McKinley (R) National Park" is a bit funny.

As always Northern Ireland has beaten you to the culture war punch. It's Londonderry if you are Protestant/Unionist and Derry if you are Catholic/Nationalist so the both sides version is Derry/Londonderry (read "Derry stroke Londonderry") or Stroke City to make fun of the issue.

"A visible sign of the dispute to the visitor is in the road signs;[108] those pointing to the city from the Republic refer to it as Derry (and in Irish, Doire), whilst signs in Northern Ireland use Londonderry. It is not uncommon to see vandalised road signs—the "London" part of the name spray painted over on "Londonderry" road signs by nationalists,[108] or occasionally "London" added to "Derry" signs by unionists.[108]"

Watching wikipedia editors hem and haw in the talk page of Mount McKinley (currently still Denali... for now) about why, exactly, it was good and correct when they immediately changed the page name when Barack Obama did the name change but now that Trump is naming it back it should stay Denali has led me to the same conclusion.

Changing names of stuff is still silly, but as with all things turnabout is fair play.

(currently still Denali... for now)

They seem to have a rather amazing capacity for Denali...

Wikipedia delenda est.

Okay, maybe not destroyed, but something needs to change. It's getting ridiculous.

Wikipedia's a weird case because as a non-profit you can't just buy it out or give government orders, blocking top-down, and it's quite willing to actively purge rightists attempting to infiltrate so bottom-up seems really hard.

The main vulnerability I can see is that because it's CC-BY-SA, Wikipedia mirrors exist and with (extreme) effort it might be possible for one of them to eclipse the original, rendering the entire bureaucracy toothless.

Yeah, I think you're right. But I don't think a fork would work either. They never do. You'd just get 1,000 witches as editors and the project would turn into Conservapedia. Network effects are powerful.

That's what made the Elon coup on Twitter so great. He flipped the polarity of Twitter, and his enemies clapped and celebrated because they thought they made him do it.

But I don't think a fork would work either. They never do. You'd just get 1,000 witches as editors and the project would turn into Conservapedia. Network effects are powerful.

I did say "extreme" effort. The cases I was thinking of were "USG or something of similar scale funds a mirror" or "WMF taken off the board or crippled".

The left-wing bias in Wikipedia content comes from the community, not the WMF. And it doesn't need a conspiracy - Wikipedia is leftish because most of the people with the time and inclination to edit a free online encyclopedia are leftish. To make a right-wing Wikipedia, you need a community of conservatives willing to make sure that they have high quality articles on things like History of Tamil Nadu and Runge-Kutta methods for solving differential equations.

Conservapedia was not an attempt to do this - it was basically a collaborative homework project for conservative homeschoolers. Vox Day's Infogalactic failed because he couldn't find right-wing editors willing to edit anything except a few pages on high-profile political topics.

The rows between the community and the WMF have been intra-left factional battles which the WMF successfully spun as them being even more SJW than the community. But they aren't - they're just more cynical about using bad-faith social justice messaging as a tool of power.

The left-wing bias in Wikipedia content comes from the community, not the WMF.

I think you may have misunderstood. If WMF dies, then the main ENWP site goes down and stays down. At that point, the policies and bureaucracy of current ENWP are meaningless; someone will build a successor, probably based on one of the mirrors, but they don't need to import those policies and that bureaucracy. This is how to beat network effects if you can't just straight-up steal the network (or brute-force through it); you destroy the functionality of the existing network so that people are available for a replacement.

And it doesn't need a conspiracy - Wikipedia is leftish because most of the people with the time and inclination to edit a free online encyclopedia are leftish.

It already leaned that way, but it got a lot worse during the first Trump Presidency and especially in 2020, as critical mass and enough (perceived) urgency was achieved to do an actual purge. This went up in 2018, and it's treated as policy despite officially not being so (IIRC I've seen it cited in a ban comment). The "lab-leak is misinformation" line from 2020, in particular, saw mass bannings of those who objected, which split mostly across tribal lines. "The rebels rightists have been routed; they're fleeing into the woods."

Until that purge, it was organically fixable if one could recruit enough non-SJWs to the cause. Now, it's not, because the admins would just ban them all once it became obvious that they were such. The bureaucracy implementing the ongoing purge has to be removed or supplanted first.

I used to actually edit Wikipedia on a semi-regular basis; this is what I noticed while there (and why I left).

I think you may have misunderstood. If WMF dies, then the main ENWP site goes down and stays down.

And Jimbo puts it back up again under a new domain name, and both the editor community and (more slowly, unless Google intervenes) the readers (and SME editors, who are mostly ascended readers) find it there. The content of the existing encyclopedia, and the MediaWiki software are open-source and widely mirrored.

At that point, the policies and bureaucracy of current ENWP are meaningless;

The policies and bureaucracy of ENWP are meaningful to the extend that they reflect the shared values of the editor community. IAR is an explicit commitment that the shared values of the community will trump the policies and bureaucracy. The shared values of the community survive a migration to a different domain.

someone will build a successor, probably based on one of the mirrors, but they don't need to import those policies and that bureaucracy.

People have done. The one I am most familiar with is Vox Day's InfoGalactic. It failed. You either need to import the existing editor community (which gets you the shared values that guarantee that return of the policies and bureaucracy) or build a new editor community.

This is how to beat network effects if you can't just straight-up steal the network; you destroy the functionality of the existing network so that people are available for a replacement.

It's the people who made Wikipedia leftish. That particular group of people are not available to a conservative Wikipedia-replacement.

The normal way you beat a network effect is by providing an alternative that is sufficiently compelling to a subset of high-value users that they jump first and bring the rest of the network with them later. Facebook beat Myspace by offering a much better product to students and recent graduates of prestigious universities first, and then attracting people who wanted to be friends with elite graduates. Twitter took a bunch of mindshare off Facebook by offering a much better product to the bluecheck class, and then attracting people who wanted to follow them and reply to them. Apple held the line against Microsoft by offering a much better product to creative professionals and the developers who develop software for them (mostly Adobe). If Bitcoin defeats Swift as a payments network, it will do it by offering a much better product to criminals like Ross Ulbricht and his customers, and then over time attracting people who want to trade with criminals.

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with (extreme) effort

I think one of the harder parts would be getting the search engines to buy in to making some other site the default. That would be a lot of the battle—if google switches, people are definitely going to start editing the new one.

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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."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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