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.
- 102
- 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 -
Anybody down to take an online IQ test? It's not timed but according to the site takes up to 20 minutes to complete.
Feel free to share your scores. I'll go first.
Full Scale: 138
Memory: 136
Verbal: 137
Spatial: 141
I'm not surprised my memory was the lowest of the three, I feel like I've always had a bad memory (and I hate that card game called Memory where you flip over the cards to make pairs.) I always wonder if the synonym thing is really the best way to measure verbal intelligence: I just don't care to memorize obscure words which I feel drags my score down but it just seems like a waste of time to remember words that I never encounter and can simply look up the other 99 percent of the time that I'm not taking an online IQ test. Besides that, if I can imagine that a word means something else, that isn't really valued in this test either, but it would be useful if I was writing poetry or a song or something. (Like if the word is "big" and a syononym option is "ebullient," I know that ebullient doesn't mean big but spiritually, to me, it has the essence of bigness...) But I guess the intelligence to override my imagination is what the test measures. I'd rather be imaginative than book smart though, really. The spatial portion was probably the closest to measuring "imagination" in that you need to imagine the shapes rotated in your mind. I feel like I used to be much faster at this, I found myself rechecking my answers quite a few times (of course the test was untimed so I could do that without penalty.)
Despite being an ESL peasant I thought I had a pretty solid vocabulary for English, but there were quite a few words here I had never seen before. Does the list include some words that don't even exist? :P
I got a much worse score than I did on a clinically administered full battery test (in my native language) as a younger man. Perhaps aging and my chronic health issue have wrecked my brain more than I expected, or this test isn't comprehensive enough to give accurate results. Did get more confirmation of the fact that my memory just doesn't work that well though. Now I feel a bit more impetus to actually try to improve it, so taking this test wasn't a waste of time.
Yeah, I remember doing well on previous vocab quizzes posted here but there were some suspicious head scratchers in this one. It's not so much that I wasn't sure what they might mean so much as even as a native speaker I'd never seen them before. Didn't stop and check though.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link