What if our fundamentals are exactly backwards?
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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Notes -
Hello, and welcome to the Motte.
We do require that culture war content remains in the Culture War thread. Since I don’t expect this discussion to go very far without someone bringing up a certain spectre, I’m going to ask that you repost this as a top-level comment in that thread.
I guess I'd also say that my post lies at a deeper level of conceptualization than do culture wars (having read the list of examples), which is partly why I posted it on its own. Ownership is far more basic than the examples, involved in and underlying them.
The philosophical foundations of culture war issues are also considered culture war material.
fair enough!
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Hi, I'm sure this is an uh-duhr, but I don't see how to specify that a post should go into a specific thread. I see the "Culture War Roundup" threads. I see I can comment there, but I don't see how to post there. A little help for the newbie?
Don’t worry, just comment as a reply to the main post. It’s the first text box that has a “Comment” button.
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Sure thing! I wasn't sure that it was a fit there, but I'll get the hang of this... Thanks!
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