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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   30437 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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I copied the wrong thing from my clipboard, I edited

I'm still curious what it means though?

It's a poker metaphor. Basically it means when confronted by a momentous decision with high personal stakes, it is sometimes better to eschew a profitable but high-variance situation in order to wait for an even better situation.

I was replying to someone on Reddit about their conservative poker strategy and I accidentally had their comment in my clipboard instead of the motte poster I was replying to here. For the record my reply to the poker poster was that their numbers were off and that being a 60% favorite is actually a huge edge and not a marginal spot at all in a game like poker.

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!

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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."

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