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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.

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naraburns nihil supernum 2d ago (text post) 1137 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for July 2025

This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).

As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.

These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.

Quality Contributions to the Main Motte

"Based on friends who have all gotten long-term relationships from the apps, combined with my own experience, here's what I can tell you..."

"I'm not going to throw away the Great Man Theory of subcultures, but I also think there are very dire limits to it."

"A Report on the Relatively Recent Desire to Kill for Preah Vihear Temple & Thai Politics"

"An Audio-Book Review of 'Mere Christianity' by C.S. Lewis, from the C.S. Lewis Essential Audio Library"

Automatic Cognition Engines

@DaseindustriesLtd:

"The chip situation is roughly stable. But Chinese culture, with regard to AI, has changed a bit since then."

@TequilaMockingbird:

"Is your 'AI Assistant' smarter than an Orangutan? A practical engineering assessment"

Big Eyes, Small Mouth

"I feel compelled to defend TTGL: it was one of the first anime series that I ever watched, so there’s no doubt that that colors my perception of it, particularly since it’s been years since I last rewatched it."

@self_made_human:

"Anime recommendation thread..."

Contributions for the week of June 30, 2025

"A couple years ago I crashed a billionaire-adjacent wedding."

"Worse things can happen to you as an upload that could ever happen to you as a human, and by a very wide margin."

@StJohnOfPatmos:

"Now, I'm not really a defender of modernism in art, and I do think the past 100 years have been largely a period of decline and loss of previous artistic achievements - but I am a defender of serious analysis and criticism, and this essay is a complete joke on those fronts."

@CrispyFriedBarnacles:

"From the 1930s on, a certain version of liberalism became so overwhelmingly dominant in America that its native conservative tradition was essentially sidelined into a permanent minority status, really, and given no public oxygen at all."

"You say that this stuff is the result of importing American culture war into Australia, but as far as I can tell the land acknowledgement stuff in the US, such as it exists, is the exact opposite."

Contributions for the week of July 7, 2025

"The center-left has been here before!"

"It is quite likely that many men have an experience like this at some point in their lifetime, which teaches them to be judicious about even accidentally flaunting their capacity for physical violence, though often it is embarrassing and private and not a thing they will proudly talk about."

"If I were to try and make a fancy title for my opinion on the Texas anti-ICE attack, I'd call it 'How I Had To Figure My Way Out Of A False Flag Suspicion.'"

Building a History

"How much of the history of 'government' is the history of developing increasingly sophisticated methods for obfuscating the nature and extent of the bondage imposed on the 'mass of men,' not only for their own ultimate benefit, but for the benefit of all?"

"A big change happens in the social environment when you achieve a critical mass of family, friends, and neighbors who will hold you to what you and they believe to be right."

"But it's not the gendered or class based norms that are missing, it's the authentic (and/or socially expected/pressured) love for others and your community."

Critical Self-Reflection

"I moderated a forum once."

"This place is, to me, like a martial arts club. You go in, you find someone to spar with, and by the end of the day you learned something about your weaknesses and bad habits."

Contributions for the week of July 14, 2025

"An Attempt at Following Up on the User Viewpoint Focus Series"

@OliveTapenade:

"Now that said, raw numbers don't tell the whole story - the church that most successfully cultivates elites is not necessarily the one that will have the most social or political influence."

@CrispyFriedBarnacles:

"I think (when it comes to art and communication), everything kind of went to hell with the combination of the collapse of conservatism in the George W Bush years, the rhetorical success of, especially, Jon Stewart, and the messianic rise of Obama."

"It sucks realizing in your 20's that you were raised wrong."

@FiveHourMarathon:

"Jake Tapper’s Historic Misnomer in Original Sin"

"It seems like journalists and government officials have been spreading disinformation since before the invention of the telegraph."

Identity (?) Politics

@Primaprimaprima:

"New in Compact Magazine: Neither Side Wants to Emancipate Women"

@CrispyFriedBarnacles:

"This is the framework I can't help but see and compare to when I look at the 'young men need to be scolded, young women are always victims' public discourse, because at a basic human level, it just seems so totally anti-human and disconnected from reality."

"The pioneers of yesteryear most likely would have turned out just like Harold, had they lived in a Schlaraffenland where you get paid for existing and sugar comes in through every pore."

@Hoffmeister25:

"Tolkien’s Middle Earth stories are intended as an ersatz mythos for the historical peoples of the British Isles; the various peoples and factions of the world are rough stand-ins or symbolic idealizations of the various ethnic groups and their myths which have coalesced into the modern (white) peoples of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland."

"If the film is creating a dramatic version of a historical event, I believe it's fundamentally important to try and nail a depiction of the time and place -- including important demographic features like race."

"I was born in the 80's. In the late 90's for reasons that are utterly baffling to me, my Virginia town began to get flooded with illegal immigrants."

"Overall my life has been awesome and not filled with much tragedy. My encounters with immigrants have been almost entirely positive."

"What I really want is for the cultural friction to go down. I want fewer people I struggle to communicate with."

Contributions for the week of July 21, 2025

"The biggest obstacle to a Russia-Ukraine peace agreement isn't the objection of 'the nationalists' to peace, but rather the 'everyone who suspects Putin would attack again' caucus to 'a peace agreement that sets conditions for Putin to attack again.'"

"I mean, history shows that "murder all the rich people and take their stuff" goes extremely poorly, but I am convinced that we could raise the maximum income tax without stepping onto a slippery slope which ends with gulags."

Contributions for the week of July 28, 2025

@self_made_human:

@P-Necromancer:

"Once again, I'm perfectly willing to believe the IDF is misbehaving in Gaza -- actually, I'd go so far as to say I do believe it, at least to some extent -- but if there's such overwhelming evidence for it, why do their opponents insist on mixing in obvious falsehoods?"

"The ultimate problem with the P320 is that it's a case study in extreme cost cutting."

"Academia does not create the Blue Tribe, it is in its current form created by the Blue Tribe."

"Really feels like we managed to get the worst of both the sexual revolution AND the evangelical movement."

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self_made_human Grippy socks, grippy box 1d ago

3 of them this month? Good to see that ~~aura~~ AAQC farming is a skill I haven't lost. Maybe I should do more stupid things if I get good essays out of them!

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CrispyFriedBarnacles self_made_human 1d ago

I'm always on the fence about whether getting more than one or two of these in a month is something I should be proud of, or a sign that I need to take a step back (because I'm congenitally incapable of dashing off short, sensible responses instead of inadvertently pretending I'm blogging on here).

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Dean Flairless self_made_human 1d ago

Kudos-winning stupidity should always be encouraged... so do more!

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self_made_human Grippy socks, grippy box Dean 1d ago

This is like the dude on top of the podium congratulating third place haha. I wonder what your record was, five?

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Dean Flairless self_made_human 1d ago · Edited 22hr ago

Don't know, don't want to know, and don't think its even the same league as the excellence that may only be provided in smaller amounts. Things like 4bpp's post on masculine restraint on the potential for violence, or WhiningCoil's post on the sort of envy/jealousy/loss of feeling 'raised wrong,' are all the better for being distinctly personal in ways I probably never will try to.

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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

Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats

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