site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25823 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 4, 2025

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Maybe this isn't the best place to ask but, can you please disable the ability to delete one's own posts or edit them after they've been replied to?

While likely challenging to implement, I think the preferable way to go about it would be to store the version history of every comment, like github does with comments.

That gives you the best of both worlds. You can edit in typos and strikeouts for statements you no longer endorse. You can even delete a post as a way to de-escalate. But intentionally writing a top level comment and then deleting it as a kind of ding-dong-ditch will be pointless, because any reader is just one click away from reading what you originally wrote.

I have at least one post that I deleted because I belatedly realised that it could function as a "how-to" for a terrorist.

I would not appreciate that post's version history becoming available to all Mottizens.

(The rest, IIRC, are from me realising I misinterpreted a post on reading further context and deleting a misaimed response or unnecessary question; undeleting those wouldn't accomplish anything but I wouldn't strongly oppose it either.)

Yes, post version history also requires a way for mods to make versions invisible to the users.

Besides your example, there are some categories of content which I think the motte server admin has no interest in hosting. Personal information posted accidentally or maliciously. Copyright infringement. Content which is illegal for other reasons in their jurisdiction.

Unlike Wikipedia, we do not have enough Admins/mods that hiding revisions even from them would become a concern, though.

No edits, no exceptions; put it on blockchain to ground the policy in thermodynamics itself.

I look forward to being paid in 𝔹asilisk coin [tm]

Is there even still any ongoing technical development of the Motte?

Yes? Zorba fixed a bug I found particularly annoying like 2 weeks back.

The Motte is mostly feature complete, but changes do happen.

I think a 1 hr grace period is sufficient for typos and regrets. After that, lithography

I think adding stuff at the end should be possible.

Agreed! so long as properly annotated

That was the edit window on Slate Star Codex. But it takes 24 hours before scores become visible; surely we can allow that much?

Not allowing edits would be an extreme form of discrimination against my human right to correct egregious typos.

Eh those kinda edits would be fine, but I've seen how people abuse editing on reddit.

Surely we can generally expect people to act in good faith, at least in better faith than the average Redditor.

If they don't, they get banned, so the problem deals with itself.

don't allow edits

Ruinous! Posting functions should trend towards forgiving so as to encourage contribution from would-be or marginal posters. Locking people into mistakes that demand more clarifications might be tedious.

don't allow deletion

More reasonable. Ideally users can delete their profiles and history, but the contents of their posts remain up. Maybe an edit lock that only goes into effect after so many days would make the most sense.

Which part is the major issue? Is it mass deletion or user edits bamboozling your replies?

Ruinous! Posting functions should trend towards forgiving so as to encourage contribution from would-be or marginal posters. Locking people into mistakes that demand more clarifications might be tedious.

Or locking people into bad temper posting which runs afoul the rules, but which they might think better of after seeing it posted.

Wouldn't keeping editing but removing deletion be pointless? You could just edit your post, change it to the text "[deleted]" and get effectively the same result as deleting it.

If you didn't freeze edits at that point as well, yes.

I don't think they should remove edits or deletion because of one or two serial delete guys. Freeze edits and deletes after a week. Allow authorship to disappear on account deletion. A balance of considerations.

Noting that when I paid dues to The Motte's Conservative Party treasurer I was told the motto was "Change? No!" All these so-called suggested "improvements" are making me a little uncomfortable.

I come back to a thread after a few days only to see a string of user self deleting their posts, random replies to them still hanging. I guess I could just run a scraper slamming the site for every single reply so they can't be removed from posterity, but that shouldn't be the solution.

This would be a request for @ZorbaTHut, but while it's annoying when people go on deletion sprees (and we have banned people for it), I don't think we'd want to prohibit deleting a post you had second thoughts about.

Undeleting the posts of permabanned members would cover a lot of the same ground. I'm pretty sure the admins can do it; Zorba definitely can.

Maybe quote the post if it's a user known for editing/deletion?

Honestly I dunno which ones, there are a bunch of deleted comments in subthreads I\ve talked to people in this master thread.

Or allow editing but have a button so users can see the audit trail? I understand the intent of the request, but I'd never want to lose the ability to fix spelling mistakes, and I often see people add [edit: reason] tags due to a response causing them to update on something or clarify a fact in the original post.

Sure an edit history will be fine, but I guess it wouldn't be simple to implement. At least disabling the delete button and auto reverting edits if they are designed to delete data ought to be enough.

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