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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!

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naraburns nihil supernum 2mo ago (text post) Edited 2mo ago 4858 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for August 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

"The dating apps have managed to cheapen the value of any individual connection to almost zero. And most of what we're seeing now is downstream of that."

"As a guy, my experience is also that nobody actually wants men to show their real emotions, least of all publicly."

@FiveHourMarathon:

"Taking advice, really taking it to heart and following it, requires a radical act of submission foreign to the modern mind."

Contributions for the week of July 28, 2025

"I'm of two minds on the overall concept of human genetic manipulation, or rather of one slightly more subtle mind that doesn't take a simple yes/no."

Contributions for the week of August 4, 2025

"I’m sure it feels good to call everyone who’s more excited than you about AI an emotionally stunted manchild afraid to confront the real world, but it’s not a productive contribution to the debate."

@SirJohnFalstaff:

"The fantasy of the younger girl is one of nostalgia for one's own lost youth, the freedom and opportunity inherent therein."

"Understanding the Real Epstein Files"

@OliveTapenade:

"There's an interesting tension I see sometimes around what the goal of environmental conservation should be."

@Primaprimaprima:

"Apparently large swaths of healthy, neurotypical humans have been experiencing emotions and ethical decision making in entirely different ways from each other and no one ever told me?"

@EverythingIsFine:

"My argument, to be clear, is that as a practical matter whatever the philosophical truth of the suicide right, not only is it controversial, implementing it is very vulnerable to abuse, to a degree that the terminal death right is not; therefore, we should not implement anything beyond a terminal death right."

Gun Mods

"Gun Rights are Civilization Rights"

@self_made_human:

"The first major anti-gun argument runs: guns are dangerous and unnecessary, and this combination justifies banning them."

Contributions for the week of August 11, 2025

"I'm also reminded of the commonly known 'thrive/survive' dichotomy, where progressives are characterized as focusing on how we can thrive, which is only possible in times of plenty, and conservatives are characterized as focusing on how we can survive, which is most relevant in times of not plenty."

Dates and Mates

"The specialization of [parasocial] romantic/sexual partnership"

"Its probably fair to say that the bottom 50% of men, in terms of attractiveness, are functionally invisible to the average woman."

@self_made_human:

"The Unwitting Ethnographer: On Pride Flags and Plausible Deniability"

"Social media and the internet make entertaining yourself without interacting with other people trivial."

Contributions for the week of August 18, 2025

@100ProofTollBooth:

"If the forecast total market is well over $1 trillion, then VCs who give you literally 10s of billions of dollars are still making a positive EV bet. This is how these people think."

"What Robinson is highlighting with his trilogy about colonizing Mars, perhaps the ultimate scientific endeavor, is that unless this changes, the science is not going to get done properly in the real world."

"In both of these, there's this implicit idea of getting to do whatever one wants and then being apparently confused by the obvious consequence imposed on one by uncontrollable external forces."

"Targeted skill acquisition does not require mass immigration."

"What predictions have you invested in? Where have you been wrong? What have you learned?"

"If you are serious about wanting to make a living from writing... you know that every single book on writing tells you the same thing ("don't quit your day job or have a supportive working spouse") for a reason, right?"

"Male audiences might not want modern Hollywood female lead character because Hollywood writers often insinuate the woman of the show doesn't [want] them in her life."

Contributions for the week of August 25, 2025

"Right now the only city pair which has supported an all-premium flight sustainably is London-NYC*, and it currently doesn't."

@Hoffmeister25:

"I want to register my prediction that the story of this video is far, far more complicated than what is being presented by agitprop Twitter accounts."

Vengeance is Mine, Saith the Lord

"It seems to me that people who have adopted what you label "revenge narratives" generally no longer believe that there is such a thing as 'our country' or 'our citizens'."

You Can't Put a Price on Your Health (That's Someone Else's Job)

@ControlsFreak:

"NYT Continues Medical Pricing Beat"

@MonkeyWithAMachinegun:

"A brief tangent on medical billing that US-based Mottizens may find useful."

@self_made_human:

"The NHS confronts the line-drawing problem head on, not with a panel of grim-faced commissars, but with a legion of actuaries and medical ethicists, and yes, actual medical doctors at an institution called NICE, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence."

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Tretiak 2mo ago

My understanding was that psychometricians currently rely on individual self-reporting of where you assess yourself on the Big 5 personality traits. It's still subjective but still provides key insights and data you can do interesting things with. I've taken one myself, only at the persistent request of others.

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Context

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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