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naraburns  nihil supernum  4mo ago (text post)   Edited 4mo ago   5001 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

@faceh:

@RenOS:

@FiveHourMarathon:

Contributions for the week of July 28, 2025

@kky:

Contributions for the week of August 4, 2025

@FtttG:

@SirJohnFalstaff:

@Rov_Scam:

@OliveTapenade:

@Primaprimaprima:

@EverythingIsFine:

Gun Mods

@cjet79:

@self_made_human:

Contributions for the week of August 11, 2025

@naraburns:

@07mk on:

Dates and Mates

@quiet_NaN:

@faceh:

@self_made_human:

@urquan:

Contributions for the week of August 18, 2025

@100ProofTollBooth:

@thejdizzler:

@07mk:

@RandomRanger:

@FCfromSSC:

@Amadan:

@Dean:

Contributions for the week of August 25, 2025

@MadMonzer:

@Hoffmeister25:

Vengeance is Mine, Saith the Lord

@FCfromSSC:

@FtttG:

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

@ControlsFreak:

@MonkeyWithAMachinegun:

@self_made_human:

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That some providers sometimes drop some charges is pretty irrelevant to either the question of whether there is any meaningful legal risk to providing price estimates or the question of whether it is socially good for them to do so. If, as the good doctor says, there has never actually been a case of a patient suing a provider because an estimate didn't match the ultimate bill, then the liability concern is fake. It's fake even if they sometimes drop some charges because of their fake worry for a fake concern. Honestly, I can't even see what legal theory one would try, because it's so incredibly easy and obvious how to make estimates in a way that doesn't produce any legal liability. Basically every other industry that has estimates does it just fine.

Just a heads up, though, this is just part of the gish gallop. There are seventeen other fake reasons doctors give for why they can't provide prices. And frankly, just like with a Holocaust denier, you can spend your time focusing on one or two of them, really showing that they're totally fake, and then they'll just shift to some of the other ones for the next week or so, and in two weeks, these ones will pop right back up, as if nothing was ever said on them.

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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.


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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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