site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2075 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 7, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Has anyone else experienced the paradox of choice with LLMs? There was a tine when ChatGPT would suggest several follow-up topics after answering my question. I would usually pick none of them. Now it offers just one suggestion, and on softer topics I just say "please go on" 80% of the time. The suggestions are still not this useful when I'm asking a technical question, though.

Use an interface that lets you fork the conversation, and explore several branches.

Why can't I explore several branches in the same conversation? The limited context window?

For most of my use, the context window is more than large enough. I use it mainly to prevent context poisoning.

If a LLM goes down an unhelpful path (it locks onto information that is either too specific and in the wrong direction, or to general, or I catch it hallucinating), I find it very important for performance to remove those tokens from the context entirely. Saying "no, that's not what I mean. Let's go more towards X" is far inferior to just purging the previous answer and directly supplying X.

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