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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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- Don't attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity.
- Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
- The Wildcard Rule
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Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I personally don't find the new site too echo-chamber-y at all, though I'm a wishy-washy centrist. I guess it's natural that someone accustomed to the norms of explicitly leftist discussion spaces would find it pretty witchy though.
I have observed that well-argued left-wing positions are well-received here. It's not as bad as some on reddit are claiming. There might be some pushback but I have seen plenty of right-wing views, like about vaccines, also get pushback.
I think right-wing-favored topics like anything to do with the vaccines are getting pushback more out of exhaustion than because of their substance, IMO. Or, at least, people are less-willing to forgive some of those right-wing agendas for epistemic mistakes.
I thought nk the opposite, I used to be a push back on vaccine posts but these days I just collapse them. Everything has been said and there isn't much to fight over besides collecting the slow trickle of results and dunking on long past predictions.
Amen, brother. I just so don't give a shit. I realize that's a luxury that some don't have (gotta check that privilege), but where I live, there are no masks, no vaccine requirement, you can get one if you want. Yes, it was bad for a while, but they never actually forced it (except maybe for healthcare workers, which was something of an own-goal, and also reasonably understandable to me).
I think Covid broke people's brains in both direction (Bill Gates is implanting chips, and if you don't double-mask outdoors you want to kill my Grandma and give me long Covid).
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