If you ever click through the profiles of the most obnoxiously progressive and ideologically rigid Redditors, you'll often find they are "lumpen-intelligentsia" of a sort--mostly people from small, irrelevant cities (nothing wrong with this!) who seem to be trying to emulate big-city liberals who read the New York Times. Actual big-city progressives don't seem to spend nearly as much time trying to prove their blue tribe bona fides on Reddit, they're busy in graduate school or at a climbing gym.
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
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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.
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Notes -
If you ever click through the profiles of the most obnoxiously progressive and ideologically rigid Redditors, you'll often find they are "lumpen-intelligentsia" of a sort--mostly people from small, irrelevant cities (nothing wrong with this!) who seem to be trying to emulate big-city liberals who read the New York Times. Actual big-city progressives don't seem to spend nearly as much time trying to prove their blue tribe bona fides on Reddit, they're busy in graduate school or at a climbing gym.
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