Submission statement: This post was the outcome of a long debate on BlueSky about whether social isolation and the decay of in-person communities should be considered to be revealed preference or not. I decided that rather than continue to talk, I should just write the code and specify the model, which thankfully Gemini lowered the activation energy of to zero. This is a toy model that I'm intending to demonstrate that entertainment can have deadweight loss, especially in small communities.
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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Submission statement: This post was the outcome of a long debate on BlueSky about whether social isolation and the decay of in-person communities should be considered to be revealed preference or not. I decided that rather than continue to talk, I should just write the code and specify the model, which thankfully Gemini lowered the activation energy of to zero. This is a toy model that I'm intending to demonstrate that entertainment can have deadweight loss, especially in small communities.
Apologies, this got stuck in the queue as other mods less familiar with your work assumed this was blogspam. I've let it through now!
You can tell that moderator that I sympathize as a former active reddit moderator myself. I probably deleted many posts that looked just like this.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link