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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.

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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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naraburns nihil supernum 8d ago (text post) 1923 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for December 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.

Happy New Year to all!

Quality Contributions to the Main Motte

@self_made_human:

"A Broken Model of The World"

"So even under the 30% scenario, genotypic IQ still matters plenty—much less the 50% or heaven forbid, 80% scenario."

@TheAntipopulist:

"A summary of where I think AI stands for software developers as of 2025."

@George_E_Hale:

"Any man in the wrong circumstances is capable of cheating. The trick is to stay the hell away from those circumstances."

"So You Want to Win an AAQC This Year… (Or: 15 Tips For Writing Actually A Quality Contribution Posts)"

Contributions for the week of December 1, 2025

"I think things could still get better in a variety of cool ways . . . but I do think we already live in an age of remarkable abundance, for which many, maybe most people are shamefully ungrateful, because they insist on thinking about wealth comparatively rather than in absolute terms."

@100ProofTollBooth:

@self_made_human:

"When an entity places itself outside the law and uses violence to enforce its will, the state responds with military force rather than police action."

"The modern public education system is an expensive daycare at best and a Potemkin village at worst."

"They can list off all the identity categories they fall into like a math nerd reciting digits of pi, but they couldn't begin to tell you who they, personally, are."

"Both Tribes routinely coordinate meanness against things they consider socially hazardous, always have and always will."

@FiveHourMarathon:

Contributions for the week of December 8, 2025

"I've believed for a long time that conspiracy theories in general are a cope to deal with the fact the people who are in charge of our institutions are just people, like everyone else, and even when competent, they simply aren't capable of being perfect all the time."

"Just to illustrate that accusations of two-tier policing are entirely warranted, a 25-year-old influencer posted a video in which she called for the deaths of all conservatives. After being questioned by the police, she was not arrested."

@RoyGBivensAction:

"The most likely reason the FBI failed to arrest the January 5 pipe bomber in the past 5 years: incompetence."

"Data centers are far, far more complicated than setting up a desktop and WiFi in your home network times a million."

"I recently listened to the Tucker and Piers interview, and specifically want to talk about the part on population replacement."

"I am pro Russia for several reasons."

Contributions for the week of December 15, 2025

"All the pressure is being put on the men to improve and jump through whatever hoops women require in order to get one... and every avenue for improvement is being cut off and the hoops have been set on fire, lifted 500 feet in the air, and suspended over a pit full of poisoned spikes."

"The advantage of the conventional educational system, and of government grants in general, is just how damn much money is thrown out there, while its results and evaluations are monitored only on the largest scales at any politically responsive level."

@DaseindustriesLtd:

"I'm pretty open to the idea that diversity is good — real diversity, not this consumerist Western appreciation of cuisines, not the lukewarm respect for ethnic varieties of ideas the West already accepts."

"To get back to Tolkien, here is his explanation of where the word came from and early thoughts on The Problem of Orcs:"

"In the beginning, the C programming language was created, and there was much rejoicing."

"Earlier this year the Swedish government appointed a state-funded Investigative Committee For a Future with Children (Swed. Utredningen för en framtid med barn) with instructions to look into the recent decline in fertility and what it portends for Sweden going forward."

"There are a lot of replies down-thread that boil down to 'just have kids bro', that seem to be dripping with a kind of smugness that suggests that it truly is that easy, and any complications that come along with it are speed bumps at best."

@BreakerofHorsesandMen:

"All of that could have been avoided by the planners packing up their notebooks, going home, and letting natural civilizational cycles of rising and falling fertility play out."

Contributions for the week of December 22, 2025

@self_made_human:

"China is attempting to engineer a free market organ and transplant it into nominally communist body. The rejection risk is moderate. I, for one, am interested in seeing how it all plays out."

"Last week Judge Hannah Dugan of Milwaukee County Circuit Court was found guilty of felony obstruction by a jury."

"What are other trade partners supposed to do with a nation that's long term goal is to not buy anything from their partners?"

Contributions for the week of December 29, 2025

@100ProofTollBooth:

"Marriage is a miracle."

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HereAndGone2 2d ago

Flattered as I am by the kind nomination, I'm also laughing. This seems to be how my participation here goes; awarded AAQC one week, getting into argy-bargy with another commenter and told to knock it off by a mod the next!

Happy New Year to one and all, it's already kinda crazy and it's still just the first week of the month. What odds Greenland as a satrapy of the USA?

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Context

Corvos HereAndGone2 2d ago

What odds Greenland as a satrapy of the USA?

I admit to being very amused by British newspapers saying sternly (paraphrased), "We stand against imperialism. The future of Greenland is a matter for Denmark to decide."

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Context

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

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