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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   1755 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 4, 2026

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.

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How long do you think The Motte will continue? Will we still be here in thirty years?

30 years is a bit much. Are there any websites from 30 years ago still active? I think there's a good chance we're still here in 10 though.

The WWW goes mass-market around the time Mosaic (1993) and Netscape (1994) are released. So there has only just been 30 years of web history that a website could have been active for.

You can see a lot of 30-year-old websites here most of which are corporate/government/university websites which are "still active" in the sense that IBM or Stanford still has a website. Amazon launched in 1995, which is now >30 years ago. As far as I can see the only 1993-4 vintage websites that are still up that are not information pages put up by pre-existing orgs are Yahoo! and the now-Yahoo-owned Altavista and Geocities.

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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