The Motte

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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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naraburns nihil supernum 17hr ago (text post) Edited 16hr ago 990 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for February 2026

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.

Quality Contributions to the Main Motte

@helmut_hofmeister:

"The Biden admin was right back there with pressure to expand credit to 'underserved communities' until the very end, and I can see the cycle continuing."

"Essentially nobody's going to push a button that turns them into an ugly woman, unless they have first devoted themselves to a culture that inculcates an 'ugly woman' aesthetic..."

@George_E_Hale:

"But I've been to the mountaintop. And I've smelled the promised scent."

"Pittsburgh: An Urban Portrait"

Contributions for the week of February 2, 2026

"Really, it is hard to understate how bad the Artemis program was (and is) managed."

@100ProofTollBooth:

"The better option is working in modernity, enjoying the good parts while avoiding the bad parts."

"I think the average five-year-old child could reliably explain the key difference between the sexes: women can have babies, and men can't."

"If anything, at least in the [A]merican culture war body cameras seem on net to have... kind of vindicated the pro-law-enforcement side by surprise."

Contributions for the week of February 9, 2026

@100ProofTollBooth:

"I'd say that most of the 'problems of capitalism' are bad feedback loops from efforts to solve the 'problems of capitalism.'"

@P-Necromancer:

"I can't see any factor that dictates global carrying capacity is 8 billion -- I can hardly see any that suggests it's 80 billion."

"Nowadays it's interesting as a piece of internet history, but the bombed remnants of a once relatively consolidated gaming media and the cratering efforts of the bloated game developer and publishing industry tell a story of how everyone failed to learn anything at all from the entire experience."

@JeSuisCharlie:

"What can a 24 year-old spin-off of a 60 year-old TV series teach us today's Culture War?"

Appellate Caselaw Update

"But the big thing I think that's changed is just social trust."

"A Brief Look at One 3D Printed Gun"

Natalism & Co.

@LazyLongposter:

"I’m reminded of the meme of clippy looking at you with the prompt 'It looks like you’re waiting for ideal circumstances to make a change. Might I remind you that ideal circumstances cannot and will not exist?'"

"So in this sense, saying 'kids are gross' is like saying 'girls are gross' -only someone who has never experienced a good one would say that."

@self_made_human:

"I have many reasons for wanting children. But the one that's the most stark, and relatively recent, is watching the elderly die."

"Children are everything modern life isn't, and hence, it anti-prepares you for it."

@OracleOutlook:

"The Long Arm of the State and Parenting"

Contributions for the week of February 16, 2026

"Who's stronger, Somalia or America? No contest. The United States with its thousands of H-bombs is vastly weaker than Somalia."

"So when I hear people proclaim that Europe is doomed because in its decadence it decided not to keep top-notch armies, I can not help but think of them as the priests of the Goddess of Cancer chanting 'KILL CONSUME MULTIPLY CONQUER'."

"For myself, it really is impossible to overstate how important he was to the New Year's Gala."

"I think the main issue with any model of masculinity is that it's typically enforced in one of two ways: the carrot of women's attention, and the stick of men's violence."

@OliveTapenade:

"Unfortunately, put like that it's obvious what the failure-state is - it's feminist messaging about 'good men', the kind that feels corporate and sanitised and frankly just wussy."

Contributions for the week of February 23, 2026

@TitaniumButterfly:

"A husband is a Daddy you choose"

@MonkeyWithAMachinegun:

"There was, at the time, a feeling that officers and gentlemen (but I repeat myself) were necessary for not just the prosecution of a war, but its conclusion."

"They won't offer unfettered access to the foundation model because it's 'unsafe', but they're simultaneously willing to give up on 'safety' as a core principle."

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OliveTapenade 5hr ago

It is a continuing source of interest to me just how much gay issues have won completely. I still have plenty of reservations, and you can still find a handful of cranky religious conservatives saying "now it's time to overturn Obergefell", but the right as a whole just seem to have stopped caring, and in fact "trans is bad because it endangers gays" has become a sometimes run into there.

The defining social issue of the time when I was growing up has been completely abandoned.

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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