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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   12809 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026

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I say this not as an insult to you but as a description of human nature: what would happen when someone dangled your price in front of you? What about 2x your price? 10x?

I think this depends a lot on what my price is at the time.

If someone came to me and offered me a hundred million bucks, yeah, I would sell this place. Maybe for ten million. Not for one million though.

If any of several things I'm working on work out, kick all those numbers up by an order of magnitude. And that includes this place. If this place is successful enough that I could sell it for ten million dollars, which is what Reddit was first sold for, I don't know if I would.

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!

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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."

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