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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   18788 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026

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He could have used polite motte-speak, such as «they are operating mainly off of cognitive bias instead of evidence-oriented Bayesian updating.»

From "How to Say Nothing in 500 Words" by Paul Roberts:

CALL A FOOL A FOOL

Some of the padding in freshman themes is to be blamed not on anxiety about the word minimum but on excessive timidity. The student writes, “In my opinion, the principal of my high school acted in ways that I believe every unbiased person would have to call foolish.” This isn't exactly what he means. What he means is, “My high school principal was a fool.” If he was a fool, call him a fool. Hedging the thing about with “in-­my-­opinion's” and “it­-seems-­to-­me's” and “as-­I-­see-­it's” and “at­-least-­from-­my-­point-­of-­view's” gains you nothing. Delete these phrases whenever they creep into your paper.

And from "Rationality and the English Language" by Eliezer Yudkowsky:

If you really want an artist’s perspective on rationality, then read Orwell; he is mandatory reading for rationalists as well as authors. Orwell was not a scientist, but a writer; his tools were not numbers, but words; his adversary was not Nature, but human evil. If you wish to imprison people for years without trial, you must think of some other way to say it than “I’m going to imprison Mr. Jennings for years without trial.” You must muddy the listener’s thinking, prevent clear images from outraging conscience. You say, “Unreliable elements were subjected to an alternative justice process.”

One of the worse things about The Motte is how the moderation pushes people into writing verbose, obfuscated, bloodless posts in order to avoid getting punished for being uncivil or writing a low-effort post. Words words words should not be a requirement of a good comment.

You are missing the point. We don't tell you you can't say someone is a fool and instead you should say they are expressing views that some people might regard as foolish. We are saying that you cannot just equate "I think you're wrong" with "You're a fool." Some people are indeed fools, but the bar for calling people names that dismisses any need to actually engage with them is high, by design.

Hedging the thing about with “in­my­opinion's” and “it­seems­to­me's” and “as­I­see­it's” and “at­least­from­my­point­of­view's” gains you nothing.

What it gains you is an explicit admission that your opinion is an opinion, not an immutable fact of the universe. This is actually very helpful for keeping a clear head during the heat of disputations.

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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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