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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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naraburns nihil supernum 1yr ago (text post) Edited 1yr ago 5387 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for February 2023

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. Here we go:

Quality Contributions to the Motte

"Since 2010 or so, I’ve been making my way through the corpus of music history in a semi-systematic way that makes sense only to me, and rating albums as I go through it using a scale of 0 to 5 stars, half stars included."

"Lickly literally promoted his own fiancee to the position he was leaving behind, and half a century later, not only we never hear about Dan Lickly (say his name to not forget), but we get fed the story of the leader of the team that wrote the software that sent the man to the moon, without ever hearing that she only received this position when the whole thing was already done from the guy she was sleeping with."

Contributions for the week of January 30, 2023

@OracleOutlook:

"My point is that the post partum period is weird and has unpredictable effects on a mother's brain."

"We, the people in abstract, are not in charge of training the AI. A very small number of people are, and they are deliberately injecting their own personal opinions into it without regard for the larger diverse opinions of the population as a whole."

Rowliphobia

@FarNearEverywhere:

"Yer a Nazi, Harry! or, the alleged anti-Semitism in the work (particularly in the latest video game) of J.K. Rowling."

@DaseindustriesLtd:

"Truly, the day when we have to portray moneylenders as a whole as generous folk just to not offend groups which have historically been overrepresented in this line of work (and still are, just less so) will be a dark one."

Identity Politics

"For my part, having grown up in the South makes me feel pretty uncomfortable in situations where people are actively choosing to center their identity on their race and drive a discussion (for some values of that term) about racial disparities and how to rectify them."

Contributions for the week of February 6, 2023

@TransgenicSolution:

"I think successful development of a trusted open model rivaling chatgpt in capability is likely in the span of a year, if people like you, who care about long-term consequences of lacking access to it, play their cards reasonably well."

"Confession - I am a NIMBY"

"You don't have to train yourself to be a self-denying online YIMBY who insists that there's no downside to living next to a homeless shelter, but you do need to come up with an argument for why NIMBYism isn't just everybody defecting in a prisoner's dilemma."

...thoroughly doubts the Seymour Hersh article claiming that the US wrecked the Nord Stream Pipeline.

Who Teaches the Teachers?

"It is impossible, however, to overstate the staggering stupidity of the average teacher."

"I worked as a writing consultant in college, a position my college hired English-proficient students for."

Identity Politics

"If anyone was looking for evidence that the DEI industry is and has been a sham with self-perpetuation as its primary measure of success, Okun's own words are the rotary excavator digging its hole."

"Why doesn't the free market solve the problem of 'looked over' white applicants?"

@100ProofTollBooth:

"The counter-intuitive thing, in my mind, is that a well developed sense of self is often easier developed within a group or community."

@ChestertonsMeme:

"There's a more general point here, which is this: discrimination is required for a well-functioning society."

Contributions for the week of February 13, 2023

"Where are all the scientists?"

@ActuallyATleilaxuGhola:

"Enforced silence on a topic can be more effective than enforced orthodoxy, since it's so much more subtle."

"The counter-argument/most relevant argument I'd make is that nations can die not only when they lose resources to sustain themselves, but also a desire to."

@FiveHourMarathon:

"Regardless of whether chatbots are sentient, or can become sentient, or will become sentient in the future; if chatbots are capable of mimicking sentience and emotion to some extent, will treating them as beneath morality brutalize actual human feelings?"

Babies Everywhere

"Overall, the guiding idea is to make people start having kids much earlier, and once they take the plunge, make having a second kid much smaller marginal cost/effort compared to returning to work ASAP."

"If you want more babies, you have to convince enough socially influential women to shame and judge other women for not having enough kids."

Identity Politics

@DaseindustriesLtd:

"The pragmatic answer is that the opposite of HBD awareness is not the innocent race-blind utopia that millenials have retconned into their childhoods, but ¬HBD, which by virtue of impossibility to bring reality in accord with it has unbounded actionable consequences."

"I think there's an article waiting to be written about the two genders actually being "capital" and "labor", and transgenderism is best defined by what happens when you cross those lines."

Contributions for the week of February 20, 2023

"The problem with most of the AI discourse is that it's too focused on the kind of intelligence that sci-fi tropes have always talked about as the hallmarks of humanity."

"Anyway, this has been my schizopost about how I hate nationalism, I hate war, and I think conscription is a bad thing."

"If that happens, the furries ... will have been responsible for putting the Musk dynasty in charge of the entire world and the flag of the future will be a pawprint softly caressing a human face forever."

Battle of the Sexes

"The question isn't why has women's behavior changed, that's obvious, it's how will men's behavior change to adapt."

@FiveHourMarathon:

"Going all-in is scary, you never know, you could lose everything. But Kipling tells us (by implication) that if you can't 'make one heap of all your winnings, And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,' then you will never be a man."

Battle of the Genders

@hanikrummihundursvin:

"I can't join a pity party for people like Rowling who have excessively enjoyed the luxury of being able to dehumanize their opponents instead of actually making an effort in understanding and discussing things with them."

"I've never actually heard of a doctor at one of these clinics saying, 'Well, actually, have you considered you might not be trans?'"

@Harlequin5942:

"One of the most sensible things that Jordan Peterson said recently was pointing out that body dysmorphia is normal among women with mental health issues."

@RococoBasilica:

"Nobody is complaining about a man being referred to as Die Person, or wondering why we use feminine articles in the plural. In the beginning, it was a way to show group allegiance."

Identity Politics

@Hoffmeister25:

"I think the better (more accurate) distinction is between 'thing-manipulators' and 'symbol-manipulators'."

"If you are working in academia, having a reasonable amount of fluency in the current etiquette of the Professional-Managerial Class is a requirement of the job. Knowing when to not get carried away with the rhetoric is also part of the job."

"Your thesis seems to be that creativity, intelligence, and cunning are innate markers of Blue identity, that people blessed with these traits always have been and always will tend toward Blueness. I don't see things this way at all."

@FiveHourMarathon:

"You don't get to be an athlete, an intellectual, or a lover after college; not in the same way you do in school, not unless you're really talented."

Contributions for the week of February 27, 2023

"It may be time to stop assuming that the causes of our problems originate directly from the outside world and update to a view that many more major problems could be solved if we simply change our cultural beliefs."

@DaseindustriesLtd:

"Women, we are told, are worried about costs of living and stagnant wages, career opportunities and iniquities; men give up on marriage, selfishly play vidya, voluntarily join alpha male incel organizations."

"Every time the psychology of trans stuff comes up at ACX or here I want to write this essay; this time I finally did."

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TheDag Per Aspera ad Astra 1yr ago

Huge thank you to whoever recommended my post! (And a day before the deadline too.)

As someone who has always aspired to write but never really followed through until this site came about, it gives me immense satisfaction to get positive feedback here, and also refills my motivation to keep writing. I have to say it feels like I've been searching for this type of community for years without knowing exactly what I was looking for, and I'm surprised to still be so excited and grateful I get a chance to participate.

We may be a den of witches with our own quirks and repeated topics, lack of overall cohesion, or whatever, but I have to say I truly think the Motte has improved my own beliefs quite a bit, and helps me gauge the quality of my writing. Compared to the quality of discourse on the rest of the internet, and increasingly in other rationalist spheres, I have to say this site feels like an oasis in a scorching desert.

Cheers to us friends.

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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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