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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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PaperclipPerfector 23hr ago (text post) 707 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 27, 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.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Capital_Room rather dementor-like 10hr ago

Do any of the more technically-inclined people here know anything about how to get past Cloudflare anti-bot verification?

I used to be able to get past — barely — if I made sure that absolutely nothing else (no other browser tabs, no background processes) was using any of my bandwidth. Then, starting a couple weeks back, even that didn't always work, and I'd sometimes get caught in the failing & retrying loop. When this happened, I'd need to stop and try again in a few hours.

As of a few days ago, that stopped working too, and I'm completely unable to get verified as not a bot. I've tried every bit of troubleshooting I could find online (on my end) — caches, different web browsers. The only thing that worked was switching over to my phone as an internet hotspot… until I hit my monthly data cap (after only a couple of hours) and got that throttled, which made it stop working too.

Is this truly an issue with my ISP or connection itself, as it appears, or is there still something I can do? From what I've read, the slow speed of my DSL connection should not by itself be an issue — that there's no "minimum speed" for passing the Cloudflare anti-bot verification. I'm in Alaska, so that may be an issue.

(I don't have much hope of contacting my ISP doing any good.)

Context

dr_analog top 1% of underdog fetishists Capital_Room 6hr ago

You might have malware on your computer (or other computers/devices in your house) and that's what's getting your home IP on cloudflare's shitlist.

Try changing your IP. Ask Google what your IP address is (or at one of the top hits) and then reboot your cable modem, see if your IP changes and see if your cloudflare problems go away.

If it goes away for a bit and then gets worse again I think that means you're part of a botnet.

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

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