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 21hr ago (text post) 691 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for September 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

"I tried Worth the Candle from all the recommendations here but couldn't finish it."

"The general paradox applies more broadly: any coming of age story recognizing the initiation of sexual desire has to straddle the simultaneous recognition that most people start having it happen at teenage age ranges, and actually presenting it as happening at those age ranges can be a felony."

@George_E_Hale:

"It is total prostitution, completely against the law, but is sidestepped by various small gestures (they are "teahouses," forget about the fact that there is a girl under a lamp showing her cleavage, wearing a santa suit and fishnets, or whatever)."

@Thoroughlygruntled:

"On that note, while morbid and uncomfortable, you need to get clear end-of-life instructions from your parents now."

"I first played XCOM: Enemy Unknown in 2015, and became instantly hooked."

"ANYWAY, without further ado, here are my selections taken from the nebulous group of bands that everyone agrees are one hit wonders regardless of whether they adhere to any formal definition of the term:"

@ThomasdelVasto:

"Christian Controversy over Contemplation"

Contributions for the week of August 31, 2026

"Dan Ariely Is In The News Again"

"Being a nerd, I find this classification -- especially in the phrase 'nerd reich' insulting."

"The Hendrix comparison is illustrative. One of the strongest surviving taboos in the Anglosphere is that white people should not say the gamer word."

@OracleOutlook:

"Part of the motivation for infanticide is the sense that it would be awful for the kid to be raised by someone else."

Contributions for the week of September 7, 2026

"I think remigration and denaturalization can be done no problem even if it seems insane now."

"The effects seem particularly large for younger people: among those aged 20–25, receiving housing increased the probability of having a child by around 32% and the number of children by around 33% relative to the comparison group."

"If you think vote-buying is bad, explain what ought to be done about eighty-five fucking years of ceaseless vote-buying."

"When you hear missing teenager, think runaway, not serial killer."

@NullHypothesis:

"It turns out many people are prone to being influenced by the messaging they constantly receive, and that most of their beliefs are not derived from first principles."

@TitaniumButterfly:

"When I remember 9/11, I remember the horror of the event. But what I dwell on is the much greater horror of how easily it has been forgotten."

@MayorofOysterville:

"The global war on terror was bad enough a global war on Islam like you seem to want would be catastrophic."

Contributions for the week of September 14, 2026

"Raves, The Scene, Community and Belonging"

@IdiocyInAction:

"I think what many people, particularly men are experiencing is a state of misalignment, where a system that is built to enact, at least in principle, justice seems to be fine with something that we all thought to understand as a moral abhorrence of the highest order."

"Some people did something, as a certain Congresswoman said, but we're not going to cede the whole moral core of the faith by saying it's Muslims as such."

"The more neutral solution that would allow more members wouldn't be to make an institution's status quo non-political, but to create multiple institutions with different cultures, so (almost) everyone has some group that accepts them."

@DaseindustriesLtd:

"So by default we'll see further crystallization of Red Accelerationism vs Blue Decelism, and as AI becomes more undeniably scary, that may begin to eat into the Red political base."

Contributions for the week of September 21, 2026

"I don't think there ever was a real disagreement of null hypothesis of the origin of COVID."

Contributions for the week of September 28, 2026

@CrispyFriedBarnacles:

"I distinctly remember there being a pretty widespread sense, around 2000, from a lot of people I knew that the neoliberal Democrats, and the compassionate conversative Republicans, were actually pretty similar when you got down to brass tacks."

@FiveHourMarathon:

"What do you mean exactly by Pointless? Thoughts on Classic WoW"

"Battle" of the "Sexes"

@ratherblather:

"The nugget I can share is this: paying attention to the behaviors of 'women' and 'men' as a whole, when examining the dating world, is an incredible fool's errand and bound to produce resentment."

"Women as a Monolith is Wrong"

"I want to reiterate, an increasing amount of women believe their status is decreasing, despite this being objectively incorrect by almost any metric you choose."

@self_made_human:

"I, as a rule, tend to avoid the gender wars. I have too much sympathy for the opposition. I’m half-woman on my mother’s side."

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self_made_human amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi 15hr ago

Starting an infamously difficult and lengthy modded campaign after becoming a new dad?

Sure. Why not.

Context

MathWizard Good things are good self_made_human 3hr ago

It's a game you can play with one hand on a mouse and the other hand holding or rocking a baby. One which you can walk away from at any time, change a diaper or deal with some other issue for an arbitrary amount of time, and then seamlessly resume. It actually does seem ideal (though the same could be said about any turn based offline game).

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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