As far as I know, it's been a while since our last meta thread, so let's have a space for the administration of praise and the airing of grievances. Hopefully we can keep the conversation distant enough from first order culture war issues to justify this being a separate thread from the main CW thread.
I've been here on and off over the years since about 2016. To my mind, the two most exciting times to be a part of this community were the period around the first Trump election, and then again in 2022 around the time of the site migration. I don't think it's a coincidence that these time periods coincided with major new social and political issues entering the public consciousness (or at least, entering the consciousness of this community): in 2016, the culture war as we know it was still very fresh and nascent, with battle lines still being drawn and positions still being clarified, and in 2022, DALL-E and ChatGPT introduced machine learning to those of us who had not been feverishly following the LessWrong comments section since the 00s.
Unsurprisingly, discussion is good when there's something new and shiny to discuss. But eventually, you start to run out of things to talk about. People have been complaining about this problem with regards to the "classic" culture war issues for at least a good 3 or 4 years now. In the time period from 2014-2018, there was still a sense that it was all brand new: people were being forced to think about questions and perspectives that they had never thought about before, they were still figuring out how to make sense of their own positions and the positions of others. But now it's all well-trodden ground. You can only rehash the same foundational questions about race and free speech so many times before people on both sides start to think "yes, I've seen it all before, I know how this ends".
Even with AI, despite it still being a very rapidly evolving field, I've been feeling less motivated to participate in AI discussions lately, largely because it feels like such a straightforwardly empirical question. The classic culture war questions are the sorts of evergreen philosophical questions that you could, in principle, go back and forth on endlessly. You can walk away and come back in 10 years and the same questions will still be sitting there. But with AI, it ultimately all boils down to "well we'll just have to wait and see" in the end. Either there will be a singularity and/or the extinction of humanity, or there will not be. Sitting here and talking about it won't change much. We kinda just have to wait to see what happens.
Perhaps these forces have played a role in causing the forum to become less theoretical and abstract over time, leading to the rise of what I like to call "nuts and bolts" type posts: local politics at the city/state level, the minutiae of urban and suburban life, court cases and legal briefings. I don't remember these types of posts being so common in the early years of the forum (probably because, again, the culture war was brand new and people wanted to discuss the hottest culture war questions). I'm glad that at least some people are invested in doing the actual necessary work that makes the world function. But these types of posts generally bore me to tears, so I skip over them. I'm sure many people skip over the dumb shit I like to post about too, so, I understand that it goes both ways and there are no hard feelings. At least I'm still trying to be the change I want to see and I try to balance out the discussion with more philosophical posts.
Something I do lament is the evaporative cooling of interesting characters over time, not only due to bans but also due to natural attrition. At this point in the community's lifespan, it's unlikely that we're going to get another Hlynka, or another TracingWoodgrains. One starts to get the impression that the window for new foundational community narratives has passed.
All complaining aside, I still derive an incredible amount of value from this forum, as evidenced by my return to daily participation, and I would hate to ever see it go. It doesn't remind me of the Old Internet, but it does remind me of the Middle Internet: that time period from roughly 2012-2018 when there was a flourishing of strange ideas and it genuinely seemed like many bold new things were possible. (Maybe it reminds some other people of Usenet, I don't know; that was before my time.) I sincerely hope that this forum can remain roughly stable in its current state for as long as possible.
Anyway, what do you think? What do you think about how TheMotte has evolved over the years, what do you like about it now, what do you want to see changed, etc.
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Notes -
On the future of TheMotte:
People always bet against themotte. I always bet in favor of it.
I was one of the SSC mods gung ho in favor of moving to a new subreddit rather than letting the culture war thread just die. I thought for sure it would work out.
I was one of themotte mods gung ho in favor of moving to a new website and off of reddit. I even took a bet on it about how many comments would be on the threads after a year. I won the bet.
I'm calling it now, I think themotte will be around and active in 2030. At least 1k comments in the main thread a week. Some checks put in place on AI contributions. Moderation mostly the same. If its not still around, I think most of the internet wont be around either.
A slow trickle of refugees from other sites. The evaporative cooling will seem not as bad, because battle lines in the culture war will shift enough. You can see this with random topics that come up on occasion. Despite a lot of demographic overlap on here, people only sorta kinda align on culture war stuff. Go off topic like bike lanes, coffee, music/movie interests, etc. And you'll find strongly held different opinions. There are even plenty of culture war topics where I feel things have reached a sort of debate equilibrium for now, but that future events might fully blow up that equilibrium. Immigration, women, fertility, Europe, etc.
On moderation:
I am one of the less active mods. This is not because I hate the work, its just that my real life stuff is kinda busy. I do like the challenge and puzzle of moderation decisions. The challenge is impartiality, trying to gauge your own bias, trying to make a system that is fair and works. My belief in the continued success of themotte is that I think we have something unique in the moderation. And that there is a lot of room for niches with regards to moderation. You can see some extremes in moderation in comparing 4chan, x/twitter, reddit, and other social media sites. I think our specific style of moderation is difficult to achieve, not desired by a large swath of the population, and strongly desired by a tiny/small group of the population.
On interest and engagement:
Themotte will never feel as fresh and as interesting as when you first joined. Thats just the nature of things. I don't think its the worst. I've been involved in this stuff for over a decade now. When I first found the SSC blog and then the subreddit it felt like this huge moment. Finally! I had found a community I could engage with in the exchange of ideas. Not just an echo chamber that all agreed with my weird libertarian ideas, but genuine smart people with different views on reality. That excitement has mellowed a great deal over the years. But I keep coming back, because there is no other place like it. If there were other places like it, then it wouldn't need to exist. But also, because this place exists, there is far less need to create something like it.
The closest place I've found to the experience of themotte is in real life interactions with neighbors. There is an expectation of politeness and not being a jerk. I can have genuine and meaningful conversations with very different viewpoints. Its maybe why themotte didn't need to be a place that existed for a long time, because these kinds of interactions were findable in real life. I'll admit to quite a bit of "privilege" here. I live in a nice neighborhood, in one of the richest counties in America, around a bunch of middle class professionals that are content to live a good life rather than participate in a rat race to the top. So I know its rare.
Question: What is a middle class professional to you? I live in a similar neighborhood with above-median incomes but I see a lot of conspicuous consumption, mostly with expensive cars and trucks. In fact, I don't think I've ever lived in a neighborhood without a lot of obviously luxury or aftermarket-modified hobby vehicles, even blue collar workers love some conspicuous consumption beyond their means. Where do you live that is a rich county but few flaunt their wealth?
They are in well paid technical positions, small business owners, middle management, etc.
I didn't say there weren't nice cars. But if your family is earning between 200-400k a year you can afford a nice car. The houses were built in the 60s they go for around 600-900k these days.
I just said they are not the strivers. We know where the strivers live, it's like a mile or two away, the schools are slightly better, the houses cost about 300k more for the same thing. You are closer to some of the big up and coming areas. A person in that neighborhood who has been holding onto the land forever, or they are buying the house just to tear it down and build the biggest mcmansion they can fit on the lot.
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