site banner
TheDag  Per Aspera ad Astra  11mo ago (text post)   2752 thread views

Calling all Lurkers: Share your Dreams of Effortposting

It’s been pointed out recently that the topics discussed in the Culture War thread have gotten a bit repetitive. While I do think the Motte has a good spread on intellectual discussion, I’m always pushing for a wider range (dare I say diversity?) of viewpoints and topics in the CW thread.

I was a lurker for years, and I know that the barrier between having a thought and writing a top level comment in the CW thread can loom large indeed. Luckily I’m fresh out of inspiration, and would love to hear thoughts from folks about effortposts they want to write but haven’t gotten around to.

This of course applies to regulars who post frequently as well - share any and all topics you wish were discussed in the CW thread!

28
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I have a file in my notetaking program that I've named "mottepost ideas", with things ranging from bullet points to semi-complete drafts of posts to try and finish when I'm in a writing mood and not too frustrated with this place. The problem is that I've also been toying with the idea of trying my hand at real-name blogging for a while - both because I think some of those ideas would be interesting to write up for people I know in real life, and because the idea of attracting more real-life friends with similar interests by public writing is appealing in the abstract - and posting the idea on the Motte first would burn it for using there unless I'm willing to risk self-doxing.

Two entries in that file that I'm pretty okay with burning (because they're low-quality anyway):

critical theory vs. critical thinking

  • Alison Bailey [2017] surprisingly clear about this
  • logic = language of nature, power dialectic = language of humans
  • speak good logic to extract resources from nature, speak good dialectic to extract resources from other humans
  • are your problems better solved by extracting more from nature (chop wood, make fire) or from other people (capture warm house)?
  • "dialectic can not extract a warming fire from winter's frozen wood, nor quenching drink from scorching desert air"
  • dialecticians only can profitably wrangle people because someone has done the work of wrangling nature before them. Had nature not been wrangled, they would be sitting in caves wondering why their children died of tetanus, not sitting in shoddy flats wondering why they can't afford an iPhone

Weirdmaxing

Modern architecture sucks because of runaway elite competition, but what about good-looking traditional schools of architecture? Did those not arise from runaway elite competition? Even people in cultures that build nice buildings (say, 19thct UK) generally have no idea how you could build nice buildings in Japanese or Indian style. Seems like an "unknown unknowns" problem; is it optimal to not have one elite that gets to do runaway loopy optimisation with an evolving value function, but multiple, and then you get to pick out the best one from them? Is this generally a good approach to unknown unknowns?

Why do you believe modern architecture sucks?

Personal opinion, and I have yet to see anyone disagree in a setting sufficiently anonymous to remove the signalling advantage to disagreeing. (See also that SSC post ("Whither Tartaria?", I think) which cited some statistics suggesting that modern buildings are generally unpopular)

To be clear, I'm talking strictly about the macroscopic aesthetic qualities. I think modern buildings have many advantages in terms of interior space, plumbing, wiring, ventilation, materials, insulation etc.; however I would not even chalk those up to architects, considering that none of the US architecture students I knew seemed to be learning anything to do with this. Rather, as I understood it at the time, the architectural process is now such that the architect comes up with some artistic macroscopic design, and the details of how to turn it into a liveable building that satisfies relevant codes and regulations are worked out by subordinates with actual understanding of construction and physics (Civil or structural engineers?).

I ask because I recently stumbled upon the subreddit /r/architecturalrevival and was greatly annoyed by the ignorance on display. I've been thinking of writing a critique, so when I saw your post, I was interested in hearing what someone who believes modern architecture sucks thinks. The subreddit has no real arguments: the belief that modern architecture sucks is usually implicit, and if it is ever expressed explicitly, it is in a circlejerky manner.

Would you mind sharing your opinion on the Sydney Opera House and the works of Zaha Hadid? This question is inspired by one of the most common complaints on the subreddit, something to the effect of "modern buildings are all just boring concrete and glass boxes", which is plainly false. (That's just one of their many nonsensical and ignorant claims. An exhaustive list would be very long.)

Edit: Other people's opinions are welcome, too.

Not who you asked, but the sails are good as a skyline piece while the bottom layers of the SOH are a boring block of concrete, so the whole thing looks better from a distance than up close. And looking at the works of Hadid, she reasonably exemplifies the trend of inhuman boxes and blobs of weird shapes which look interesting for 5 seconds but seem in no way to be awe-inspiring, pleasant to be around or part of a beautiful skyline.

Really, this is the essence of the issue for me - a lot of Architecture from the previous century feels designed to impress people looking at it for 5s-5min. Wow, what an unusual design. But buildings are going to be the home or workplace of many people, and part of many more people's daily commute or view. I'd pick any place from the front page of that subreddit over any of Hadid's buildings for this.

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