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AnotherSiteAnotherName  2yr ago (text post)   3835 thread views

The Motte and the future

So the move has been made. Potential shut down by Reddit has been avoided. Huzzah!

But people are still worrying about where new members are going to come from. And things are still being organized in the same terrible way as /r/ssc when they were trying to quarantine the culture war from the rest of the sub. And sprinkles around you have a few small threads for other weekly topics or talking about the new site.

A dedicated site deserves a nu start. Rather than purposely making quality writing harder to find, it should be highlighted. (I know the quality contributions roundup exists, but it certainly isn't exhaustive.) Seriously, have you ever gone back and tried to read an old weekly culture war thread with its thousands, potentially tens of thousands of comments? It is an unnecessary slog if you are looking for something and don't have a link. And sometimes you 'continue reading' and go back only to find that you've lost your place. It just makes you say, "I blue myself."

I do have some suggestions on some of the changes I'd like to see more that there is a dedicated website. First, I'd like to see a webpage highlighting quality contributions and other content from the forum. Something that I can easily link a friend to rather than a nested comment in response to some insane person ranting "There's a man inside me!" Or whatever.

Secondly, I think some editorial prompts for content for the sure would be good. Adversarial collaborations and whatever else. Just easier ways to find good writing from the site.

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I'll chime in here that I'm one of the few libs to have stuck it out on TheMotte and, yeah, it does feel like it's taken a bit of an echoey turn with the site switch. I do think it's a mix of people finally being able to go mask off and rdrama folks trolling.

I don't think Joe Average Liberal will have the same experience I'm having, since I've spent most of my life enjoying back and forth with Cons and have my own weird ideosyncretic takes I like to ride around hobby-horse style.

I also don't have a great fix for this. Are there things libs want to say that they can't say on reddit? Abso-goddamn-lutely, but they're also things that left-wing spaces discourage saying as a taboo, so even unleashed in a place like this we hold our tongues.

Are there things libs want to say that they can't say on reddit? Abso-goddamn-lutely, but they're also things that left-wing spaces discourage saying as a taboo

Like what?

One thing that occurs to me is anti-GMO / anti-vaccine discussion, which has historically been equally if not more left-coded than right-coded, however is extremely taboo outside of quite fringe subreddits.

anti-GMO

Care to expand? From my understanding of the subject anti-GMO opinions are barely an order of magnitude more supported by evidence than flat earth unless you are using it for a catch all including monocultures and other agriculture issues that aren't nearly as controversial to criticize.

I don't think GMO is bad, but I think there are some principled reasons to be opposed to it. You know how tomatoes are worse than they used to be because they optimised for redness? I feel like GMO makes that sort of trap easier to fall into.

Or openly admitting that you consider antivax folks so repugnant that you'd consider otherwise unfair measures to hassle them.

Basically any discussion of violence as a political tool, even just like 'yeah, we should probably have some number of liberal gun owners otherwise the Accelerationists will win because they think they're running unopposed.'

That was what I was coyly pointing out, but I'm sure there are other taboos, probably that I've become so good at avoiding I don't even notice.

Huh? Liberal gun owners have their very own subreddit, which, as of now, isn't quarantined. And that's just one subreddit among many.

But the vast majority of libs won't touch it with a ten foot poll.

But they won't touch it primarily because they disagree with it, not because they are suppressing their feelings.

That's hardly something anyone besides themselves can do anything about. As far as I can tell, it's a completely normie-friendly subreddit.

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!

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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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