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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 didn't want to make a separate thread for this, so I'll leave it as a comment: I think we have a serious issue with diversity of opinion. This was already pretty bad on Reddit, but there seems to have been a step change for the worse in the few days this new site has been up. I'm not against people sharing reactionary or anti-woke points of view but when there's nothing to counterbalance them it feels less like a forum for debate and more like the world's highest effort Daily Mail comments section. I foresee this being an increasing issue, since now the Motte is moored in the digital equivalent of international waters, there is a far lower chance that progressive voices will chance upon the community by accident. Moreover, lack of diverse perspectives induces a harmful feedback cycle, since if someone sees at least some representation of their viewpoints they are more likely to pitch in, while if they just see a load of right-wingers competing to be the most critical of 'wokeism', in all likelihood, they will leave as quickly as they entered.

I accept that I'm not the first to raise this point (I believe this was a motivating factor for the removal of the bare-links repository) but since this isn't a problem that looks likely to solve itself I feel obliged to raise it again in the hope that we can work towards a solution.

I think we have a serious issue with diversity of opinion.

Any forum that discusses pretty much anything will tend to develop consensus viewpoints over time. It's especially bad with the culture war, because leftists will mostly self-select out of participating in any forum where people are allowed to express reactionary viewpoints.

I wish we had more diversity of opinion, but there's only so much we can do to foster that, unfortunately.

there's only so much we can do to foster that

I would like to see a higher standard of charitability for criticisms of progressive leftism. I would like all posts criticising progressivism to be required to start from the sincere premise that the progressive actors are acting with the earnestly held belief that they are making the world a better place, and for any subsequent argumentation that rejects this idea to be required to explicitly demonstrate it. Far too many posts here are along the lines of 'as we all know, the woke progressive left are trying to force their ideology down our throats and the throats of our children to achieve cultural hegemony, and here's the new way that they're doing it'.

I make this request in the interests of the medium-to-long-term ability of this website to live up to its stated raison d'être. I definitely don't consider myself woke, but I'm not a reactionary either, and my most common response to reading Motte threads is a vague mix of annoyance at the monotonality of the know-it-all-white-stem-guy vibe and a creeping suspicion that most of the posts I'm reading are by fascists hiding their power level. Please forgive the lack of charity in this admission: I share it only to demonstrate that if this is my response to reading these threads, as a know-it-all-white-stem-guy with the habitual chan-browser's acquired tolerance for edgy politics, I worry that most visitors here would be far more strongly repulsed.

As much as it winds me up, some of the best long-form effortposting I've ever read on the internet has been on The Motte and I would be sad to see that end. Any moderator who cares to check can see that I have made source code contributions to the site, so I hope readers of this post do not assume I don't have its best interests in mind. I would appreciate any responses from anyone else who has had a similar experience to me, or (for that matter) from anyone who feels I am misrepresenting things.

And what would you say to people like me, who have enough experience with the woke that we've concluded progressives are not coming from that position? I absolutely refuse to lie for your feelings. If that means that you're less likely to participate, that is unfortunate but not really a problem; I'm not vulnerable to threats of taking your toys and going home.

There are certain tonal requirements per the rules, sure. But 'polite' does not demand deference to woke's self-image in contradiction of its actions.

Personally, I'd say that you might be on the wrong community.

Ideological diversity is the entire point of this place, and that's not hyperbole, we have a Foundation that defines the point:

The purpose of this community is to be a working discussion ground for people who may hold dramatically different beliefs. It is to be a place for people to examine the beliefs of others as well as their own beliefs; it is to be a place where strange or abnormal opinions and ideas can be generated and discussed fairly, with consideration and insight instead of kneejerk responses.

All of the community's rules must be justified by this foundation.

If you feel so negatively about left-wing people that you're not able to discuss things with them then you're in the wrong place.

I disagree with your interpretation of your Foundation. The entire point of this place is to have a «working discussion ground», that's the first item on the agenda and the value of diversity is contingent on satisfying this criterion.

Some beliefs can be genuinely irreconcilable with that, for example any sincerely held and practiced belief in the utility of shitting up the discussion for most of the people here. Some beliefs are just so epistemologically alien and uncharitable that they don't lend themselves to a productive discussion. Some are plain dumb.

We must not become an echo chamber, but it is perfectly expected that some beliefs, even expressed with formal respect to our tone standards, are in fact not conductive to having a working discussion ground, and the community would be wise to reject them and their adherents precisely to protect its value and purpose. It may be the case that the standard issue Twitter/nu-Reddit militant wokism is grounded in beliefs of this kind.

Ideally, it would be a small sector of the left-wing spectrum, tucked between some dissident post-trotskyism and 4th wave anarcho-feminism. Philosophically, that's roughly what it is. Demographically, it happens to be a big deal.

Some beliefs can be genuinely irreconcilable with that, for example any sincerely held and practiced belief in the utility of shitting up the discussion for most of the people here.

Sure, and we boot people for that.

Some beliefs are just so epistemologically alien and uncharitable that they don't lend themselves to a productive discussion. Some are plain dumb.

This, however, I disagree with. "Their opinions are too uncharitable to be tolerated" is a classic way to shut down differing opinions. So is "their opinions are dumb". It may be true that there are opinions that are thoroughly incompatible with what we're going for here, but so far I haven't seen any; honestly, the general idea that people with differing opinions are unable to have good discussions is the closest I've seen.

This, however, I disagree with. "Their opinions are too uncharitable to be tolerated" is a classic way to shut down differing opinions.

Doesn't this just as easily apply to the earlier post? How do you escape the circle of uncharitability to the supposedly uncharitable? With enough charity in interpretation nearly nothing is uncharitable and the level of charity necessary to apply to social justice posts is the entire question here.

Far too many posts here are along the lines of 'as we all know, the woke progressive left are trying to force their ideology down our throats and the throats of our children to achieve cultural hegemony, and here's the new way that they're doing it'.

Is not a charitable way to interpret the posts in question.

It's not very honest to make me the bad guy here by focusing on meta level ideas about abstract interaction of opinions. In practice, when a Guy comes in with guns blazing and, brandishing his great and novel Beliefs, revives some discussion about, say, Trump supporters being covert Nazis, or people interested in genetics of intelligence being deeply dishonest fascists who need fraudulent science to justify an apartheid state – it... just doesn't matter how eloquent and polite and effortful he is. Because we know how it goes, I do, at least: no amount of good faith argument will achieve anything more than the guy disappearing without conceding a single point; were he honest and as intelligent as the quality of writing indicates, he'd have found all that before anyway. So there'll be some tired snarky response or not even that, he'll leave and/or get baited into a bannable offense, and you'll shake your head about evaporation of dissent.

But I think it's normal that such «dissent» evaporates. If we need new people, we need new people, from similarly niche but different intellectual traditions, people who can take the heat... the light, if you prefer, and keep defending and counterattacking and creating sparks.

I really don't care for a spar with Impassionata, even when she doesn't overstep the bounds of polite discourse. I know how it goes with her. You do too, which is why she had been banned on the sub. But when a newbie comes in with Impassionata-style attitude, is it really our fault that he finds the reception cold?