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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   3632 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 30, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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What motivates you to post on this site? Anything in particular?

I got accused of projecting last night while drunk-replying (always a bad idea) and I realized that's totally right. I project constantly when I write online, and I'm okay with it. A lot of my motivation for writing is to get my ideas out there, test them against the intellectual mettle of folks I respect, and ideally making my ideas into a more cohesive shape.

Testing my thinking, that's really it. If there is a better space on the internet for me to do so where would it be? Nowhere, it's either an echo chamber or an execution chamber everywhere else on the internet. It's really the only place where I can actually test my thinking.

I spent over a decade posting nowhere but 4chan, and whenever I left I would read constantly about how it was a stupid place full of terrible people. I have since gone looking for an intelligent place full of brilliant people, but so far I haven't found any forums as wise or worthwhile as the imageboards of my past. But this place is a close enough approximation and it kind of looks like legitimate work(no big images, no large racial slurs in flashing colours etc), so I post on here during working hours when I don't actually have any work to do.

Some people here know a lot more about certain subjects than people I know in real life, so I can have conversations here that I can't in real life or that there are few people I can have them with in real life. Even if it's a subject I can talk to people in real life about, there is a lot of background knowledge I can assume many people here have which is mostly missing from other people. The inferential distance is much less.

while drunk-replying (always a bad idea)

I post better drunk, so YMMV.

I post because It's a place where I can easily get negative engagement with my values. EDIT: COHERENT negative engagement; I can just look at blue check twitter if I want drooling morons who disagree with me.

The majority of people here are wrong on the facts and have bad axioms from my standpoint, but I might be wrong. So, I come here every now and again to look at the people that disagree with me to see if I disagree with them.

What are some of the values that are contentious here?

non vaccine skepticism, non-full fat capitalist, non-HBD, non-raceblindness, historical revisionism, non-isolationism, etc.

Those are the ones that always get me negative internet good boy points.

The ones where I usually even out to zero are being non-Christiaan nationalist and antitheist, or supporting the left side on any culture war topic (eg, it was bad that Neely got choked to death, etc.).

Ukraine is an interesting one; I get wildly different reactions on being a strong anti Neo-Imperial Russia mark depending on who is online that day.

What motivates you to post on this site? Anything in particular?

Mainly, the people engaging with my post won't have a negative IQ.

I got accused of projecting last night while drunk-replying (always a bad idea) and I realized that's totally right.

Yup, you were overly defensive to criticisms against your post even minor ones.

I have many ideas where I haven’t found another good place to discuss them. Often, they are unrefined theories and I need outside feedback to refine them and find the flaws with them.

My best friend doesn’t have the same interests and background knowledge that I do. Sure, he will let me nerd out about signaling theory or whatever my latest intertest is, but he can’t provide the same kind of intellectual stimulation that I get here.

I also find it to be therapeutic to share ideas that the people around me ‘don’t get’. I’m getting acknowledgment that there are other people that share the same interests and think in rationalist-adjacent ways.

Also, I’d like to give a huge shout out the Wellness Wednesday threads. I really like being able to share a problem/challenge that I’m facing and get multiple perspectives on it. The multiple perspectives help me see multiple ways I can approach something. I feel like there are a lot of high-effort and helpful responses that people have just given me for free and I appreciate that. If I were talking to a therapist or close friend I would get a much narrower (and potentially more biased) perspective.

Funnily enough I got my therapist into slate star codex, and will often give him ‘homework’ of reading an article I find helps describe part of my thinking.

Good therapists are hard to find but certainly worth it imo.

I find it entertaining.

Making a proper, well-constructed argument and pointing out bad argumentation are underappreciated.

This one of the few corners of the internet where I can expect both high quality posts for me to read and expect engaged and intelligent comments on what I've written. The fact that we're allowed to discuss topics that most forums wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole is certainly a big draw in itself.

I write because I have something interesting to say, or because I'm bored, but at the end of the day I like writing or I wouldn't be doing so much of it!

Yep, this. (He comments intelligently).

In all seriousness, it's one of the only places where I can have good conversations with people whose opinions are close enough to mine to be interesting but not so close it's dull. With ordinary friends and family either you spend all your time manoeuvring around the badthink filter or they just don't have much extra to add.

I like writing as a way of working through my thoughts but I find it very difficult to sit down with a blank page and write anything good. Seeing an interesting motte comment gives me the motivation to put my thoughts on a topic into words. Being forced to articulate a thought is itself a way of testing it, then you've got people replying to it trying to find its weaknesses.

Refining my views, finding interest views, getting criticism of my views.

Themotte works as fun training in “quick argument generation” because topics are variable, challenging, and diverse. Twitter doesn’t work like this because of character generation and the emphasis on low-information dunking and insults, Reddit used to be good but not much anymore, and there is no real life equivalent that occurs with frequency. If there were, like, 17th century coffeehouses, I’d just be chilling there instead

Sign me up for the 17th century coffeehouse and salon revival please. That sounds dope. We can even add adderall and cocaine this time.

Boredom, the only thing that really motivates me to do anything, other than spite.

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.


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