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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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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.

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naraburns nihil supernum 9mo ago (text post) 4285 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for July 2023

This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).

As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.

These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful. Also, @Soriek's "Transnational Thursdays" have continued to garner AAQC reports:

Here are the rest:

Quality Contributions in the Main Motte

@FarNearEverywhere:

"So you may have heard of The Problem Of Susan, a literary critical view of what happened to Susan in 'The Last Battle', the final Narnia book."

@George_E_Hale:

"The first train ride takes me to a commuter hub, where you can actually travel to one of the international airports in my area. You see a lot of Chinese, Korean, Thai, probably other Asians as well."

Contributions for the week of July 3, 2023

"Earlier this year, the Swedish publisher Natur och Kultur released a new book discussing the rise of male sexlessness by the name of 'Man går sin egen väg: riktningar i sexlöshetens dimma.'"

@Primaprimaprima:

"Is there anything we can recover from Dante's notion of cosmic responsibility, which has now become so alien to us?"

@self_made_human:

Apologetics for America

Contributions for the week of July 10, 2023

"So after speculating last night I decided to do my homework and actually pull the 990s for [Operation Underground Railroad] and see what their reported financials say."

"Every time a tactical win hints towards a long term strategic strategy, the Republicans have shown themselves to be incompetent in pursuing it."

Race and Ethnicity

@TracingWoodgrains:

"I wrote a rather long post on my reflections in the wake of affirmative action, detailing why I'm mostly ambivalent about its end and what I see as the core problem with college admissions."

"How much did America contribute to decolonization?"

"If feeling morally superior to others and reveling in hating and even seeking the extermination of the right people is something you enjoy, the difference between Nazis and Twitter SJWs is little more than a palette swap."

@DaseindustriesLtd:

"Affirmative Action is never just affirmative action, never just redistributing the pie of prestige; it carries costs that may measure in lives."

"But you don't have to be pro-Nazi to notice that the person fantasizing about violence seems to have a much broader definition of the term than you do, and that their definition includes you."

"At some point you're going to have to quit blaming those pesky Confederates and either come up with a solution or admit that you don't have one, because it's not our fault that black kids in Baltimore can't read."

Sex and Gender

"So this is my interpretation of 'women are loved for who they are': women tend to be loved and respected by their families, friends and romantic partners more or less unconditionally."

"Women are manipulated into careers they don't really enjoy and talked into having less children later, to keep them in the workforce for longer..."

@raggedy_anthem:

"One cannot perform sexuality without an audience."

"What’s being normalized is keep the parents out of the loop and almost presenting parents as 'the enemy of their children,' and normalizing structures in society that actually work against parents being able to find out where their kids are and what they’re doing online..."

Religion and Irreligion

"Is it possible to be genuinely religious in the modern secular west?"

Contributions for the week of July 17, 2023

"What is the Enlightenment?"

"I believe that this formula of rule by scientific experts is slowly coming to an end, crushed under the weight of its own contradictions."

"[A]dvances in HIV treatment have surely raised that number in the last few decades, but the fact remains that practicing homosexuality is a lifestyle with health consequences similar to those we associate with smoking, sedentary lifestyles, bad foods, etc."

"Nolan's Oppenheimer released this weekend, and I wanted to use this opportunity to both post an excellent paper about Bhagavad Gita's influence on the man and a short introduction to Hinduism to illustrate just how different it is from Abrahamic religions."

Contributions for the week of July 24, 2023

"Since my 'don't trust Science' threads were already toeing the line between 'Pepe Silvia!' and schizophrenic (fair!) (I didn't even touch the four-part follow-up), Nate Silver summarizes better than I can..."

@raggedy_anthem:

"Every time I've shopped for real estate in this beautiful European city established in the 12th century, the market offers me a fucking concrete box."

"Legislative Updates: Senate Appropriations Committee Mark Up"

"Everyone seems to agree that it would be a very bad thing if a trans-Napoleon today gained control over the countries that used to make up the former French Empire, or if Norton was given the head of Rutherford B. Hayes, so they just... dismiss those and say it could never happen."

"For a young man in a contemporary world that is entirely individual-centric, what is the appeal of any altruistic act?"

@coffee_enjoyer:

"Masculinity, manliness, Incels? Red herrings. The issue is that men chase rewards, and the rewards today are disordered."

@problem_redditor:

"I think all of these things are enough to lead one to at least question the idea of historical female oppression."

Contributions for the week of July 31, 2023

"I'm trying to figure out how I would make either characters that are never called attention to, or characters that are an allegory . . . for trans people."

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fartVader 9mo ago

If only AAQCs came with notifications to submit camera-ready versions :(

a long term strategic strategy

Who writes like that ??

7

Context

RenOS Dadder than dad fartVader 8mo ago

Unconditional agree, half of my posts that landed in the AAQCs are part of a chain of me arguing with someone and read embarrassingly combative and/or pompous bc I got pissed at some point. If only I could sneakily revise them beforehand...

1

Context

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

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