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CSpitz  8mo ago (text post)   2931 thread views

Married guys of The Motte, where are your wives hanging out and can I join in?

I’m looking to find out where I can meet other women/moms who value rationalist-style discourse, but are more interested in kids, family, community, and home than in Motte discussions these days.

I’m a long time Motte lurker with a deep respect for the tenets of this forum. I crave more of this type of discourse. The issue is, I’m a stay-at-home mom now and I’m choosing to spend my time elsewhere (kids, community-building, garden, etc). Most of my exposure to this community is now through my husband (who forwards me the quality contributions he thinks I’d like), and honestly I’m generally more interested in topics that relate closer to my daily life these days anyway. (e.g. I'm very interested in Culture War stuff, but with more of a focus on "how the heck do I raise my kids in the middle of this Culture War?")

I’m wondering whether I can somehow connect with other moms (maybe wives of Motte members?) who are similarly lurking but who’d enjoy Motte-style discourse a lot more than the kinds of discourse I’ve been finding on more-mainstream kinds of online mommy groups (ugh).

TL;DR Seeking moms who love the rationalist ethos, but are busy doing mom stuff.

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My wife thinks this forum is an "incredibly boring illustration of the fact that you first-worlders don't have any real problems".

She's not wrong.

It's always been the case that most of the people doing real philosophy are relatively privileged people. Practically speaking, I don't see how it could be any other way. That doesn't mean that the philosophy doesn't need doing. We would hope that the most well-intentioned people with the best ideas have the most success in propagating them, privilege notwithstanding.

The very real-world philosophy of ethics, politics, science, and tech that gets discussed here matters to the long-term well-being of humanity, and I don't have a lot of patience for dismissing those discussions as preoccupation with "boring first-world problems".

To be clear, I don't have any problem with someone interested in rationalist takes on more "down-to-earth" topics. That's fine. But just don't denigrate the more abstract "boring" stuff.

What is this place?

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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."

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