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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   31056 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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This place has made me more anxious, more prejudiced, more frustrated, more hopeless, less compassionate, less able to appreciate beauty, less joyful.

For what it's worth I sympathize, and I have found myself participating less and less of late for much the same reasons. I find myself wondering why I'm wasting my time arguing with idiots and assholes here when I could be playing with my kids or spooning with their mother. The counter is that little voice in the back of my head that tells me that the righteous are in no need of a priest, and that a physician goes where the sick are. Maybe that's arrogant of me but that's what it is.

Edit to Elaborate: "Be the change you want to see" is one of those stupid fucking cliches that is also a deep wisdom. One that people in general, and rationalists in particular, seem to shy away from out of fear of appearing stupid or being taken for a sucker. Why "cooperate" when "defect" is an option? they ask. The answer takes many forms depending on context but what it ultimately boils down to "people like you are why we can't have nice things".

When @BurdensomeCount asks Are you stupid or am I evil? the answer is "yes". We are all at least a little bit stupid, we are all at least a little bit evil, but that doesn't mean you should be the sort of guy who wears flip-flops in the foundry.

FWIW I hope you stick around but will wish you well if you don't. Do what you must.

I find myself wondering why I'm wasting my time arguing with idiots and assholes here when I could be playing with my kids or spooning with their mother.

My personal approach to dealing with this is that I reserve my motte posting for downtime at work. At most I'll look at replies I've received when extremely bored, but I've done almost all of my posting here during times I'm ostensibly meant to be performing my actual job. I should probably use this time on more productive habits, but posting here is fun and enjoyable... and I can dimly justify the time spent here as polishing my rhetorical skills and understanding of the world for my actual creative endeavours.

I'll admit that I've always been vaguely puzzled by the posters here who claim to be worried about getting canceled (as distinct from getting banned by theMotte's mods) for their postings here but now I realize that there are people here who are posting from work. Fucking A, am I really such an ancient-fag that I just took it as a given that no one here was dumb enough to post using their work or school account?

  • Smartphones are a thing these days, grandpa.
  • A sufficiently motivated mob will find out who you are from the few traces you leave behind, find out where you work, and spam your employer about how horrible you are. Not posting from work won't save you.

you're not using your own phone though are you?

Who's phone am I supposed be using? That's the one I have control over, and can be sure no one is spying on.

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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.

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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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