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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3606 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 14, 2024

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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Is everyone satisfied with the moderation here? For me, it’s getting to unacceptably high levels. For some reason, they recently felt the need to almost double the mods to take care of the shrinking userbase.

Our old charitable custom was to treat strangers as if they were worthy of good faith. Increasingly the mods treat those whose good faith has already been established (such as the recently modded Kulak, Hlynka, Burdensomecount) as if they were strangers.

Like reddit, you can start off as a bastion of free speech, but inevitably mods identify with their function and see mod action as an end in itself, until they become more prison guards than janitors.

So are there good alternatives to the motte out there?

I don’t think it’s possible to create an Internet community where everyone engages charitably but people are also free to call each other or their outgroup stupid, evil, or faggots.

To the extent such a community does exist, it’s living on borrowed time as one group leaves due to asymmetry in hostility (if your community is 80% Packers fans and 20% Bears fans, then Bears fans are going to see a lot more hostility than Packer’s fans).

TheMotte itself began its existence due to a one-time infusion of quokkas. who had the miraculous ability to tolerate their outgroup. I support an increase in moderator effort to preserve this, since it is ultimately why TheMotte works at all.

If you find a place with weaker civility norms and better quality discussion I’m happy to be proven wrong. As it is, the only places I’ve seen higher quality discussions (about politics) are places with stricter civility norms, and at this point I think that’s just an unfortunate reality that stems from human nature.

I’d say what distinguished the forum originally was more a commitment to free speech than to civility, though it had both of course.

I don’t think it’s possible to create an Internet community where everyone engages charitably but people are also free to call each other or their outgroup stupid, evil, or faggots.

They believe it though. The illusion of censorship is that hiding something makes it disappear, like a hand in front of a baby.

To the extent such a community does exist, it’s living on borrowed time as one group leaves due to asymmetry in hostility (if your community is 80% Packers fans and 20% Bears fans, then Bears fans are going to see a lot more hostility than Packer’s fans).

If you think it was bad before, wait until the packers fans get mod powers. The minority is always going to be perceived as more hostile. ‘Bears are the best’ – ‘what are you, trolling? You knew an inflammatory statement like that would generate a lot of drama’. On the motte, you’re obviously going to get a lot more reports for an equivalent sneer if you’re woke rather than anti-woke.

They believe it though. The illusion of censorship is that hiding something makes it disappear, like a hand in front of a baby.

It is impossible to prevent people from writing an uncharitable post against their ideological opponents by forbidding them from calling them faggots (or insert any other snarl word). But I do believe it introduces significant friction and reduces the amount of such posts.

It also makes such posts cattier, which is a disincentive in and of itself.

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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