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ymeskhout  1yr ago (text post)   4706 thread views

What is your favorite Motte post ever?

I'm curious about not just what your favorite post is, but also what you think is the GOAT, or perhaps what you think is most illustrative and representative of this space (e.g. what would you show someone to get them intrigued). Please limit your post to only ONE pick and briefly explain why you chose it. This can be from anywhere within the Motte's history thus far, and r/TheThread is a good place to check in case you're having trouble finding something. Asking for a friend.

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Man we gotta get more links going in this thread.

One that stuck with me back from the SSC Culture War thread days was BarnabyCajones' post about how street preaching used to make sense and then didn't.

Kulak's post on humanity's ingrained love of violence and domination.

https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/s0e1r7/comment/hsg1z8s/

https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/eabgr3/even_space_marines_need_artillery_support_why_i/

Warhammer 40k, StarWars, Fascism, Equality. Even Spacemarines need artillery support.

Someone once wrote a post about sales being a bullshit job that spawned a lot of interesting economic discussion, which would be my pick. I'd appreciate if someone has a link to that, actually. It might have been KulakRevolt, although I'm not sure.

This one?

Yes, thank you!

Here

Another one

The Baseball guy ..for somehow weaving in teens into every possible post

You mean Branson

I don’t know his real name but his username was euphoricbaseball I’m completely convinced that he actually was a teenager who hated how adults colluded to keep him down

The one about step parents being 40 times more likely to abuse kids than biological parents. The west gets family wrong, I will likely never divorce my wife since marriage in Hinduism is a bond for many lives, not just one and the main unit is the family. My mother stayed in a marriage I never would have despite it not even being my fathers fault. My family had some genuinely terrible circumstances and my mother could have left, had I been her, I would have but she stayed for us. I do not wish anything bad on kids who have step parents but anyone who stays together despite issues deserves respect.

I really liked the one about /u/tracingwoodgrains wedding. Other than that maybe the ones where standard_order told me to get addicted to natural dopamine or where everyone trashed me because my oneitis began dating some other dude. I did not get what the people meant back then but it makes more sense the more I read it. The standard_order post was in october 2020 and this one in march 2021. January 2021 stands out too but yeah.

One that will forever stand out would be the book review of from third world to first.

The one about step parents being 40 times more likely to abuse kids than biological parents.

That just feels intuitively off to me. I'd want to check if it's adjusted for "step parents are scrutinized more closely so more abuse is documented".

I don't think it's healthy to have the family structure found in the west, period.

Marriage is a sacred bond.

Why is it intuitively off to you? It's the opposite for me -- we see numerous cases in nature of males killing off a rival male's offspring to secure their own genetic legacy, and I would expect people to innately have a much higher level of sympathy for their blood. Of course step parents are significantly more likely to abuse kids -- they're not their kids.

Hm. Might be better to split this into two categories - "step parents" and "adoptive parents". When I think of a step parent in the singular - some new partner of the biological parent who didn't specifically want to adopt a kid - I find it more plausible. "Evil stepmother" and "abusive stepfather" are popular tropes.

I heard recently (I forget from where) that the Wicked Stepmother trope was invented well after the fairytales we associate it with became popular, and the original versions had the bio mothers being villainous. IIRC, it had to do with the change in inheritance traditions from Medieval Europe to Renaissance/early modern dramatically altering the incentives.

Yeah, I'm talking about new partners of biological parents. I don't know how adopted parents are. I would suspect less likely to abuse due to selection effects, but I don't actually know how (dys)functional the American adoption system is.

The one about step parents being 40 times more likely to abuse kids than biological parents

I think you should read Grimms Bros folk tales. The Juniper Tree in particular.

i will, thanks.

I will likely never divorce my wife

This confused me for a little bit since I recognized your name: "Aren't you the guy who posts about his girl troubles?"

Then I realized that you meant your future-wife, or did something happen and I'm not aware of it?

lmao, I mean my girl issues stem from just being in a small place where I cannot meet many girls. This will vanish when I move out and interact with a bunch more pretty high iq girls on the regular with better logistics and a suitable lifestyle.

I mean my future wife as in when I do get married and have kids with her, I will not divorce her as that is not how families work according to Hindu ideals.

My parents made it work and because of better understanding of how thins work, I should have an easier time.

regardless, divorce is off the table, marriage is like being tied to a ship, you sink with your mate. Now the question of unfaithfulness is a big one here which is especially why I go out and talk to girls so that I am not green when I settle down.

This confused me for a little bit since I recognized your name: "Aren't you the guy who posts about his girl troubles?"

lmao, I hope I become known as the guy who is disciplined in the near future instead of this. This made me laugh and get a bit sad but mostly laugh.

Won’t your marriage be arranged.

I am very unlikely to have that given that the best genes have fled the arranged marriage market in the country so you now have a weird system. Romantic love is the one thing everyone "believes" in here which is what caused this, all movies, tv shows, music etc is based around this premise. Factor in globalization and the Indian elite obsession with copying whatever anglos do and you get a world where people of the higher socio economic strata date and whilst marriages are still mostly arranged, the amount of ones where spouses are chosen on your own have risen.

I also do not trust my parents to select a good wife given that both were raised during times that were very different. They are not aware of things are today in my humble opinion. I may despise my familyy on some days but I love them more than anything else in the world, I still do not think that they would do a good job.

Also my issues are me being low value in a ghost town in his early 20s. My girl issues are just a symptom of that, bump up my value and city and these problems will just disappear.

Ok. I’ve worked with Indians in IT over here, some of whom had arranged marriages. their parents set them up on dates but didn’t force the marriage. That worked.

It will not now given that seuxal revolution is a thing in urban India, at least in the higher ends.

I really do not want to beta buxx some girl who had her share of lovers and had to settle down because she became too old, this is the thing that many I know kinda put up with so I will most likely find a girl for myself.

The one about step parents being 40 times more likely to abuse kids than biological parents.

[here], caveat here

thanks.

I quite liked that one ilforte post about the Chinese military officer who's wife died in a force abortion and went AWOL. I lost my link to it with my reddit account and have been too lazy to find it again.

[here] for Vault link, original at here.

thanks!

Any Julius Branson post. He’s the undisputed champ, caused more seething and inspired more terror than anyone else

He also really captures the spirit of this place and has a truly inimitable style and sense of humor

The Vitiology guy's manifesto was amazing. Like a BDSM-world themed erotica worldbuilding document that turned into an SCP and infected him. I legitimately hurt myself with how hard I laughed.

Do you have a link?

https://archive.org/details/vintologi26/mode/2up

Pretty sure it was this, NSFW and I think he advocates for pedophilia in here but I don't fully remember

This seems like a pretty Johnny-come-lately response. Julius Branson was stale and sophomoric compared to, say, penpractice. And TrannyPornO was as far beyond penpractice as penpractice was beyond Julius Branson.

That said, I'm pretty sure HlynkaCG has ultimately caused more seething than all three of those posters combined.

TrannyPornO

Do we have his posts archived?

If he ever does an AMA no one will have to ask him what his favorite type of porn is

Penpractice was great

I can't say Hlynka ever made me seethe, or I saw him give others a reason to. We have grossly irreconcilable worldviews, and he wasn't always great at expressing his, but I never got the impression that he was intentionally yanking on chains to get a reaction.

I never got the impression that he was intentionally yanking on chains to get a reaction.

Nor I! At least, not habitually. But particularly when he was moderating, and even for a long while after, almost every comment he made, regardless of content, would draw vitriolic reports of one kind or another.

I wish i knew who any of these people are or what they posted.

Try searching r/TheThread for their usernames to find their Quality Contributions.

the old threads are available, and are full of interesting things.

endlesss scrolling through omnibus threads... no thanks. And without even knowing what year these best writers posted in?

No thanks. Keep your esoteric knowledge.

That's neither a surprising nor an unreasonable position, but I think people seriously underestimate the value of long-term perspective in the culture war. A lot of insights are inaccessible if you can't follow the conversation long-term. As for years, just pick a significant political event, and find the thread from the corresponding weeks. The Kavanaugh confirmation, Covington, the Smollett accusation, and Floyd are the ones that spring to mind for me, but for pretty much any significant political event of the past several years, the corresponding threads are going to have some of the best analysis you can find on the subject.

Good point but I think the moderators, god bless 'em, are attached to this roundup style that is horrible for archives and frankly a vestigial leftover from its former attachment with Starslatecodex.

Sometimes I think that the Motte is among other things, a living testament to Scott Alexander's (prudent) cowardice.

But you are right about time and perspective. But even if I wanted to look for Kavanaugh commentary that's somewhere between 8-10 possible threads I have to wade into until I find what im looking for.

Iirc, there was a Kav megathread or two.

Seriously, I feel like I am in one of those reddit "Post your favorite facts!" threads where no one posts any links or sources. But people here seem to know what other people here are talking about, so maybe I am still very noob.

IIRC, Penpractice posted a lot of HBD stuff, in a way that eventually started to come across as hiding his power level sort of way. TP0 was sufficiently researched and eloquent as to not be suppressing much, power level wise, but had this bad habit of losing his cool after backs-and-forths with opponents, and after that got him banned he just kinda never came back.

Like tears in rain.

I would pay a bounty to anyone who managed to get Trannyporn0 here. His effort posts were amazing, and I'm sad I missed when they were originally happening.

I remember a commenter on the Pumpkin Person blog once identified him as an American grad student who sometimes publishes with Emil Kirkegaard. I wonder if it was true. Didn't he say he was 7 feet tall and from Lichtenstein?

Y'all forgetting Impassionata?

The frustrating part of the banned people listed is that they were interesting, but they weren't able to curb the worst parts of their behaviors enough for us to let them stick around. Or it turned out they were interesting in exactly one way and unable to understand "okay, post about that specific thing less, please".

Glad to see you came to the new site, JB.

Wait I thought you were JB?

This is the only insult I've ever gotten here that's stung.

Sizzle50's various posts on BLM were really great, but I think everyone here has discussed that to death.

Instead, I'll link SayingAndUnsaying's longpost on Hawaiian Racial Dynamics, which will be new & novel for a lot more readers.

Are you fishing for someone to say your post about your client not understanding the non-binary woman with huge tits? Because that’s definitely my favorite

I don't know about favorite, but it's up there. Every now and then I think of "are you telling me those big-ass titties ain't real?", and I get a good chuckle out of it.

Links, or none of the posts being talked about in the comments happened.

I am no fan of drama and understand its corrosive impact on discourse. But my lizard brain loved reading the fallout from Namrok's original post about how he thinks the psychology that aids in child rearing and sentience are contradictory along some axis.

Some of the most interesting gender-war commentary I have ever read was to be found in the motte around that time and its so difficult to dig it up.

I no longer remember for sure, and reddit's search functions are trash. I'll poke around a bit and see if I come up with anything.

EDIT: Guess there's a nonzero chance this was the final result, though again--I no longer recall for certain.

Trans people are surprisingly common among zoomer gen nationalists and imageboard-adjacent culture, Astolfo meme is not just a meme. That said, you only need one connection to get exposure to a tight-knit community or interesting rejects and weirdos. Interesting, in part, because of the contrast between the discourse here, where their peers in the West are a meaningful cultural force and their [often unfounded] ideas of persecution are weaponized for political gain by a broader liberal coalition, and the reality on the ground there, where such a person – down to the same obnoxious twitter style and attitude – can get thrown into an actual reeducation/concentration camp by neonazi pagans backed by fashy local police (maybe I'll tell that story one day, but it played a big part in making me more sympathetic).

It's easy, but most of the time I'm insufficiently curious about people's lives. It would be cool to also talk about, say, Old Believer friends, but that network never got far before February.

I also prefer it when people don't get curious about me. Alas, dramanauts have their own quirks.

Misogynist (in the feminist sense) would be more accurate. There is zero mention of anything related to getting laid.

'The longstanding open question here is over what "charity" means: does it mean being honest in your assessment of your enemies, or does it mean not recognizing "enemy" as a valid category? I hold to the former. The mods have not, to date, deigned to enforce the later. When they adopt that policy, my participation in this forum will end and I imagine the discourse will, from your perspective, improve immensely.'

Craven and I may have butted heads numerous times over the years but that's one of my favorites as well. That and McJunkers' civil war posts, both Irish civil war and American.

McJunker's history posts are my favorites, by far. I really enjoy FCfromSSC's output, and I consider it some of the most accurate culture war observations on the motte, but reading some wholesome history in the middle of all the culture warring simply felt best.

I don't remember much in the way of butting heads. I do remember a few brief conversations in particular that provided two extremely valuable insights: the futility of pursuing the exterior form of Conservative ends from a frame of fundamentally progressive values, and the difference between Conservative and Progressive concepts of victory, of The Good Life, and how the former necessarily demands the capacity to accept loss. Both took a while to sink in properly, but they had a huge impact on my understanding of both my own thinking and the world I see around me. I participate here because I have questions and want answers. I got a number of really good questions from reading Scott. The best answers I've gotten came from you. To the extent that my contributions here don't reflect that, it's a lamentable failure on my part.

The words of the wise are like goads, their collected sayings like firmly embedded nails—given by one shepherd. Be warned, my son, of anything in addition to them.

The sequence leading to this was memorable, though I can understand framing it as disagreement and exploration over butting heads.

It's hard to pick favorites, but one thing that comes to mind is the various posts from TracingWoodgrains (and others) talking about Mormon culture. While I'm not Mormon, as someone who grew up in a conservative Christian culture there was something so profoundly enjoyable about those. I would sometimes read them and go "YES! THAT'S EXACTLY HOW IT IS!"

But yeah, with how much Christians tended to get trashed on Reddit it was kind of a breath of fresh air to see posts from someone and feel this sense of kinship with them based on our respective upbringings. And I do realize Mormon culture is not the same as small town Wisconsin Christian culture. But that was ok, because that meant the posts would hit the sweet spot of familiar enough to be comforting, but unfamiliar enough to be interesting posts I could learn new things from.

I liked that one about the Barbarian and the 7/11 clerk. mediumly-motte, but very funny

That sounds vaguely familiar, do you have a link for it?

https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/e5odim/the_barbarian_and_the_711_clerk/

https://www.vault.themotte.org/post/the_barbarian_and_the_711_clerk

Also, that vault entry's title should have a hyphen between "7" and "11".

https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/e5odim/the_barbarian_and_the_711_clerk/

My favorite part so far is that the author correctly handles quotes that cross paragraphs. I think I am in love.

I don't know if it's my favorite, but I really liked "Gratitude Walking Through Walmart". It's hard to remember, but poverty is the default state of mankind. Anatomically modern humans spend tens of thousands of years living in mud huts and owning no more than what they could carry. The incredible amount of wealth that I have access to after working for a day and dropping by the local Walmart with my wages is nothing short of an economic miracle.

From "Thanksgiving Prayer" (2008) by Eliezer Yudkowsky:

Dear Global Economy, we thank thee for thy economies of scale, thy professional specialization, and thy international networks of trade under Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage, without which we would all starve to death while trying to assemble the ingredients for such a dinner as this. Amen.

And from "Contra Robinson On Schooling" (2016) by Scott Alexander:

I often see poor people using food stamps at my own grocery store, so I know the quality of service these poor people get for their money. And it is really good. Practically all grocery stores are really good. There's a story about Boris Yeltsin coming to America for the first time, walking into a random grocery store, seeing that random middle-class Americans had a better selection of goods than the highest-status Soviet officials, and freaking out that this was some kind of weird Potemkin economy that the Americans had set up to demoralize him. Grocery stores don't just have fifty different kinds of cereal and a hundred different kinds of soda, they're also really cheap. You can buy a day's worth of food for an hour's minimum-wage work, maybe two hours if you want a little quality and variety.

My thou-obsessed pedantry is set off by all of those "thy <vowel>"s. It's "thine economics" and "thine international," thou genie-summoner.

/pedantry

https://tracingwoodgrains.substack.com/p/on-mottes-and-mythologies

It's motte-adjacent but directly relevant. TracingWoodgrains writes on why this place exists in the first place, what it's appeal is for those drawn to it, and then how it relates to his own personal crisis of faith within Mormonism. It ends with a very moving declaration to ensure others get the same charity & respect that he was given.

Many motte posts are interesting for their esoteric takes or niche knowledge. But tracingwoodgrains post captures the feel of the draw itself to this place. Of the frustration with an external world of fear and polarization. Of the drive to challenge oneself and find 'opponents' worthy of respect. Of remembering that often people's closest beliefs come from a point, not just of a model of what is true, but of a very intense personal relation to who they believe themselves to be. Of the two futures in front of one each time you encounter 'someone wrong on the internet' - to try to destroy them, or to try to live in peace with them.

The Modern Homer, or Alex Jones Wordsmith: An Info Warrior Across the Third Dimension

I absolutely love those Alex Jones rants over the Doom intro mashups. This is probably my favorite post.

The Kulak "America should invade Australia" post came to mind first, but really any of his top-level essays fit the bill. What's wonderful about KulakRevolt posts is that they are almost always wrong, oftentimes obviously wrong, but you really have to think about why they are wrong in a way that leaves you with a greater understanding of freedom, the state, and the issues involved.

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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