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
- Courtesy
- Content
- Engagement
- When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
- Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.
- Accept temporary bans as a time-out, and don't attempt to rejoin the conversation until it's lifted.
- Don't attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity.
- Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
- The Wildcard Rule
- The Metarule
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Alexandros explicitly endorsed ("Liked by Alexandros Marinos") many of the disparaging comments I was talking about.
It's the article I was responding to on Reddit, which I linked up above. The official title is "Scott Alexander corrects error: Ivermectin effective, rationalism wounded." In other words, according to Alexandros, Scott was so catastrophically negligent that he wounded Rationalism in its entirety. Combine this with the accusatory nature Alexandros' article, and it comes off like Alex wants to tarnish Scott's legitimacy beyond his Ivermectin take.
If you're implying I'm a blind Scott fanboy then I categorically reject your assertion. Scott's just a smart guy who approaches a variety of topics from a rationalist perspective. Nothing more, nothing less. He's certainly capable of making mistakes, and the fact that he hosts a list of them is part of what makes him unique. He benefits from critiques like everyone else.
The issue with Alex he mixes good criticism, i.e. "here's where your analysis is wrong, and here's the stats to back it up", with bad criticism, i.e. "rationalism wounded" and other such nonsense attempting to draw meta-level conclusions on Scott's credibility from limited object-level events.
More options
Context Copy link