Extremal black holes in flat space feature the attractor mechanism, meaning that moduli are pulled towards certain values at the horizon in such a way that bigger black holes make scalar fields travel bigger distances. Using the distance conjecture, or looking at top-down examples, this means that near the horizon of big black holes physics from the ultra violet completion is at play. This seems to contradict effective field theory expectations. In this talk I will explain how this is a consequence of having moduli and that in phenomenological compactifications we should get the opposite behavior: the bigger the black hole the less scalar fields shift positions and less of the UV modes are relevant. Yet, if UV physics is needed to solve certain black hole paradoxes then this implies that compactifications consistent with quantum gravity must have light fields. We verify some of these ideas in actual top down examples, but first discuss bottom up models. Based on recent work with Matilda Delgado and Sebastien Reymond.