Seems pretty obvious why in a world where if you misspeak or say something ill considered it can be all over twitter and have serious personal and professional ramifications.
Regardless of how well meaning people are in their desire to hold people to account for bad views, it does have a chilling effect, and you can't learn if you don't have a safe place to make mistakes.
The only times I've seen Chatham House rules used explicitly is when multiple companies have come together to discuss serious security concerns that affect all of them urgently (e.g. widespread 0-days, etc).
It makes sense that you want to have candid and open discussions, and those discussions will have to leak back to the respective companies for any concerted action to be taken, but you don't want your company's security specifics to be identifiable.
There are a number of different situations where I can see this being useful, but:
> “In corporate culture, there’s a liberating and freeing quality to the idea that this is a safe space for me to say unpopular things and not get labeled as a conservative or racist”
is really not one of them. I fully agree with Ocean's take that "maybe it’s just a bad solution to a worse problem," and I think there we can tease out two separate social problems:
1. People looking for safe spaces to say racist or other discriminatory things (generally identified as a politically-right problem)
2. The 0-strikes political climate we now (believe we) live in (generally identified as a politically-left problem)
I think these are actually the same problem: they are both about convincing yourself that "others" are "bad" and "we" are good, and looking for every conceivable way to do so. Not just in the specific instance, but permanently and unchangeably.
Somewhere along the way (my belief is that it was around the time social media took off, but I don't have proof for that), we forgot that we're more alike than we are different, and that people can grow and learn and change, and that both of those things are good, actually. It's not like there's some fictional past where we all agreed more than we do now, but it's how we relate to or exclude others that has changed.
> Somewhere along the way (my belief is that it was around the time social media took off, but I don't have proof for that), we forgot that we're more alike than we are different, and that people can grow and learn and change, and that both of those things are good, actually.
The difference between The Before Times and now is that it was historically hard to curate and communicate with a group of people who exclusively agreed with you. This had two primary consequences:
(1) You were constantly exposed to nice people who nonetheless disagreed with you about something / everything.
(2) It made you realize that you're the asshole, if you couldn't at least be polite to someone with different views than you.
Now, living in a bubble is trivial. It's also the subtle default on a lot of social platforms.
> Now, living in a bubble is trivial. It's also the subtle default on a lot of social platforms.
Indeed. IMO, social media should have very limited facilities for blocking/muting (e.g., maximum number of accounts to block, no blocking accounts that have never previously interacted with you, and no import functionality), so that it could only be used to stop true harassment, and not to intentionally live in such a bubble. That's one of my biggest criticisms of Bluesky: the whole design of their blocklist system seems to be to intentionally encourage this sort of thing.
This assumes that mass social media is some kind of idealized “meeting of the minds” rather than like…the digital equivalent of a loud and raucous bar.
The ability to block obnoxious and hateful people is fundamentally far, far less of causative factor of information bubbles than the pervasive engagement-driven algorithmic feeds are.
True harassment is VERY easy if you can create infinite amount of new accounts and each new account can harass the person and cant be blocked. True harassment is very easy if you are someone with many followers who will target whoever you choose to.
What you suggests is setup designed so that large scale harassment is easy. Alex Jones will love it, psychopaths will love it.
uhm, hard disagree. Harassment is the #1 problem blocking helps with but...
I block anything the platform suggests to me as a form of protest against it shoving click bait triggering channels in my face. I see this as resisting getting forced into a bubble by the platform.
I can't not use social media because it is the only way to get local info and it is a terrible way when you consider that for every post from someone i subscribe to, there are 6 ads and 6 channel suggestions specially chosen to entice me to join in a flame war of comments. I'd just give up if i didn't have the hope of at least from time to time catching a break because i blocked all the things the platform thought to suggest for a few weeks. My hope is to one day achieve a whitelist of local posts which is driven by geography, not agreement/alignment on politics or ideaology. since that's not an option, i'll blacklist the entire world if i must...
The context in this article is far more corporate and far less personal than what you describe. It's corporations and wealthy people within them hoping to not have their feet held to the fire for decisions that they know might not be appreciated by, or may actually negatively impact, the broader populace.
Alternatively, it’s a way for bad faith actors to spread their beliefs while not having to worry about their reputation. Many people with power are only hurt through public opinion, so this is the way they try to gain control over that.
This is not what I observed in the last 8 years. People with power (both D and R) get away with anything while individuals suffer for the slightest infractions.
Any given senate hearing or political speech would lead to dozens of expulsions in a standard censored software company.
Yup. The most obvious example is Donald Trump himself. Instead of suffering consequences for any of the things he's said, he has been elected to president of the United States. Twice! Meanwhile if you repeated what he says verbatim in your workplace you might find yourself gone by next week.
I think that reality check is that in many social groups and in many workplaces, guys who say and do "things like Donald Trump" are rewarded again and again and again.
To claim otherwise is just a lie designed to make it so it stays that way.
Isn’t there a danger that if the rule is selectively enforced, for whatever reasons, that it will actually decrease the credibility of the participants/organizers?
If you really believe something, say it loudly and proudly and sign your name to it. If you're not willing to have it attributed to you because it will make you look bad, then maybe you should take a moment to think about where those beliefs come from.
Well, there is a matter of safety, and not wanting to be harassed for your opinions. Some debates are so heated that an opinion stated either way is going to expose you to potential violence if not, just verbal abuse through various channels. I think even though you should be honest about your opinion, it’s obviously better to avoid that harm so why not be anonymous?
Personally, I’ve also found that stating your opinion, and having it recorded and known to everyone, makes it very hard for you to change your mind. We’re very harsh to people who do change their mind in such circumstances because the first thing we see is a record of them saying the opposite, and then we ask them to explain themselves and judge them like it’s some kind of fault in their character. There are opinions I had when I was 18 years old that I think abhorrent. I don’t want to be associated with them. I’m very happy there’s no record of me having these opinions. I don’t want to have to explain my past like that just to hold the opinions I have in the present. I have found that process never really ends — i’m regularly changing my opinions on beliefs overtime . I wonder what opinions I have now I will look back on with shame. so I try to make sure that I don’t have anything recorded for the end of times under my name just in case I want to distance myself.
Yea. The "What's going to be taboo in 30 years" question is a good one. I don't know and I don't have a good answer to that. I personally don't worry about it because it's never occurred to me to walk up close to the line of what's acceptable. I have pretty vanilla opinions.
But, for today, I always wonder when someone says they are going to be harassed for their opinions. Just what opinions are we talking about, here? That's what these discussions always seem to lack: Specific examples of what opinions you want to share that you are afraid to share.
I've always liked Stephen Fry's retort to the old "You can't say anything anymore!" line. If a friend tells you that, pull them aside in private and ask them "What exactly are these things you'd like to say but can't? We're in private now, and I'll give you a judgment-free chance to say what you think you're being prevented from saying. Go ahead!" Nine times out of ten, they still won't say it, because they know it's terrible. They just want to complain that they're somehow the victim of censorship.
If you’re an Ivy League college professor, it is extremely risky to say that Palestine has a legitimate grievance against Israel. If you’re a small town high school coach, it would be smart to be careful about advocating for trans girls to be able to play on the girls team. You can be punished for opinions on various sides of the political spectrum.
If you're coaching a girls' team and you advocate that boys who say they are girls should be allowed to play on the team too, then that should be grounds for dismissal from the coaching role, as you'd be disadvantaging the girls on the team that you're supposed to be supporting.
This would be an entirely warranted "punishment for opinions" because of your failure to adequately safeguard young female athletes.
Appreciate the demonstration of why Chatham House Rule can protect opinions on the left side of the spectrum. Just to be clear, this is a real live example of someone saying that an individual should be punished for their opinions, separate from their actions.
It's more a demonstration of how this rule can be used to protect views on the misogynistic side of the spectrum and quietly undermine women and girls. Perhaps, it's how much of this lobbying for male privilege was actually done.
The reason examples are generally those from the past it's because those from the present are, by definition, controversial and so it mostly would just derail the topic.
It just so happens that controversial views on one era frequently end up being seen as 'right and proper' in another, and vice versa.
Here's a 'safe one' unless you actually think about the implications of what it means I'm saying - forcing people, against their will, to kill (or be killed) is a fundamentally unacceptable violation of human dignity and human rights, that should never be tolerated under any circumstance.
That's probably safe to say, yet now apply it to certain situations and suddenly it becomes tabboo. Of course in the future it will probably be as plainly obviously correct as the notion that slavery is wrong.
> Yea. The "What's going to be taboo in 30 years" question is a good one. I don't know and I don't have a good answer to that. I personally don't worry about it because it's never occurred to me to walk up close to the line of what's acceptable. I have pretty vanilla opinions.
30 years is a long time. Even the most vanilla of opinions can become entirely taboo in less time than that. Take gay marriage as an example. In 1996, the Defense of Marriage Act became law. Joe Biden, Harry Reid, and Chuck Schumer were among the Congressmen who voted in favor of it, and Bill Clinton signed it. In 2008, Barack Obama said "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage." Even Obama's statement would be taboo today, let alone passing such a bill.
> You should expect verbal pushback on your shitty ideas
There is also shitty pushback to decent, or inchoate, ideas. I strongly push back against the notion that there shouldn’t be spaces where one can say something dumb and not be crucified for it.
Again: “crucified.” Say what you actually want, I don’t know how to interpret this idea. I haven’t heard of a crucifixion in recent times if I’m being honest.
It’s less a real problem than you think. For example lots of politicians including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were on the record as not supporting gay marriage and later said that their position on the matter had evolved.
If you really believe something, say it loudly and proudly and sign your name to it.
And then wait for the lynch mob to come round because they disagree that {people shouldn't be property / women should be allowed to own property / etc }.
> If you really believe something, say it loudly and proudly and sign your name to it.
Anonymity should be lauded and protected, BUT if you're expecting to benefit from the use of your subject matter authority or credentials, then it needs to have your name attached.
Saying that repeatedly in most settings gets tedious for the audience who'd wonder whether you're alright.
Saying that any relevant technical setting as a newcomer would likely be received politely although many would then point out the ground truth behind that simplification:
Nature has many examples of physical gender not being straightforward; egg tempreture determining development in crocadiles and other reptiles for one.
Even in humans it's less that straightforward for a little over 1% of births and decidedly undecided even by experts with all the machines that beep for about a fiftieth of 1%.
Banging on about it in online forums using throwaway accounts is simply being a sad wannabe edge lord type.
> > "There are two genders." The belief comes from watching birds and bees.
> Nature has many examples of physical gender not being straightforward; egg tempreture determining development in crocadiles and other reptiles for one.
Temperature-dependent sex determination results in offspring of one sex or the other, so how does this refute the observation across species that there are two sexes? Please explain your reasoning.
I guess it contradicts the belief that sex is determined at conception? I don't know, I'm not familiar with crocodile biology.
For humans specifically we not only have xx and xy, but also xxx, xyy, xxxx, xxyy, xxxxx, xxxxy, 46xy dsd. There is a de la Chapelle syndrome, persistent Müllerian duct syndrome and more. These are just the most obvious things that muddy the waters, and I don't really know much about that topic, but confidently saying "there are two genders and you can tell by watching birds and bees" is anti intellectual
"I will put every person in precisely one out of two boxes at my discretion, and they will be happy about it".
Example: "I believe there are two kinds of people in the world, the righteous and the despicable. You belong with the despicable, I decided. If you disagree, you are woke".
The amount of inferences and insinuations you draw is a perfect example of why the Chatham House Rule is needed. I wonder how biologists discuss the issue if one hypothesis is outright forbidden. Note also that Ketanji Brown Jackson evaded the question when asked in a hearing.
Biologists would be the first one to correctly determine your sentence was not a biological hypotheses, but a political statement meant to declare your allegiance against trans rights and trans people.
They would consequently treat it exactly the way people in this thread do - with assumption that you have ideological and political goals against that group of people.
I used a made up but analogous example to see how the anti-trans rhetoric is intrinsically closed up to discussion.
It is a group of people deciding unilaterally what other people are without room for any alternatives. Say what you want against trans people, but at least they only identify themselves and ask to be allowed to exist.
Do you want to make an argument about bathrooms or sports whatever? Fine. But don't start it by de facto invalidating their existence, because that eliminates any room for a productive conversation.
They do it just fine. People who show up with crank hypotheses that are repeatedly rejected by evidence are not outright forbidden but generally not super popular.
Regardless of how well meaning people are in their desire to hold people to account for bad views, it does have a chilling effect, and you can't learn if you don't have a safe place to make mistakes.