It's the same reason Kissinger still got invites to Manhattan social events (and, bizarrely, Clinton campaign events) long after it was known that he was a traitor and a war criminal.
It’s not simply for privacy or nondisclosure. You are free to disclose, the discussions are not private.
"khazhoux said yesterday: 'Megalopolis is the greatest film of the 21st century'"?
I thought the point was you can't attribute -- no names. And without a name, it's not actually a public quoting...
Yes, the Chatham House Rule is practically designed to exclude people who have an immutable black-and-white worldview.
The bullwhip effect applied to sociology is in full swing.
Like that I think gasoline should cost more.
I recently read a book review that discussed South Africa today. One of the many points it made about the dire state of things is that the air force planes that flew overhead during Mandela's inauguration were, a decade later, completely inoperable. <https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-south-africas-brave-new-...>.
As a long it was a white government there was lot of monetary support and knowledge transfer to South Africa, all the way to building nuclear weapons those collaborations stopped once the racial profile changed.
overtime that means complex technologies like military aircraft which are difficult to keep flying anytime will stop working as South Africa was and is not equipped or can afford to maintain them on their own.
no nation which flies f-35s can keep them flying if they are not in trump’s good graces now.
This is why countries like china or India or few others who can afford to, invest heavily to build their domestic defense infrastructure.
My objection is bigger than that though, it is independent of the merit or quality of the discourse , unwelcome discourse is impolite even if it is sound.
This is a fair rule for you to live your life by. I think it crosses a line when someone insists it be one everyone follow.
I personally got value from the comment about South Africa, and that’s despite knowing South Africans. (Their “lived experience” as non-military non-historian non-aviation South Africans is sort of irrelevant to questions of military aviation history.)
You and OP should follow the principles that you feel best.
It wasn’t a mere discussion on military aviation history, context matters, the implication here is post apartheid the government is corrupt and incompetent, it was corrupt before too just propped up better by foreign powers.
A discussion about which one can knowledgeably have without any South African “lived experience,” apart from that of people then in that government.
Like, a group of diplomats in Jburg could probably have a more-informed discussion of American politics and history than a random assortment of Americans.
Our personal opinions govern how we interact with others.
The alternative is greater ignorance.
I think effort should go into honesty, humility, and open mindedness.
I'm sure someone can have different insights from their lives experience which should be recognized, but that doesn't mean they should trump all else.
We live in the age of disinformation, influencers, and anti-intellectualism that actively dismissive qualified sources, we have to put value in source quality, while not completely dismissing the ones without them.
From the review that I cited and you didn't bother to read:
>A little over a decade later and that same South African Air Force was no longer able to fly. It wasn’t for lack of planes: new ones were procured from European arms manufacturers in an astonishingly expensive and legendarily corrupt deal. But once purchased the planes rotted from lack of maintenance and languished in hangers for lack of anybody able to fly them. Most of the qualified pilots and technicians had been purged, and most of the remainder had resigned. The air force did technically still have pilots, after all it would be a bit embarrassing not to, but those pilots were chosen for patronage reasons and didn’t technically have any idea how to fly a fighter jet.
There's more, if you care to actually read it.
That's a great point. One thing I've not enjoyed in modern corporate culture is the mental gymnastics required to usher out a statement that couldn't be interpreted as offensive to anyone on the planet. It's not like I'm _trying_ to be offensive, but as the number of rules governing speech increases, it becomes difficult to have conversations that are not laden with newspeak.
Removing that cognitive load is bound to leave more brainpower for the task at hand.
Unless it is group of South African expats why should we brainstorming?
Is South Africa asking for help ? Either for ideas or for money? Or is there genocide or other basic human rights abuses that we cannot but intervene.
The presumption that we can solve or think about their problems better than them is where it is offensive not what is being said, people are more than capable of finding their own solutions to their own problems.
Why is this an inappropriate topic to discuss?
> presumption that we can solve or think about their problems better than them
You're the only one who presumed this. (It's also presumptuous to assume that nobody outside your own context can be helpful to you.)
I didn’t say you can’t be helpful, but if not being asked that is the definition of presumption .
> Why is this an inappropriate topic to discuss?
It would be same as my neighbor discussing how to fix my problems with my wife or Mexicans having leadership conferences on how to prevent the raise of Trump . Same as how it feels for citizens when Elon Musk is doing now in UK, Germany or France
Domestic intervention or influence by foreign actors no matter if well intentioned or not is inappropriate
If I want to have a discussion about South Africa, that's between me and whomever I'm speaking to. South Africa doesn't have a global veto on conversations about itself.
> would be same as my neighbor discussing how to fix my problems with my wife
If they're having a conversation in their house about your relationship, I don't see the issue. It's rude. But it may also be interesting or even instructive to their own situations.
It is not private though, we are not talking about diplomats doing it in confidential communications, nobody is objecting to that .
What we are describing is equivalent to having a public conversation in the street in front of your home where you can see them having it
Still rude, but nothing more.
All degrees of the same thing ? And the degree in the eyes of the subject
Why not? British people discussed the US election and Trump, lots of Americans express opinions on Britain, everyone expresses opinions about Russia and Ukraine, etc.
I would say that people's opinions about countries they do not know first hand are often (if not usually) worthless, but I cannot imagine that in any of the above cases (or similar) many people would say they have no reason not to have opinions.
Illegal? I don't think that's true, not since ~1989 in South Africa anyway.
You know that there is a "wrong opinion" that'll get you in trouble when you and conservatives begin to nod in agreement with George Carlin, even though you've always thought of yourself as liberal.
You might even be an immigrant and a person of color who prefers to date the same sex, and yet, you're going to keep your mouth shut because anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion.
If they think bees are secretly plotting to overthrow the Welsh government, but are afraid to say so, they're not going to willingly reveal that they have anti-apiary tendencies in response to a direct question.
> Instead, his groups have moved to signing NDAs or explicitly stating that conversations are not to be shared externally.
This seems a bit better, albeit with more work.
Legally enforcing every social norm is dystopian.
But I didn't say that? I was genuinely unsure of whether this was something that could be taken to court if someone violated it. If it's socially bound, and the purpose is to increase free speech, I find that less compelling in today's culture.
anonymous sources to media is pretty common way to share information.
Anonymous source in the meeting leaking to news media that person X said something controversial in this summit .
Since nobody would know the anonymous source itself , social norms like being shamed or not being invited in the future will not work is the point
Persecuting people for their beliefs by exploiting loopholes (e.g. blast on social media, bully their employer, etc) is also pretty dystopian, don't you think?
And it's not like the persecutors ever give you the full story. For example, the reporting on Meta ending DEI didn't want you to know their rather logical view of the situation (discrimination on the basis of immutable characteristics is wrong). What fraction of people actually believe in giving a boost to certain candidates purely on the basis of race? Certainly not enough for the persecutors to allow that argument to be broadcast widely.
Sometimes it can be. More than one thing can be dystopian.
Such a ridiculously overloaded use of the word “persecution.”
Are the NDAs signed between attendees and the host? That puts the host in the awkward position of having to enforce the NDAs, even if the injured party is one of the guests.
Suing is time-consuming and expensive.
In addition, both the subject of a secret conversation and the participants of that conversation could sue someone for disclosing the discussion on the basis of libel. My understanding of USA law is that libel has a very high threshold and is therefore rarely litigated, but in other jurisdictions, such as the UK, libel can be as simple as saying something true with the intent to hurt the subject's reputation.
Many people try to put as much as possible into bespoke, written contracts, but usually a mixture of common law and implicit contracts is adequate to litigate almost anything considered harmful by society. I doubt the NDA is actually needed as long as the Chatham House rule is made clear.
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.
Any given senate hearing or political speech would lead to dozens of expulsions in a standard censored software company.
It is the small people who need protection.
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.
You should expect verbal pushback on your shitty ideas. You should expect physical safety nonetheless.
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.
https://www.christianpost.com/news/isis-crucifies-11-christi...
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.
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.
Whether something “looks bad” is a basis for whether to discuss it, where to discuss it, and with whom, but not a basis for determining truth.
Sure. Not every discussion involves something I really believe in.
Also, I think it’s reasonable to believe that not all of one’s deeply-held beliefs are the public’s to know.
Now, say that in 2020 in a woke software organization.
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".
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.
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)
(Both feel like symptoms of High Conflict: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/55711592-high-conflic...)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Like you, I believe that we're more alike than we are different, but that mindset focuses on the small differences over the many similarities.
That's my cynical take.
Tantalizing, now I really wonder what he said.
"Real world" is umm... okay. Thanks for the contribution.
> Jenny Lederer, a linguistics professor at San Francisco State University, argued that the Chatham House Rule has intrinsic flaws.
The first one is confusing. The US is a very conservative country. It just elected a very conservative president. Statistically like 40% of voters call themselves conservative.
There are plenty of elected leftists in America. We don’t have a major leftist party because we don’t have a major leftist voting bloc.
As far as I'm aware, Democrats are still rather strong proponents of liberalism. Even most Republicans are proponents, though generally more for classical liberalism than modern liberalism.
Liberalism, arguably, isn't really on the left-right axis at all.
(To be fair, liberals can too, but IMHO conservatives are more adept at it.)
This statement is proof for the need of this rule. Everyone who disagrees with the "one truth" is obviously a racist who is aligned with the worst of the other side. There can be no deviation or nuance. No debate, or benefit of doubt.
That is a deeply toxic view that in the past I only saw in the right. Maybe it was my own blindness. But now I see it all over the left as well.
With Chatham House Rules you don't have to worry about a gotcha quote getting pulled out of context or used as a statement against interest.
I’m not a free speech absolutist, so that’s not a negative for me, but it’s extremely annoying to see a lot of people pretend to be pro free speech by policing what others might say about them.
For example, at a funeral, the norm is not to speak ill of the dead (or any other time, for that matter), and if you break that rule, you might find yourself socially excluded. But that has nothing to do with the concept of "free speech".
The same goes for some kind of proceeding where you are not permitted to speak, or some situation where you are given information in confidence, or your signing of an NDA.
E.g. if someone beats you up due to a view you expressed, i consider that a free speech issue.
If the police beat you up, then that's a freedom of speech issue (as well as police abuse, etc), since one might argue that the government is suppressing your speech.
If a private citizen beats you up, then I disagree; it's merely a matter of assault. That's illegal anyway and your speech had little to do with it. If someone beats me up for looking at them the wrong way, I'd hardly argue that it's a "looking the wrong way" issue.
I appreciate that you consider otherwise, and of course it's subjective so your view is as valid as mine. I'm just identifying that I think your concept is "creep" that has occurred over time for some subset of people, spawned by a principle that never originally included what you now include in the concept.
> I think your concept is "creep" that has occurred over time for some subset of people, spawned by a principle that never originally included what you now include in the concept
You've got it backwards. The Athenians believed in both "isēgoriā, or equality of public speech, which was associated with formal political institutions and democratic deliberation; and parrhēsiā, the license to say anything, even (or especially) if it went against the current" [1].
The First Amendment is based on the freedom of speech in the English Parliament [2]. Millenia older. It isn't until the Warren Court, after WWII, that the modern interpretation that the First Amendment prohibits the government from censoring speech comes into focus [3].
[1] https://antigonejournal.com/2021/04/two-concepts-of-free-spe...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Right,_1689#The...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite...
To what extent are you able to abridge someone's freedom, though? The only legally permitted thing you can do is to compel that person to leave. If you are hosting that person commercially, say by running a lodging house, even that option may be restricted by other laws.
Legal restrictions on speech are a little different, because of the unlimited sovereign power of the law (what Max Weber called the state's monopoly on violence). The USA has a special limitation on its own sovereignty by means of a written constitution, but I do believe that only applies to government restrictions as parent said.
Also, it is worth noting that the freedom of speech in Britain that you link to applies only to Members of Parliament. Nobody else is afforded freedom of speech by the Bill of Rights; other people have to look to different laws to defend themselves.
I could ask them to leave, I could threaten to not invite them back, I could withhold something they want or might want in the future. Social sanctions are vast.
> it is worth noting that the freedom of speech in Britain that you link to applies only to Members of Parliament
Yes. That is the first time a First Amendment-style protection was passed into law. The modern view of freedom of speech being constrained to what the state can and cannot do starts from around then.
Fair, but I think the creep is in the other direction. I think that this notion that only the government counts is extremely new (and somewhat limited to the cultural context of the USA) and the broader version is the traditional definition of what freedom of speech means.
While I don’t condone violence that is not the only possible consequence. If you call me an asshole that is your right, but if I disinvite you from the party I was planning as a result that is not a ‘free speech issue’.
People say this a lot but i doubt anyone actually literally believes this.
If the state executes you as a consequence of your speech, it is an unambigious free speech violation no matter how you interpret that term.
What people really mean is its not a blanket protection against every consequence, but they hide that part because then you have to explain which consequences are reasonable and which are not which is complicated and requires nuance.
No, this is the First Amendment. Free speech as a value is much broader [1].
I'd agree with you about the NDA bit. Using courts to enforce seems anti-free speech
However the milder version of it, where if someone violates the rule they aren't invited back, hardly seems like a free speech issue. Free speech doesn't mean you have to stay friends with someone who told your secrets to a third party. Free speech means you can say whatever you want, but it also means you can not talk to whomever you want.
\0 in the context of a specific meeting or gathering ..
\1 the freedom to speak one's mind and say whatever it is you wish to say,
\2 the constraint that no third party shall repeat your words without your permission, quote you out of context, report what you said and the company in which you said it, etc.
There's no legal binding or specific prosecution in the original context, simply a literal "Gentleman's Agreement" and the general social implication that should you make and then violate such an agreement then you will likely be excluded from similar events and such company in future.
It arose from diplomatic ranks and is a polite form of the parallel convention Snitches get Stitches.
In the UK Foreign Affairs sphere the rule is often exercised to advance a piece of policy via rumour and backtalk, nobody officially directly states that (for example) the military may be bought into play in some region, none the less word gets out that such a thing is being considered by those that can make it happen, subsequently someone folds their position and trade resumes (maybe).
What a strange comment.
If after attending a dinner party people are repeating everything they heard, in public, with attribution - then that dinner party absolutely was not intimate.
It's still helpful if you're bringing together groups of people who don't know (and thus may surprise) each other to lay the ground rules. I'd be quite upset if I held a birthday party, which may go to 30 or 40 people, and learned that something (possibly quite inappropriate) that had been said was being tweeted or whatever.
Different definitions of intimate [1]. Webster's gives an intimate club as an example. I'd also suggest an intimate dinner over which e.g. in-laws meet.
You want liquidity and lots of exposure in any marketplace, including the one of ideas. Ideas without sunshine tend to rot and fester. That might be why there are so many obviously stupid ones these days.
This was the thesis behind e.g. Twitter. I’m not sure it’s panned out. Ideas need sunshine, but a seedling also does better in a nursery.
Won't that enable harassment - enable people to do it without consequence?
Public debates are swamped with characters who want to make a name for themselves by holding views, having a particular style, or catering to certain demographics. At this point, the debate ceases to ne a way of discussing ideas and opinions. It’s just a way to sell the participants. Likewise, there are many people who want the opposite. They hold opinions but really don’t want to be part of the wider social debate . They don’t want to be public figures defending a particular point. They just want to contribute in some way.
The one fine piece of good journalism in there is that SFSU professor: humans have a hard time separating the ideas from the speaker. Done.
Now, I might be wrong, but it sure does sound like tech folks in the Bay are getting ready to take advantage of MAGA madness, and paranoid about AI / surveillance.
If anything, it’s this orange website that’s closer to untangling identity from the content, but that’s nothing new and Web 1.0 news.
Congress is the one that regulates most of commerce and they are always slow and inept. I don’t expect much meaningful stuff to change. If anything it will be some sort of AI regulation that will benefit the top companies under the guise of ‘safety’ and probably get bipartisan support.
Zuckerberg also said he was planning his moves for a long time and waited until the elections were over so it didn’t seem like he was trying to influence it and any time he announced it he’d have been be accused of doing it under political pressure. That’s also how fact checking started in the first place, with extreme pressure during COVID and federal gov employees calling meta employees, yelling at them when they declined to delete things. So technically it’s a reversion of a system created under political pressure.
This doesn’t even seem unique. Newspaper editorial boards don’t assign individual names to editorials or sentences thereof. Individual members of Congressional commissions aren’t cited for the sentences they (or their staff) committed to reports.
Chatham House Rule, meet Chesterton’s Fence.
I live in a one party consent state for the recording of conversations [1,2], whether on the phone or in person. I don't know how y'all get away without it in California. It pairs really well with free speech, and it feels wrong to not have this legal feature available.
[1] https://www.justia.com/50-state-surveys/recording-phone-call...
You can be recorded in public.
In most of the US states you can be recorded in private so long as the one recording is a party to the conversation.
Why does California do this separate weird thing? It doesn't feel like my rights should go away when I cross into your state. It feels like a glitch.
And for the record, California is not the only two-party consent state. There are twelve others.
Legally you can go to an event and act in bad faith without breaking the law. That’s not cool, but you’re not getting arrested for it.
If (or when) word gets out that you’re breaking the rules, or worse, secretly recording people against their wishes then you’d find yourself excluded from those groups and private events.
"We will have conversations and share information and we agree we can act on the information but would all prefer not to be directly quoted or have the information we shared be shared with others outside the meeting."
It's not legal, it's social.
Break trust with a wiretap (really?) and you'll just find yourself no longer invited to the fun places.
My understanding is that the Chatham House rule specifically permits sharing the information shared in the meeting as long as it is not attributed to any specific attendee.
Rules like this are an agreement among friends or attendants at an even. If you go in to such an event with an awareness of the rules but an intent to go against them, that’s bad faith. If you go in to such an event with an intent to secretly record people and release recordings of them that’s just terrible behavior, regardless of what the law says.
Maybe overused today but there are some times when you hold back on things if you know they may appear in print. Certainly, over the years, I've been quite careful about what I say to journalists--even those I generally trust.
Odds are they're not talking about saving the world in these spaces.
The original purpose (on the Internet) was to create a space where complex ethical and moral questions could be explored and discussed in depth without risk of someone taking a hypothetical statement out of context to slander you, as people are wont to do. It would be orders of magnitude worse in this current age of people obsessed with generating click-bait for engagement, which wasn’t a thing back then. I personally found that environment to be intellectually stimulating and rigorous, I miss the standard of discourse of those days.
Chatham House Rule is going back to the old Internet, which valued novel insight and reasoned discourse highly, before the masses took over the Internet. The purpose was not to enable edgelords. Rational defense of ideas, statements, and hypotheses was expected and table stakes. Related rules of that era, such as Crocker’s Rule[0], placed responsibility on the reader to address uncomfortable or offensive feedback in the most dispassionate way possible.