Chatham House Rule is suddenly everywhere in the Bay Area • Hacker News Board

Re: Chatham House Rule is suddenly everywhere in the Bay Area

#111

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jan 12, 2025, 1:35 AM UTC

TMWNN wrote: post #68

manquer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that shocking? It would be the case no matter how they do as a country 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 So…

> Why is that shocking? It would be the case no matter how they do as a country 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 fr…

[deleted]

Re: Chatham House Rule is suddenly everywhere in the Bay Area

#112

Post by JumpCrisscross » Sun, Jan 12, 2025, 1:38 AM UTC

manquer wrote: post #94

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making the point for why people who are not South African can have interesting and meaningful conversations about South Africa. All while possibly expressing views that are incorrect but still interesting to consider and respond to.

The irony is not lost to me, my comments without lived experience are one reason why we shouldn’t do it 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.

> my comments without lived experience are one reason why we shouldn’t do it

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.)

Re: Chatham House Rule is suddenly everywhere in the Bay Area

#113

Post by falcor84 » Sun, Jan 12, 2025, 1:40 AM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #105

falcor84 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you mean, the offending party?

No. If you, me and Bob sign an NDA and I leak your secrets, you’re the injured party.

So I'm still confused - why would the host feel awkward protecting the injured party? Am I missing some implication of enforcing the NDA?

Re: Chatham House Rule is suddenly everywhere in the Bay Area

#114

Post by JumpCrisscross » Sun, Jan 12, 2025, 1:44 AM UTC

llamaimperative wrote: post #98

TheBruceHimself wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 opin…

Lots of conflation of verbal response versus physical violence here despite the massive gulf of difference. You should expect verbal pushback on your shitty ideas. You should expect physical safety nonetheless.

> 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.

Re: Chatham House Rule is suddenly everywhere in the Bay Area

#115

Post by JumpCrisscross » Sun, Jan 12, 2025, 1:46 AM UTC

mmooss wrote: post #62

It's nothing impressive. It's secrecy and corruption; it's the modern trend of power grabs and exclusivity (withholding information) over efficiency, productivity, intelligence, and all the benefits of an open, free society. It just has a fancy British name to give it legitimacy. You want liquidity and lots of exposure in any marketplace, including the one of ideas. Ideas without sunshine tend to rot and fester. That…

> 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.

Re: Chatham House Rule is suddenly everywhere in the Bay Area

#116

Post by s1artibartfast » Sun, Jan 12, 2025, 1:47 AM UTC

manquer wrote: post #94

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making the point for why people who are not South African can have interesting and meaningful conversations about South Africa. All while possibly expressing views that are incorrect but still interesting to consider and respond to.

The irony is not lost to me, my comments without lived experience are one reason why we shouldn’t do it 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.

forming opinions should not be limited to lived experience because people (and states) interact in a shared world.

Our personal opinions govern how we interact with others.

The alternative is greater ignorance.

Re: Chatham House Rule is suddenly everywhere in the Bay Area

#117

Post by s1artibartfast » Sun, Jan 12, 2025, 1:49 AM UTC

addicted wrote: post #13

I have no idea whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but this is not freedom of speech, for the obvious reason that its based entirely on the limitation of speech, in this case, the freedom to truthfully state who said something. 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 a…

Freedom includes the ability to voluntarily subject oneself to obligations and enter binding contracts.

Re: Chatham House Rule is suddenly everywhere in the Bay Area

#118

Post by josephcsible » Sun, Jan 12, 2025, 1:52 AM UTC

ethbr1 wrote: post #96

DavidPiper wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

> 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 exclusive…

> 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.

Re: Chatham House Rule is suddenly everywhere in the Bay Area

#119

Post by superfrank » Sun, Jan 12, 2025, 1:54 AM UTC

DavidPiper wrote: post #78

bawolff wrote: post #7

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 s…

Yes. I've noticed a similar pattern online that I fucking hate. It goes "Group X is bad, so anyone who shares any belief with Group X is bad."

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.

Re: Chatham House Rule is suddenly everywhere in the Bay Area

#120

Post by manquer » Sun, Jan 12, 2025, 1:57 AM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #112

manquer wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is not lost to me, my comments without lived experience are one reason why we shouldn’t do it 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.

> my comments without lived experience are one reason why we shouldn’t do it 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 questio…

Nobody is expecting anyone to follow someone else principles.

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.