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Chatham House Rule is suddenly everywhere in the Bay Area

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

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at voting maps for the 2024 USA Presidential Election, you can see that there is a blue band of Democratic voters right down the coast, including the Bay Area. The Bay Area in particular appears to have a very different culture to most of the USA, although I have never been there so cannot confirm that statement personally. I don't think that many Democratic party members consider themselves conservative,…

Mainstream Democrats are conservative, mainstream Republicans are regressive. There is no actual liberal-centric major political party in the US, let alone one that's genuinely leftist.

What do you consider liberal-centric policies? Or leftist?

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.

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

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 opin…

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.

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

#163
post #51

> 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,” Lederer said. Tantalizing, now I really wonder what he said.

> this is a safe space for me to say unpopular things and not get labeled as a conservative 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.

Trump is not conservative.

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

#165
post #128

Denunciations of the Chatham House Rule seem underdeveloped. According to the history on Wikipedia, it was invented to let members of post-WW1 English civic society discuss and debate potential reforms, and then get as much of that discussion into the public record as desired without having individual members pilloried for things they said during the discussion, even if the rest of the group disagreed with them. This…

The easy solution to this in my state is to just wear a recording device. 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... [2] htt…

"Chatham House Rules" is not a problem that needs solving. I've only seen it used as a courtesy extended by peers to each other out of mutual respect.

"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.

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

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were to guess, the types of conversations that happen in these places that aren't gutter racism (they're eating the dogs etc) are going to be eugenics-adjacent, "enlightened" scientific racism instead. At least, that's what I've noticed among rationalists online.

There are plenty of things you can say that are career limiting moves if attributed to an individual at a particular company. Eg. if an OpenAI employee says that ChatGPT is negatively impacting the education of children, it gets recorded, and then used in a hit piece against the company, that could go poorly. Or a Facebook employee speaking frankly about the negative impacts of social media, as another example. With…

Negatively impacting is a bit of an understatement. It has completely and utterly ruined education of the middle, finishing what COVID started. The real question is when, not if, someone at OpenAI goes on the record to stop the madness.

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

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The easy solution to this in my state is to just wear a recording device. 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... [2] htt…

"Chatham House Rules" is not a problem that needs solving. I've only seen it used as a courtesy extended by peers to each other out of mutual respect. "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 wir…

> "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."

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.

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

#168
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can still be quoted verbatim publicly.

Maybe I'm confused then. So one would be permitted to post on Twitter: "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...

[deleted]

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

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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.

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

#170
post #128

Denunciations of the Chatham House Rule seem underdeveloped. According to the history on Wikipedia, it was invented to let members of post-WW1 English civic society discuss and debate potential reforms, and then get as much of that discussion into the public record as desired without having individual members pilloried for things they said during the discussion, even if the rest of the group disagreed with them. This…

The easy solution to this in my state is to just wear a recording device. 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... [2] htt…

If you don’t plan on following the rule, you don’t need a recording device.

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.

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