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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

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you come to my house and express a view I disagree with, and I ask you to stop talking, I'm abridging your freedom of speech. (I'm not violating your First Amendment rights.) > 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 "isēgor…

> If you come to my house and express a view I disagree with, and I ask you to stop talking, I'm abridging your freedom of speech. 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 restriction…

> To what extent are you able to abridge someone's freedom, though

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.

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

#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 might be why there are so many obviously stupid ones these days.

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

#63

> 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.

I thought conservatives were against safe spaces?

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

#64
post #27
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the usa context yes, but i think its wrong to hold that the concept in general is soley about governments. E.g. if someone beats you up due to a view you expressed, i consider that a free speech issue.

> 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 some…

> 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.

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.

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

#65
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I said: it's to prevent people from being quoted publicly.

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...

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

#67
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't about people speaking candidly. It's about not hurting the feelings of people who do and work on bad things and allowing them to still get invited to events without fearing any consequences for their actions. 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.

> not hurting the feelings of people who do and work on bad things Yes, the Chatham House Rule is practically designed to exclude people who have an immutable black-and-white worldview.

How so? It would seem to encourage people to say thoughtless, shallow things, among more open things.

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

#68
post #38
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How about South Africa not doing so well currently? 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-... >.

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 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.

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

#69
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.

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.

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

#70
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the usa context yes, but i think its wrong to hold that the concept in general is soley about governments. E.g. if someone beats you up due to a view you expressed, i consider that a free speech issue.

Free speech only means you are not prevented from expressing yourself. It does not mean freedom from consequences. 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’.

> Free speech only means you are not prevented from expressing yourself. It does not mean freedom from consequences.

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.

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