5 ms·

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

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.

MichaelZuo 2y ago
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?
cmdli 2y ago
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.
- throw112312 2y ago
  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. It is the small people who need protection.
  - AlexandrB 2y ago
    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.
    - inglor_cz 2y ago
      You are probably getting downvoted for being too recently-political, but I noticed the same paradox. Speech that can get one elected to presidency with a comfortable margin in the Electoral College can get another fired. We truly live in a polarized world.
    - watwut 2y ago
      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.
ryandrake 2y ago
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.
- bawolff 2y ago
  How do you make progress on beliefs if you have to be 100% on board with every view you express?
- TheBruceHimself 2y ago
  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.
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    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.
DavidPiper 2y ago
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) (Both feel like symptoms of High Conflict: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/55711592-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.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  > 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.
jjulius 2y ago
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. That's my cynical take.

MichaelZuo 2y ago

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?

cmdli 2y ago

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.

throw112312 2y ago
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. It is the small people who need protection.
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  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.
  - inglor_cz 2y ago
    You are probably getting downvoted for being too recently-political, but I noticed the same paradox. Speech that can get one elected to presidency with a comfortable margin in the Electoral College can get another fired. We truly live in a polarized world.
  - watwut 2y ago
    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.

ryandrake 2y ago

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.

bawolff 2y ago
How do you make progress on beliefs if you have to be 100% on board with every view you express?
TheBruceHimself 2y ago
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.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  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.

DavidPiper 2y ago

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) (Both feel like symptoms of High Conflict: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/55711592-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.

ethbr1 2y ago
> 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.

jjulius 2y ago

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. That's my cynical take.