Chatham House Rule is suddenly everywhere in the Bay Area
sfstandard.com131 points by mrry a day ago
131 points by mrry a day ago
This is not new. Many of the mailing lists that dominated the discourse of the early Internet in the 1990s operated under a similar rule. The novelty is that it disappeared almost entirely for decades.
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.
Agreed - This article is wrong at the beginning, Chatham House Rules are not a gag, they allow everyone to talk FREELY. I have been to many classes and forums under this rule, not least at Chatham House in St James Square, and it means that the speakers can speak freely, name names, without hedging or fudging or perambulating around the shrubbery. You can report whatever you like, but not who said it. I have heard so many truths in these discussions that were 15 years before their time - the behaviour of Mohammed Al-Fayed, for example - which carry much more weight when you hear them from an eyewitness, even if they do not wish to be named.
I like how the parent points out that it was a similar rule and not explicitly stated as "Chatham House Rules".
>This is not new. Many of the mailing lists that dominated the discourse of the early Internet in the 1990s operated under a similar rule. The novelty is that it disappeared almost entirely for decades.
Anecdotally, I believe this rule was followed implicitly and often subconsciously and probably through some of the peak blogosphere era, despite blogs being accessible by the general public at the time. People were still looking for their tribe to escape the intellectual, creative, or censored dullness of their local surroundings.
The concept of ratting out people who were looking for the same thing would not occur to most people. They prized the discussion they couldn't have elsewhere more than the specific points being made. It'd be like the pilgrims going back to England and complaining to the English about all the other crazy heretics in the new world.
The whole thing started disapearing when going "viral" on social media started becoming a thing.
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 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.
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...
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.
"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.
> "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.
IANAL but it would seem to me that one party consent just means you can record it. It does not automatically mean you can divulge.
And since you agreed to the chatham rules not to (i.e. you entered into a contract) you can still be liable for breach of contract in a civil court, with potential penalties and damages if those were part of the contract.
Of course anything you record can still be used in criminal or civil proceedings (e.g. if your interlocutor admits to a crime or utters illegal or tortuous speech, such as fraud, harassment, or verbal abuse).
The easy solution to what? I’m saying lack of like individual line-item attribution is a feature.
It feels incompatible with how the rest of the legal framework works.
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.
The Chatham House Rule is not a legal principle. If you violate it by recording a meeting in a one-party consent state, the most likely consequence is that you wouldn’t be invited back. (Someone else posited legal consequences under contract law, but I’m not a lawyer.)
And for the record, California is not the only two-party consent state. There are twelve others.
It’s not a legal thing at all. It’s a social agreement that people opt into at an event.
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.
are you sure that is a solution? one party consent sounds like a default if the parties have not negotiated something else. but i wonder if it still stands if you have agreed to a different set of rules that would bar recording or at least bar the release of such recordings. for example the default rule is i can share what i want with a conversation i have with someone but if prior to the conversation i sign an NDA then i may face a civil tort if i share information barred by the NDA.
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 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.
> 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.
> 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.
This assumes that mass social media is some kind of idealized “meeting of the minds” rather than like…the digital equivalent of a loud and raucous bar.
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.
True harassment is VERY easy if you can create infinite amount of new accounts and each new account can harass the person and cant be blocked. True harassment is very easy if you are someone with many followers who will target whoever you choose to.
What you suggests is setup designed so that large scale harassment is easy. Alex Jones will love it, psychopaths will love it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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 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.
Yea. The "What's going to be taboo in 30 years" question is a good one. I don't know and I don't have a good answer to that. I personally don't worry about it because it's never occurred to me to walk up close to the line of what's acceptable. I have pretty vanilla opinions.
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.
The reason examples are generally those from the past it's because those from the present are, by definition, controversial and so it mostly would just derail the topic.
It just so happens that controversial views on one era frequently end up being seen as 'right and proper' in another, and vice versa.
Here's a 'safe one' unless you actually think about the implications of what it means I'm saying - forcing people, against their will, to kill (or be killed) is a fundamentally unacceptable violation of human dignity and human rights, that should never be tolerated under any circumstance.
That's probably safe to say, yet now apply it to certain situations and suddenly it becomes tabboo. Of course in the future it will probably be as plainly obviously correct as the notion that slavery is wrong.
Good example. Also possibly circumcision, eating animals.
Looking forward:
The right to choose an abortion also extends to the prospective father.
> Yea. The "What's going to be taboo in 30 years" question is a good one. I don't know and I don't have a good answer to that. I personally don't worry about it because it's never occurred to me to walk up close to the line of what's acceptable. I have pretty vanilla opinions.
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.
If you’re an Ivy League college professor, it is extremely risky to say that Palestine has a legitimate grievance against Israel. If you’re a small town high school coach, it would be smart to be careful about advocating for trans girls to be able to play on the girls team. You can be punished for opinions on various sides of the political spectrum.
If you're coaching a girls' team and you advocate that boys who say they are girls should be allowed to play on the team too, then that should be grounds for dismissal from the coaching role, as you'd be disadvantaging the girls on the team that you're supposed to be supporting.
This would be an entirely warranted "punishment for opinions" because of your failure to adequately safeguard young female athletes.
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.
Again: “crucified.” Say what you actually want, I don’t know how to interpret this idea. I haven’t heard of a crucifixion in recent times if I’m being honest.
crucify /ˈkruːsɪfʌɪ/ verb past tense: crucified; past participle: crucified
1. put (someone) to death by nailing or binding them to a cross, especially as an ancient punishment. "two thieves were crucified with Jesus"
2. INFORMAL criticize (someone) severely and unrelentingly. "our fans would crucify us if we lost"
It is figurative speech. It is valid use of an English language.
Right and it means “don’t criticize when I say stupid things,” which is how the marketplace of ideas works.
ISIS crucified a number of people as recently as 2014.
https://www.christianpost.com/news/isis-crucifies-11-christi...
See, what an excellent contrast between actual crucifixion and simply someone saying your ideas are bad and socially ostracizing you.
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.
> If you really believe something, say it loudly and proudly and sign your name to it
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.
You can post opinion A and opinion ^A and be vilified for either, right now. To say nothing of how popular belief has changed over time and place.
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.
> If you really believe something, say it loudly and proudly and sign your name to it.
Anonymity should be lauded and protected, BUT if you're expecting to benefit from the use of your subject matter authority or credentials, then it needs to have your name attached.
Without an identity, there is no authority.
"There are two genders." The belief comes from watching birds and bees.
Now, say that in 2020 in a woke software organization.
Saying that repeatedly in most settings gets tedious for the audience who'd wonder whether you're alright.
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.
> > "There are two genders." The belief comes from watching birds and bees.
> Nature has many examples of physical gender not being straightforward; egg tempreture determining development in crocadiles and other reptiles for one.
Temperature-dependent sex determination results in offspring of one sex or the other, so how does this refute the observation across species that there are two sexes? Please explain your reasoning.
I guess it contradicts the belief that sex is determined at conception? I don't know, I'm not familiar with crocodile biology.
For humans specifically we not only have xx and xy, but also xxx, xyy, xxxx, xxyy, xxxxx, xxxxy, 46xy dsd. There is a de la Chapelle syndrome, persistent Müllerian duct syndrome and more. These are just the most obvious things that muddy the waters, and I don't really know much about that topic, but confidently saying "there are two genders and you can tell by watching birds and bees" is anti intellectual
"I will put every person in precisely one out of two boxes at my discretion, and they will be happy about it".
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".
The amount of inferences and insinuations you draw is a perfect example of why the Chatham House Rule is needed. I wonder how biologists discuss the issue if one hypothesis is outright forbidden. Note also that Ketanji Brown Jackson evaded the question when asked in a hearing.
I used a made up but analogous example to see how the anti-trans rhetoric is intrinsically closed up to discussion.
It is a group of people deciding unilaterally what other people are without room for any alternatives. Say what you want against trans people, but at least they only identify themselves and ask to be allowed to exist.
Do you want to make an argument about bathrooms or sports whatever? Fine. But don't start it by de facto invalidating their existence, because that eliminates any room for a productive conversation.
Biologists would be the first one to correctly determine your sentence was not a biological hypotheses, but a political statement meant to declare your allegiance against trans rights and trans people.
They would consequently treat it exactly the way people in this thread do - with assumption that you have ideological and political goals against that group of people.
I think it’s just a way to stop the reporting of an event turning the event into an opportunity for people to gain media coverage and propel their careers, or their interests that may not be related to the discussion at hand.
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.
Are Chatham House Rules just a way for people to hedge their bets? If they say something controversial, rude, offensive, or downright dodgy, they can hide behind anonymity. But if it’s a hit or something clever, insightful, or widely praised—they’re quick to claim credit. Convenient, isn’t it?
It is indeed convenient, not just for individuals, but for society at large. People keep their most "controversial, rude, offensive, or downright dodgy" only to be said amongst friends whom they trust to not "out" them, while keeping their utterances in the public sphere more self-censored, in order to avoid offending people and being rebuked. I'm pretty sure that this is how it's always been, and I'm quite happy with it.
It doesn't have to be controversial, even. It might just be a little bit private.
I'm on a social tech Slack that uses the CHR. It means if someone asks a question about, I don't know, how my company does something, I can say "ah, yeah, we used to use vendor X, that didn't work because of Y, and now we're with Z instead" without worrying about a blog post showing up that says "wlonkly from company Foo says that Foo used to use X but dropped them because..." but they can definitely use the information I gave them to help solve their problem.
> 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 think Lederer (who, by the way, is a she) isn't saying that she herself wants to say those things, she's describing one reason why something like the Chatham House rule might be popular. It's not perfectly clear from the article, which may be because Lederer wasn't clear or because the reporter didn't pass on all the details of what Lederer said and how she said it.
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 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.
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.
Sounds like the definition of "good intentions" with no mechanisms to back them up.
All of these people seem a little bit too high on their own supply
> 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.
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.
Meh. I have seen these debates long enough to see that there is a lot of truth in that judgement. We are supposed to give infinite benefit of the doubt to people even after it is super clear what it is that they are saying. I have seen these paranoid SJW accusations to .... turn out truth enough times already.
Turns out, people who say these things are the ones who actually listen with comprehension to what is being said in those circles.
> Meh. I have seen these debates long enough to see that there is a lot of truth in that judgement.
There are fair cases of dog-whistle racism. But that is the person who is indeed racist and not necessarily everyone who falls to the whistle or happens to be next to that person. The problem is that this approach creates divisive politics.
Typically division would make sense if you're cutting off the terrible people. Unfortunately, current western politics is cutting off half of the population with a blunt instrument.
A lot of these snap judgements block our ability to self reflect. How can you tell if you're in a cult or an echo chamber?
How do you know your confirmation bias isn't lying to you?
> The problem is that this approach creates divisive politics.
No, this approach is making the existing division visible. The other approach is to politely ignore it and not talk about it, if you are anti racist be silent about what you see. Allow them to promote its politics and representants, do not object, do not point out to the obvious.
And that is pretty much how abortion protections got removed - "reasonable mainstream" was mocked for telling the truth and supposed to pretend republicans do not plan to destroy them until it was inevitable.
No. The other approach is to talk about it. Not make things more extreme. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis
This is the only effective way to end racism and hate. The problem is that you pool too many people together as "racist" which eliminates the power of the word and sends them into a position of "I'll be hated by the left no matter what I do so I'll go full on".
This strategy has objectively not worked. More Latinos voted for Trump in this election even though his rhetoric got MUCH worse. He wants to deport 18M people and revoke citizenship. Yet, they still voted for him in much larger numbers. Women whose rights were denied voted for him. Why?
You can say they're all stupid and indeed there are quite a lot of those. But the fact is that saying to a person that he, all his friends, family and community are evil and racist doesn't bring that person to your side. It pushes them further down that bad path. It might be satisfying to confront a person in a "good vs. evil" scenario, but that doesn't fix the problem and makes everything worse.
I will add: Trump did not won by being nice and accommodating to leftists. Trump won by being accusatory and aggressive. Trump won by treating "suckers" badly.
Trump winning is the ultimate proof that what you suggest is a loosing strategy.
Calling things what they are is talking about it. What you want is to enable one side and castigate the other for telling anything mildly bad about the one choose side. If many people are racists, yep that word will cover many people. There is nothing weird or wrong about it.
Latinos who voted for Trump did it because they are very conservative, have a thing against blacks/arabs and like Trumps personality. Effectively very similar reasons to why non latinos vote for Trump.
> Women whose rights were denied voted for him. Why?
Trump is a lot more popular among men then among women. That is the first thing. Second, yes there are women who deny some rights like abortion for women, that is not shocking new development or something.
> But the fact is that saying to a person that he, all his friends, family and community are evil and racist doesn't bring that person to your side. It pushes them further down that bad path.
Pretending racism is not racism and enabling racism and enabling it does not make these people less racist either. It makes you more like them and it makes middle more like them.
Indeed, what happens and happened is that their opinions are the ones primary being heard, those who oppose are mocked by those who want to be seen as enlightened. What happens is that their real goals are ignored untill they achieve them.
> Pretending racism is not racism and enabling racism and enabling it does not make these people less racist either
Again. Not what I said.
I think what you heard me say is appeasement. Which is VERY MUCH not what I said. I said you should avoid instant judgement which goes against the basic process of persuasion.
I said talking to people and not judging them immediately. Asking instead of confronting. If you start by calling someone a racist his shields go up and he won't listen to you. What did you accomplish by the attack?
Nothing. You didn't change his mind. You preached to the quire. People who hear you either agree with you and people who disagree with you think you're an ahole. Everyone digs deeper into what they already believe and become more entrenched/hostile.
If your goal is to keep people in their positions and prevent change then sure, that would work. You can virtue signal and position yourself as the "good guy".
My goal is to understand people and communicate with them. Even people who might be "bad" or uninterested in communicating/changing their mind. To do that I try to interact without being too judgemental. That's hard sometimes when I read some pretty horrible stuff from some people. E.g. I had a recent debate where a guy implied that me and all of my family should be dead or homeless (I'm an Israeli) so that's hard to reconcile and indeed we didn't reach a reasonable understanding because I feel he wasn't open to another point of view. He was just looking to prove his point (which is pretty insane if his point is I should die).
But it's still a conversation worth having. Understanding what drives a person to a racist position and asking the right questions can sometimes help them along the path of better understanding.
Around 2014 a friend of mine was running from Gazan missiles every night with his kids. His son started bedwetting again and his kids were very scared. They lived in the south very close to Gaza and it is indeed a dangerous area. Back then iron dome wasn't as good and the alarm times are very short. He exclaimed that as far as he cares the IDF should bomb the hell out of Gaza. Fck them for coming after his kids.
If you would have confronted him as a racist he would have become more enraged and probably would have moved to the right.
I asked him how a Palestinian father in Gaza would feel about that. He initially gave some kickback on that so I stressed the difference between Hamas and the civilian population which made him see that his statement was of rage that doesn't represent who he is.
I'm not saying you should tolerate racism. I'm saying you should understand people, listen to their motivations and logic. Talk to them individually and understand where they are coming from. Snap judgements are very problematic and overly simplistic.
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> As a person that would be considered dysgenic, yes, I think eugenics is bad, I guess you got me there.
Implying that I support Eugenics because I want to listen to people and not pre-judge them is pretty much the exact thing I'm complaining about.
I brought up eugenics because I’ve seen this before and you stepped up to bravely defend it against accusations of wrongthink. I think you’re telling on yourself here.
When did I defend eugenics? What specifically did I say?
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You said this:
> 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.
I responded without talking about Eugenics at all... My problem was with this phrase of yours:
> "If I were to guess, the types of conversations that happen in these places"
That's a pretty problematic phrase. You're "guessing" what they're saying then judging them to be guilty based on your imagination.
Notice you're blaming me for that in this thread even though my response didn't mention that in any way. You chose to interpret that as me supporting Eugenics. That's projection. That isn't me.
That is a problematic way to look at life and at people in general.