This is a linkpost for https://chrislakin.blog/p/plausible-deniability
Social events with plausible deniability
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New Comment
As described, this type of event would not make me unrestrained in sharing my opinions.
The organizers have additional information regarding what opinions are in the bowl, so are probably in a position to determine which expressed opinions are genuinely held. This is perhaps solvable but it doesn't sound like an attempt was made to solve this. That's fine if I trust the organizers, but if I trust the organizers to know my opinions then I could just express my opinions to the organizers directly and I don't need this idea.
I find it unlikely that someone can pass an Ideological Turing Test for a random opinion that they read off a piece of paper a few minutes ago, especially compared to a genuine opinion they hold. It would be rather depressing if they could, because it implies that their genuine opinions have little grounding. An attendee could deliberately downplay their level of investment and knowledge to increase plausible deniability. But such conversations sound unappealing.
There are other problems. My guess is that most of the work was done by filtering for "a certain kind of person".
It's a creative idea and would be an interesting experiment. That being said, I can't help but wonder why the focus is on sharing such heavy opinions. I'll be honest in that it's not been a major challenge for me in my life to not avoid talking about things that could likely spell discomfort. It's not even been intentional, because to me, it's a party and I want to be talking about things that are fun for myself and for others.
If you are deliberately getting into heavy discussions about a potential socially dangerous topic, I'd ask why you feel the need to talk about it in that setting anyway. Is a party really the place where the requirements for good outcomes to the discussion are going to be present? Sure, mention something in passing but leave the actual discussion for other settings/atmospheres.
I'm not going to tell you how to party though - I just think it's odd that when others are coming together to have a good time, voicing heavy opinions and fielding heavy discussions are where these attendees minds go to.
Many people have no context in their life where they can get feedback on socially undesirable ideas from thoughtful people so that they can potentially update them. E.g. you hear socially undesirable thing online that you suspect has some truth to it, you can't have any reasonable discussion about which aspects might be true, which might be false, and even amongst the more true parts how to navigate having that belief or what would be a wholesome framework to use to work with it, bc no feedback.
I'll give an egregious example. At one time, iodizing salt in developing countries was opposed by some NGOs on the grounds that the argument that it raised IQ was some sort of fake racist thing. A person in that environment might have wanted to be able to discuss things in a safer space than whatever environment produced that insanity.
The example here is that I'm working for an NGO that opposes iodizing salt in developing countries because it is racist, for reasons. I've been reading online that it raises IQ and that raising IQ is good, actually. I want to discuss this in a safe space.
I can do this by having any friends or family who don't work for the NGO. This seems more likely to work than attending a cancellation party at the NGO. If the NGO prevents me from having outside friends or talking to family then it's dangerous and I should get out regardless of its opinion on iodization.
There are better examples, I could offer suggestions if you like, probably you can also think of many.
What makes a discussion heavy? What requires that a conversation be conducted in a way that makes it heavy?
I feel like for a lot of people it just never has to be, but I'm pretty sure most people have triggers even if they're not aware of it and it would help if we knew what sets this off so that we can root them out.
Fair question - I guess that a certain discussion doesn't necessarily have to be "heavy" but I believe that humans are far less skilled at communication, especially in social settings, for the majority of these interactions to not flare up some level of insecurity, human bias, or offend someone's held beliefs.
I personally would say that I'm quite good at navigating a social context while also being able to broach traditionally taboo'd topics, but I do not think this I represent the norm. The general heuristic of avoiding potentially controversial topics has served me well in most social settings like this, where I believe the purpose is for social connection on a lighter, surface level.
As I replied to a previous comment, I think I'd append my original comment that if OP was advocating for banning normal parties in favor of this format, I'd be against that. I suppose the idea I'm trying to communicate is that it's important to know your setting and the social context before engaging in these types of behaviors, and that this habit will serve you far better in facilitating social connection.
When I see an event with the stated purpose of opposing highly politically polarized things such as cancel culture and safe spaces, I imagine a bunch of people with shared politics repeating their beliefs to each other and snickering, and any beliefs that are actually highly controversial within that group are met with "No no, that's what they want you to think, you missed the point!" It seems possible to avoid that failure mode with a genuine truth-seeking culture, so I hope you succeeded.
All politically correct beliefs should go to the hat. Plausible deniability for everyone.
(And maybe everyone should pick two or three beliefs. Bonus points for making a convincing claim that one of them is a logical outcome of the other. Oops, you actually can't get bonus points, that would ruin the deniability.)
This kind of thing does justified harm to our community’s reputation. If you have fun arguing that only white people can save us while deliberately obfuscating whether you actually believe that, it is in fact a concerning sign about your intentions/seriousness/integrity/trustworthiness.
i think i agree that this does justified harm, but maybe for some subgroups or communities the justified harm is worth the benefits of such an event? our local rationality community has developed to a point where i think people are comfortable talking about "controversial" statements with their real faces on because the vibes are one where any attempt at cancellation instead of dialogue will be met with eyerolls and social exclusion but like, you know, it took a pretty long time and sustained effort for us to get here. (and maybe im wrong and there are people in the group with opinions they are still afraid to voice!)
im modelling this as something kind of like authentic relating - you're hacking the group's intimacy module and ratcheting up the feeling of closeness with a shortcut. it's not going to be as good as the genuine thing, but maybe it's a lot better than what one would have general access to. it's not everyone's thing, people with enough access to the genuine goods are likely to be like "wtf this is weird", sometimes it can go catastrophically wrong if the facilitator drops the ball... but despite all of that, for some people it's a good thing to do occasionally bc otherwise they will never get enough of that social nutrient naturally
You may be right that the benefits are worth the costs for some people, but I think if you have access to a group interested in doing social events with plausible deniability, that group is probably already a place where you should be able to be honest about your beliefs without fear of "cancellation." Then it is preferable to practice (and expect) the moral courage / accountability / honesty of saying what you actually believe and defending it within that group. If you don't have a group of people interested in doing social events with plausible deniability, you probably can't do them and this point is mute. So I'm not sure I understand the use case - you have a friend group that is a little cancel-ish but still interested in expressing controversial beliefs? That sounds like something that is not a rationalist group (or maybe I am spoiled by the culture of Jenn's meetups).
I think if you have access to a group interested in doing social events with plausible deniability, that group is probably already a place where you should be able to be honest about your beliefs without fear of "cancellation."
You may not know exactly who belongs to that group before going to the event and seeing who shows up.
There's a connection to the idea of irony poisoning here, and I do not think it is good for the person in question to pretend to hold extremist views. This is a parallel issue with the fact that it's terrible optics and creates a difficult tension with this website's newfound interest in doing communications/policy/outreach work.
I'd argue one of the issues with a lot of early social media moderation policies was treating ironic beliefs that were usually banned as not ban-worthy, because as it turned out, ironic belief in some extremism turned out to either have been fake, or turned into the real versions over time.
Wouldn't that destroy the whole idea? Anyone could tell that an opinion voiced that's not on the list must have been the person's true opinion.
In fact, I'd hope that several people composed the list, and didn't tell each other what items they added, so no one can say for sure that an opinion expressed wasn't one of the "hot takes".
Does the list need to be pre-composed? Couldn't they just ask attendees to write some hot takes and put them in a hat? It might make the party even funnier.
We wanted to run an event where controversial opinions could be shared without restraint: “a safe space for what you can't say in ‘safe spaces’”
So a mechanism was devised:
Examples of what may or may have been on the slips:
We also advertised the event so only a certain kind of person showed up:
One attendee said:
Has anyone else run social events with plausible deniability?
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