I was at an event where one of these was proposed. Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner, which felt deeply wrong to not consider to several of us and we left.

Slavery was legal then.

Doesn’t make it okay.

Judging the past without context is akin to judging your neighbor through a -blind- third party’s verbal description.

Meaningless.

Placing current societal norms on the past is also meaningless.

Understanding is only achieved through proper context, research, and discussion.

You’ve chosen none of these.

We don't have to condemn Jefferson as a man to acknowledge that his thinking was influenced by his position as a land owning slave owner. This isn't some minor detail. It is essential to understanding his worldview. I actually think Jefferson had many quite brilliant insights but much of his thought is tainted by his belief in racial hierarchy. Knowing the source and the context, I would like to be careful about lifting up the thought of figures like Jefferson without carefully considering the subtext.

Plenty of philosophers and other learned men of past centuries were chattel-slave owners or ruled serfs. But to claim about some non-slave-involving practice that their slaveowning is “essential to understand their worldview”, is not productive. It tells us little about the merits of the practice in question, and on an internet forum it allows parties to derail the conversation towards a political theme for prestige points.

I'm quite certain it influenced his thinking. I fail to see how that's reflected in his "how to have a good dinner party" ideas, other than that the servants bringing the food to a southern US dinner party would have been enslaved, and the ones bringing them to a northern US or UK dinner party would have been free. They wouldn't have been invited to chime in in most cases. Kind of an unavoidable consequence of having servants at all.

Even at a self-service potluck, someone has to provide the utensils, the drinks, the food refills, and the cleanup. Usually someone volunteers for that role because it's easier for them than making a dish, and it is contributing to the party.

You're using a website and internet infrastructure that were built on the backs of slave labor. If you're worried enough that a conversational concept was named held humans as property to bail, you should probably be boycotting this too.

To become more enlightened about Jefferson and slavery and his times, this episode from 2006 of The Thomas Jefferson Hour by Jefferson scholar Clay Jenkinson tackles it in depth:

https://jeffersonhour.bandcamp.com/track/615-slavery

Is it possible that despite slavery being unpalatable to today's norms, the idea of having a dinner structured around intellectual debate is one worth considering?

We should downgrade our expectations of the usefulness of this debate since the champion for the intellectual debate couldn't be talked out of the evil he was perpetrating. Slavery was unpalatable to a lot of people Jefferson knew, like James Hemings.

You should spend a few minutes and educate yourself on TJ and his views of slavery.

If the event were named something else, would it be acceptable?

> If the event were named something else, would it be acceptable?

Almost certainly yes - which is very troubling to think about.

Literally walking out of a gathering because a dead person's name was brought up demonstrates deep emotional immaturity, regardless of whatever perceived negatives that word may or may not be associated with.

Since the gathering's goal was to engage in philosophical and intellectual debate; OP's reaction is even more troubling. Since it's TJ, OP's reaction is also very ironic.

Had the concept been referred to by some other name, OP wouldn't have felt the deep desire to signal their "position" on a dead person's name. I believe this is the emotionally "triggered" concept.

Assuming it actually happened, this strikes me more as performative virtue signaling than a response to an emotional "trigger."

>I believe this is the emotionally "triggered" concept.

"Triggered", when it first entered the popular lexicon, used to refer exclusively to people with PTSD experiencing something that triggered (!) a heightened stress response, panic attack, etc.

Nowadays to be triggered is to be vaguely upset at something.

Do you refuse to use the Julian calendar, for the same reason? This has to be trolling.

"This has to be trolling."

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance. Most people (myself included) have no idea of the connections between everyday things and their negative connections due to the lack of knowledge on such a large domain. Some people think the few things they do know about are the only ones or the only important ones and proceed on that basis.

Maybe not the best example. Except for some Orthodox Christians (who even then only for religious purposes -- which is why Orthodox Christmas and Easter are celebrated on different dates than what others celebrate it on), the Julian calendar isn't used, having been replaced by the more accurate Gregorian one.

> This has to be trolling.

No, this is a serious position, and you have to be trolling by being so dismissive of it. Julian calendar, what kind of argument is that? Don't you know we use the Gregorian....

See how that feels? That wasn't very constructive, was it? Try to assume good faith.

It is implausible that a person bothered by this could operate in society. It’s deep into conservative-parody-of-liberals territory. It’s possible for a claim to be so outlandish that no amount of good faith with preserve it.

To be fair the julian calendar is rather illogical even if you ignore the heaps of cultural baggage... don't even get me started on the gregorian calendar (which is the one we actually use)

nice, so other things you'll probably want to also avoid:

  - printed books
  - anything government related
  - banks

You know, for all the whataboutism going on in defense of Thomas Jefferson, I’d like to point out that his contemporary, John Adams, never owned a slave. Neither did Thomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton or Roger Sherman.

People were capable of understanding that slavery was wrong, it was just an inconvenient truth for most of them(them being the wealthy land owners in America).

I’m not going to go so far as to say it’s a good reason to forget about him, Jefferson was a great thinker, but the whole “product of the times” is kinda BS. People who act shitty don’t deserve forgiveness because they could get away with something immoral through the contemporary legal framework.

I say this because very rarely are people lionized for being ahead of their times in important practical moral ways.

These sound SUPER fn cool - Need a follow up post on "how to attend a jeffersonian dinner party.

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also @mattl: I understand you convictions against jefferson being a slave owner, however I'd like to point out a couple things ;

The nazi's are basically responsible for discerning the connection with smoking and cancer as they experiemented on rats.

The Good Clinical Practice and Patient Consent are direct results of the (negative) aspects of the nazi experiments, which resulted in a generally positive outcome.

We wouldnt have much of the science which got us to space, also by nazis [aliens]

The CCP is doing horrific things to groups of people, yet find an object within arms reach not made in, or relies on china?

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But yeah, all the founding fathers have been white-washed through history to make them look good... Heck, if you know even some of the things the Bush family is responsible for, you'd boycott any Bush style of anything.

I don't like the "but bad things can lead to good" as an excuse for anything, because it washes away or excuses the evil. Let the evil be known for what it is, and allow for positive benefits to stand on their own merit.

Be sure to check out the long-running Thomas Jefferson Hour podcast by humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson:

https://ltamerica.org/listen-2/

When he's not in character as Jefferson tackling contemporary or timeless questions, he interviews other scholars or answers listener questions.

Edit: Past episodes here: https://jeffersonhour.bandcamp.com/audio

I really like the format, it helps to humanize the participants and generate empathy and relaxation. It feels like people just don't know how to disagree, and would rather wall themselves off from those they don't agree with, figuratively and literally. I also wonder what a "speed debating" meetup would look like.

I think the designation of a facilitator and the guideline for one conversation around the table makes a significant difference and lets everyone become better acquainted.

Priya Parker's "Art of Gathering" (https://www.amazon.com/Art-Gathering-Transformative-Meetings...) offers helful guidelines for planning a serious conversation

1. Purpose: a gathering starts with the invitation which should define its specific purpose. This purpose should be repeated at the formal start of the gathering.

2. Welcome List: deciding who to invite and who is not invited are critical steps in supporting a gathering’s purpose.

3. Venue: consider how it will help to support the purpose of the gathering. The size of the gathering will give it a different ambience with thresholds for a different experience roughly at 6, 12-15, 30 and 150.

4. Larger Purpose in Community: in addition to its primary purpose, a gathering should also serve to foster connections among attendees and increase a shared understanding of their needs and goals. This helps connect them with a community and a larger purpose that continues after the gathering.

5. Active Host: The host needs to act with “generous authority” to spell out and gently enforce clear rules of conduct to support the purpose of the gathering.

6. End cleanly: a gathering needs to have a clear end so that it finishes cleanly and energizes the attendees to fulfill its purpose.

I have blogged about facilitation and the value of roundtable conversation in

https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2019/08/02/key-lessons-from-pr... https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2014/05/12/circle-the-chairs/ https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2014/09/15/guidelines-for-an-o...

I'm sorry but this was easily the most pretentious book I've read all year.

There were several good suggestions clearly expressed, but I agree the signal-to-noise ratio was not great--also true for a lot of books and articles you can still learn from.

What would you recommend as better books or articles on the topic of structuring serious conversations?

Do you disagree with any of the six points I posted from the book?

I actually am not convinced that this is a good format for intellectual discussion based on past experiences I've had. If you have, say, ten people and are meeting for three hours, that gives 18 minutes of speaking time at most if speaking were divided equally. Of course it won't be and certain people in the group will disproportionately hog the talking time (btw, it is this kind of person who will be most excited about the format). The more nuanced your position, the more difficult it is to express in the short amount of time that you may have to speak. Also consider that some people are simply better at speaking in a group environment even if the quality of their arguments are weak (or at least one sided). One or two people can easily dominate the whole group. It can devolve into a series of lectures rather than a conversation. Or the entire conversation can be sidetracked by something inflammatory that hijacks the group's attention. These issues can be addressed in part with a great moderator, but a poor moderator is a disaster and you may not find out the moderator's weakness until there have already been major problems in the group.

It is no surprise to me that the format is attributed to Jefferson. He seems like he had exactly the personality that would thrive in this tightly controlled environment with rules that he set for his own benefit.

That being said, good intellectual conversation over a meal is one of life's great gifts. I just prefer other formats.

> These issues can be addressed in part with a great moderator, but a poor moderator is a disaster

Or a moderator who is not allowed to cut the mic of a presidential candidate who is talking over the other person. Moderators need to have teeth; the latitude to enforce the ground rules.

Jefferson would have had such moderation power, because he was the host.

>The more nuanced your position, the more difficult it is to express in the short amount of time that you may have to speak.

My experienced with nuanced positions I have held and heard others present is they are either overthought and as a result overly complicated OR the presenter is really a salesperson and has something for you to buy.

I agree. Clarity of speech is representative of clarity of mind, "complicated" ideas are often half baked and use the supposed complexity to hide the flaws in the argument.

Or those 'simple' arguments might only make sense in a vacuum when no real word implications are considered.

Of course it depends on the discussion and the topic but actual problems (which are worth discussion) almost never have simple or straightforward answer.

The opposite of simple is complicated. Complex ideas are fine, complicated ideas are generally nonsense.

The initial argument was about a time limit. Complex ideas certainly can be expressed in simple terms which might be sufficient for a presentation or a performative 'discussion' (like a debate).

If you're having a good faith discussion/argument? Well, it depends..

If you idea is complex provide a summary and allow others to ask questions.

People with complicated ideas tend to get upset when you do that. Recently the socratic method was called a misinformation tactic in the media, to serve as an example of this.

> People with complicated ideas tend to get upset when you do that.

Presumably because they don't actually understand their 'ideas' themselves and not so much because they are complicated (I don't agree that most complicated ideas are nonsense it's just that it's rarely possible to discuss them without splitting them up/narrowing down to specific aspects. So chances are that a person who proposes one is incapable of doing either of those things so we end up with nonsense). But yeah that's a definitely a good approach

Do you have a simple explanation for the difference between complex and complicated?

String theory is complex.

Any argument about US constitution that isn't just a literal reading of the text is complicated.

Ask Hawking about string theory and he can answer your question.

Ask a judge why civil asset forfeiture is constitutional and after a while he will refuse to talk to you anymore and insist that your uneducated mind can not possibly comprehend this complexity that he is unable to articulate or defend.

Widely-known concepts are like black holes; they swallow anything that dares come near. A nuanced idea doesn't have to be a complicated one, in absolute terms; it is just one that happens to have enough surface-level similarities to locate it close to a different, but much more widely-publicized idea, such that it's necessary to explain the differences carefully or else the listener's mind will leap to treating them as identical. This takes even more careful and time-consuming explanation if there is a debate partner who deliberately attempts to conflate such ideas.

I have a lot of experience with panels at events and they can be pretty great with the right panelists and the right moderator. And there are a few events I attend that are well above average. But on average I avoid panel sessions at conferences like the plague unless it's a topic I'm really interested in and know people involved.

What other formats of dinner parties exist? Google is practically useless here, as all I get is recipes and menu templates!

Burns Supper - Address to a Haggis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxXO0HAzR58

Ancient greek symposiums (aka socratic dinner party?) and salon style dinner parties off the top of my head

I don't think most people think of dinner parties as needing to fit a specific "format," so maybe that's why Google is useless here. Most people (I think) consider dinner parties in roughly the same way: a gathering a friends (who may or may not all know each other) for dinner.

There can be details of whether you want to serve drinks before dinner, but I wouldn't call it a "format" in the same way as the Jeffersonian Dinner Party is.

When I Google "How to host a dinner party" I see lots of articles giving advise. I would recommend, though, if you're new to it, to just invite a close friend or two to dinner. Then it's a "dinner party" without any formality.

A Keipi dinner is a tradition dating back hundreds of years from the country of Georgia. Basic template here, but this dinner format is extremely dependent on a skilled host: https://www.keipirestaurant.org/how-to-keipi

I have been to salon-inspired dinners where a large group of invited guests enjoy dinner, followed by a short talk from one or two out of town acedemics or experts (flown in at the expense of the host), followed by frank discussion between guests on a particular topic.

They were very enjoyable but required a host with a very large house (0.1% or less of homes in my city would be suitable) and a big budget.

Tangential, but speaking of Jefferson and dinner parties, apparently he was introduced to pasta while in Europe, had his own pasta machine, and served what was essentially macaroni and cheese at his dinner parties, including state dinners while president. Reportedly guests were unimpressed but he kept doing it anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT3DeFxyLms

There wasn't enough pain in his mac and cheese.

A different take on dining while discussing diverging perspectives, where apparently participants often find some common ground: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/series/dining-acros...

I've participated in these through Unreasonable (whose guide is linked at the bottom). They didn't use a single table, but rather broke folks down into tables of 6 or 8. Each table ended up having very different conversations, but in general they ended up being meaningful. Some people would share extremely personal details about their lives/relationships/etc. It was a good way to get to know our cohort very well in a short period of time. It also didn't hurt that Unreasonable always served very, very good food!

From the title, I thought it'd be dining solo — from John F. Kennedy's quip at his White House dinner for Nobel laureates: "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." [0]

[0] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-dinner-hon...

One of the more annoying/insufferable episodes of "Billions"...

Great idea, but it does require a private dining room. This wouldn't work in a public space, like a restaurant, for the simple reason that "the Jefferson" cannot control attendance. To put it bluntly, when someone breaks the rules you will need to eject them. And that can only be done when you have full control over the space - so, a private dining room. This inherently requires capital, capital enough to own or rent such a room, which puts this modality out-of-range for a lot of people.

Furthermore, just as a practical matter, if you're at a table in a public space (or really even in a private space with a bunch of tables), having a table-wide conversation become pretty hard above more than a half dozen people or so. I've been at way too many events where, even with a round table, it quickly becomes a real effort to speak with more than a couple of people on either side of you.

The extreme partisanship of that era was not long after the Constitution was written, and Jefferson was a partisan as anyone. They agreed that factionalism was bad in theory, but they were powerless to stop themselves.

Given the historical baggage, I think it’s unfortunate that they named this dinner format after Jefferson? There’s no clear idea of how he did it and they are reinventing it anyway. I guess they think it sounds classy?

It’s interesting that one of the rules and purported virtues of this dinner format is confidentiality. Anytime people who hold power meet, especially political positions but also even other economic power, there is vociferous demand these days for transparency about what is discussed at meetings. Think of the decades now of criticism of events like Bohemian Grove in the USA, or politicians’ sauna circles in Finland.

That's the Chatham House Rule, basically. Outsiders may not like it but it's there to encourage free conversation

Sort of.

"Under the Chatham House Rule, anyone who comes to a meeting is free to use information from the discussion, but is not allowed to reveal who made any particular comment. It is designed to increase openness of discussion."

Which I'd say is a bit different from absolute confidentiality.

Back in the day polarization was still within the confines of loyalty to the Republic, these days George Washington has been once again proven correct:

“…the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.”

We know some people locally who worked in DC for a number of years and used to put on dinners like this. We went to one at their home a couple years ago where they had gathered a group from a variety of backgrounds for the purpose of discussion around community issues. While they hadn't filtered an agenda exactly, there had been some guidance on topics included in the invitation. While there are perhaps nuances to how these can be executed, over the past two hundred years since Jefferson I would say other groups have tried to achieve the same outcome through their "salons" and "chautauquas". In our case, the meal was served and casual conversation made, and then we moved into a separate room for a more formal, structured conversation directed by a moderator. It worked well, but also felt a bit like an echo chamber.

In our current political environment, I'm really not sure how these types of conversations actually make a difference. For example, in our area we have a group absolutely dedicated to destroying the local libraries and carrying that same mission into our public schools. These people have no intention of compromising or making peace. They don't even care who has the most votes or community support - it's their way or else. You have people attempting to put on community forums and discussions, but I don't see how you come to any resolve when one group has every intention of forming sides and browbeating the other until they get their way.

> Their version of polarization produced the enduring document that is the American Constitution.

> Thus, there’s some precedent that political polarization can produce world-class governance, if you can only figure out a way to still work together.

I don't think their era generated world-class governance. The actual machinery of government and its employment was clumsy and erratic.

The product of the era was world-class philosophical and experimental improvements in the theory of government that allowed better governance later.