Personally I leave it set to depth below keel, to which I add 1.5 metres for actual depth. There is a special corner of hell reserved for the person who then reset it to actual depth and did not tell me or put it back again! Fortunately I had already slowed right down thinking ... surprised there's this much water here as we came to a sudden stop.
Since lateral means side, multilateral means basically many-sided. The philosophy of multilateralism claims that the best solutions generally result when as many of the world's nations as possible are involved in discussions, and multilateralists often favor strengthening the United Nations.
John Ruggie further elaborated the concept of multilateralism based on the principles of  indivisibility  and  diffuse reciprocity ( international relations )  as  an institutional form which coordinates relations among three or more states on the basis of ' generalized ' principles of conduct . . . which specify appropriate conduct for a class ...