Climategate
I’ve waited a bit on this one to see how it would shake out. The hacked/leaked emails and data seemed to me like prime fodder for motivated cognition. My expectations were pretty much met. Many alarmists have inappropriately minimized the importance of the evidence of a shameful conspiracy to enforce what is clearly an ideological party line among climate researchers. Many skeptics have gone too far in using the revelations as grounds for casting doubt on the entire scientific case for AGW. But, clearly, the thrust of the scandal vindicates the skeptics’ claims that the science of climate change is conducted in an ideologically charged atmosphere, that there really are coordi

Political Correctness Can Kill
Here’s my latest column for The Week: “The perils of political correctness–left and right.” A snippet… Cultures evolve by constantly redrawing the bounds of the socially acceptable, and we inevitably disagree over where those lines should be drawn. It’s natural to resent one day finding oneself on the wrong side of the line, and to push back against the feeling of being pinned in by social pressure. Conservatives have pushed back by casting “political correctness” as a nefarious plot to wipe out independent thinking.

A Little Mystic Nationalism
Jonah Goldberg writes: A little mystic nationalism is a good and healthy thing because it provides the emotional sinew that helps us hold onto our patriotism. I strenuously disagree that a little mystic nationalism is “a good and healthy thing.” But I heartily agree with what I take Jonah to imply: that patriotism has little emotional substance without mystic nationalism. Here’s your good and healthy:

Now Let Us Praise Results-Facilitating Virtue!
Robin Hanson writes: [T]he world would be better if we praised folks more for what they did than who they are. The idea is this: Because the usual focus is on inferring how smart, strong, creative, caring, charismatic, determined, etc. people are, the incentives are more to do things that suggest good things about your character.  If instead we focused on describing the differences a person has actually made to the world, we would get more folks trying harder to actually make a difference.  And they would focus more on acquiring the features that produce res

The Utility and Justice of TARP
Yglesias says: I believe that absent the [TARP] bailout, we’d be looking at even higher unemployment today. I think this is a plausible claim. But I don’t know of a satisfactory way to evaluate it. It’s plausible because some plausible theories about the nature of the financial economy and its interaction with the real economy imply its truth. But other plausible theories do not imply its falsity. My problem is that I don’t know of a satisfactory way to evaluate these theories. I’m not saying that there is no way to evaluate them,