Just about the whole of left-brain Oz plogdom has weighed in to the intertwining threads started by Ken Parish and me yesterday. There are lengthy posts from Jason Soon and Tim Dunlop, as well as comments from Scott Wickstein (politically on the right, but definitely a left-brain thinker). Gareth Parker(another rightish left-brainer) is away at the footy so we’re missing his thoughts.

On the other hand, even though I started out by pointing out that Mark Steyn, a favorite of right-brain blogdom, is a serial plagiarist (as Don Arthur puts it, a blogger without the links) and prone to historical howlers, none of our leading right-brain bloggers has bothered to respond, let alone to acknowledge error. As the dominant group in blogdom, they seem to have adopted the attitude they attribute to the ‘lefty mass media’ – namely that criticism from bloggers can safely be ignored.

Jason raises the issue of labelling and is inclined to deplore it, particularly when it’s pejorative. I think labelling is an inevitable consequence of the way our brains are wired – they are basically categorizing machines. This in turn reflects the fact that we evolved in a world where it was more useful to see discrete categories than continuous variables. For example, plants are safe or dangerous to eat, animals are predators or prey and so on.

In political terms category labels like ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ are still useful, even though they are necessarily oversimplifications and therefore dangerous if misused. People use them as identifiers for their own side, as well as to label opponents. For example, both ‘economic rationalist‘ and ‘warblogger’ started out as in-group labels, although they are now also (mostly?) used in a pejorative sense.

It’s also true that political processes tend to convert a continuum of opinion into a few discrete groups. On Iraq, for example, you can class pretty much everyone into one of three groups
(i) those who want war, with or without UN approval
(ii) those who want Saddam disarmed, and are prepared to support a UN-backed war if he tries to stop inspections
(iii) those who are unconditionally against war
Each of these groups contains many shades of opinion. For example, some of group (i) would prefer to have UN and NATO backing, while others would much rather not. But at least for the moment, most members of any of the groups regard all fellow-members as allies, and members of other groups as opponents.

PS: For those who missed it, Ken Parish links to this Hemispheric Dominance Test. I turned out to be evenly balanced, basically because my physical existence is as chaotic as my mental existence is linear.

Stephen Odgers of the NSW Bar Association gives a useful critique of NSW Opposition leader John Brogden’s call for mandatory minimum sentences. He says

“An example is murder. Brogden will create three classes of murder, carrying mandatory minimum sentences of life (for murder of a police officer, in or out of uniform), 25 and 15 years. To test the merits of this policy, we should consider some examples.

Is 15 years or more appropriate for a son or daughter who gives a drug overdose to their terminally ill parent as an act of mercy killing? Or for a young man who was sexually abused as a child by an older man for a period of years, does not go to the police because he fears no-one will believe him and then bashes his abuser, killing him although he only intended serious harm? What about a woman who has been the victim of domestic abuse and decides, finally, to take revenge?

What about a pub brawl gone wrong? What about a mentally disabled offender whose capacity for judgement was impaired? A spur-of-the-moment act by an 18-year-old of good character who is deeply remorseful and unlikely ever to reoffend?”

Odgers is spot-on in saying that issues like the probability of reoffending are more relevant than “making the punishment fit the crime”. I’d be much more impressed, though, if he followed his logic through and argued for long sentences for habitual/career criminals, even if their offences are not as serious as murder. Consider for example, a violent burglar, or a standover man who severely injures somebody as part of an extortion racket. The community would be better off if such people were locked up until they were too old to do any harm. The same applies to some types of sex offenders, who are at very high risk of reoffending.

Another welcome, this time to “Uncle” whose blogtitle, ABCwatch, is self-explanatory and whose pseudonym I take to be a play on “Auntie”. In a reversal of normal blogging form, he’s started out by saying something nice about me.

“PLANET QUIGGIN. I like John Quiggin. He is good to travel with. Just make sure you get off before the terminus.

The occasion for this entry is John’s latest piece on how to deal with international aggression. If Auntie wishes to employ persons of leftish persuasion – and she should – she really should choose people with the integrity to argue their principles openly. Instead we get snide manipulation, on which, no doubt, I’ll be moved to say more later.”

The distinction between the left and right hemispheres of the brain is one of those startling scientific discoveries that has passed (in an oversimplified form) into popular folklore. As we all know, the left hemisphere is supposed to control rational thought, language and calculation, while the right hemisphere controls emotion and creativity.

Most of the evidence on this came from ‘split-brain’ surgery, where the corpus callosum (the bundle of nerves connecting the two hemispheres) is severed. As a result, information supplied to the left hemisphere is unavailable to the right hemisphere, and vice versa.

Something very similar seems to have happened in blogdom though the main problem seems to be with information flowing from the left brain to the right brain.

For example, when right-brain blogger Professor Bunyip observed that Ken Davidson had borrowed significant bits of a recent column, Ken Parish was quick to link to it and to give a thoughtful discussion of the issues involved.

By contrast, a good deal of recent left-brain activity has pointed out that right-brain favourite Mark Steyn’s columns are routinely based on extensive borrowing (usually with misquotation), urban myths and absurd historical errors. But Professor Bunyip, James Morrow and other right-brain bloggers have continued quoting Steyn with approval and without reference to the left-brain.Tim Blair, another Steyn fan, also ignored the issue, though I don’t think he’s quoted Steyn since it came up. A partial exemption goes to Bernard Slattery. Although he did not take much notice of the left-brain efforts, he took the trouble to do a Google search and noted the dubious quality of one of Steyn’s sources.

(To make the left-brain, right-brain metaphor work properly, we need to class Jason Soon with the left brain, since he certainly does engage in sensible debate with the left-brain of blogdom . But Jason is one of those hard-to-classify mixtures of libertarianism and social democracy, and can’t really be called a rightwinger).
Update: The comments thread for this post is intertwined with that over at The Parish Pump so you have to read both to get the full story. Comments are great, but I wonder how much interesting content is being lost forever in locations that are apparently inaccessible to Google and even more prone to failure than blog archives.

Of the many good things about the Social Democratic victory in Germany, the most delicious is that it’s succeeded in annoying the American government and the French government at the same time. They must be doing something right.

Brad DeLong links to this piece from ultrabear Steven Roach, saying:
“Morgan Stanley’s Steven Roach lays out why he is so scared of the business cycle. He’s a lot more scared than I am–I am worried that deflation is a (relatively small) possibility two years hence, while he is worried that deflation is likely in the next year as what he sees as bubbles in housing prices and consumer spending pop. But he’s been consistent in his views over the past six months, while I have been moving in his direction… ”

I have a couple of observations. First, among the serious economists I know, Brad is the one I’d most readily describe as a natural optimist. When he starts getting worried, it’s time to start stocking up on gold bullion and tinned food (actually, if you buy a deflation scenario, you should start stuffing your mattress with dollar bills). Second, there’s some impressive irony in the fact that the most realistic analysis of the bursting bubble is coming from JP Morgan, which seems likely to be the epicentre of any really catastrophic collapse.

Tim Blair and others have been giving the Greens a hammering over GM foods for some time, so I thought I’d have my say. On this issue, I’m a big believer in the principle of subsidiarity, that is, letting the people directly affected make the decisions. Speaking for myself, I’m convinced by the scientific evidence that GM food is as safe as the ordinary sort, that is, not perfectly, but safe enough that I have plenty of bigger things to worry about. On the other hand, the idea of tomatoes with fish genes makes me a bit queasy, and I think I and others should have a choice about whether or not to eat them. Hence, I’m in favor of labelling and I think the producers of GM foods, as the innovators, should bear the cost of this. Taking it a level higher, I think that this is an issue that is within the competence of individual countries to decide. If Australians, contrary to my preference, decide to ban GM foods altogether, then that is our decision to make and we should not be subject to punishment by bodies such as the World Trade Organisation. To paraphrase our beloved leader, we will decide what foods we eat and under what circumstances. Obviously the same applies to poor countries that want to take advantage of GM foods – they should not be subject to bullying from anti-GM Europeans. My only dispute with Tim and others is that I haven’t seen much evidence of GM foods that are actually useful in feeding the poor. Rice with added Vitamin A sounds nice, but it’s scarcely the next instalment Green Revolution. Most of the effort seems to have gone into making crops like soybeans “Roundup Ready’, which is not much use in poor countries. I have a bit more to say in this 1999 article entitled, The pros and cons of labelling are food for thought

This speech by Al Gore showed more guts than he displayed at any point in his election campaign. If the Iraq war goes well for Bush, Gore’s political career is finished. But very few wars go well for those who start them, something which Saddam Hussein should know after Iran and Kuwait even if Bush doesn’t.

A big welcome to Alan McCallum who’s already got into the spirit of things by slamming one of my posts. Judging by his blogtitle, Alan seems to be mainly concerned with the ancient sport of bagging the ABC (Perhaps Ubersportingpundit could extend coverage to this popular activity).

The economists statement in support of the Kyoto Protocol, which i helped to organise got nearly 300 signatures (around 30 per cent of the academic economics profession) in three weeks. The counterpetition, announced a month ago, has yet to be released, despite repeated rumors. I think we can conclude that the problem is a paucity of qualified signatories. (The only public Kyoto opponent of any stature in the Australian economics profession, Warwick McKibbin is proposing what is, in effect, a marginal variation on the Kyoto plan.)

Support among Australian economists for sensible economic policies designed to reduce carbon emissions is strong, if not quite as overwhelming as support among qualified natural scientists for the global warming hypothesis itself.