Sentence of the Year

"If one spends too much time knocking down and polemicizing against weak arguments, sooner or later all opposing arguments start looking weak."

Here is the full version of Tyler Cowen's biting rebuttal to Paul Krugman's needless nastiness.

For background here is another post where Cowen explains why he is generally disappointed with Krugman, who he thinks is spurning his chance to be a truly great public intellectual by not being charitable to opposing positions. Krugman responds here, arguing that being polemical increases his power in the grand intellectual battle he sees himself as fighting. Here is what someone articulate from the Marginal Revolution comments makes of the situation:

Yes, he definitely targets weak arguments, but that’s because he’s conducting a war, not a debate. Krugman believes (or at least he’s said so on many occasions) that his opponents — Republicans and “right-wing” (his term) economists — are either themselves malicious or dupes of malicious people, who (consciously or not) are pursuing goals that will result in massive negative results, on the order of trillions of dollars of loss, hardship and death. He believes he needs to win this battle on the stage of national opinion (and for better or worse, he is on it), or these terrible things will happen. 

Picayune details like whether or not specific little arguments are right or wrong are irrelevant, and that’s why he reacts so rudely to you — as an average person might to the argument that “at least the trains ran on time.” He thinks that if he grants any ground to you or any other “right-wing” footsoldiers, he may lose the war, and then the truly evil (again, his words) will use that as ammunition to enact policies that will harm billions of people. I imagine that’s why he rarely repeats all the free trade stuff that he wrote in the 90′s — that position has been overrun by the enemy. He no doubt continues to believe those words then to be true, but talking about them today doesn’t serve the greater purpose. 

I don’t want to armchair psychologize or demonize Krugman, because I feel everyone tends to think like that: when you’re opposing something that is truly wrong, no one goes out of their way to analyze their arguments, or take care to ensure they’re addressing only the strongest points of the apologists. I feel like he’s taken a form of Pascal’s wager: when the risk is so great, can he afford to let any doubts fester? 

It is cool to see such a widely-read economics debate take a turn towards philosophy. The question of whether people do better by picturing their intellectual interactions as group play or as wars is quite a deep one I think, but not so deep that it isn't totally obvious who is right in this case!

Songtime

Mavis Staples: True Religion

The Lovelites: Get It Off My Conscience

"Watch out! Watch out!"

I found the second song by watching this incredible documentary about the Wigan Casino, where in the 1970s/80s young northern people congregated to dance through the night to obscure soul music. It has interviews with a reveller, a record-seller, the proprietor and an old couple who tell you about the price of cigarettes in the 1910s. Watch it!

The BBC does not take complaints seriously, part 851

I read an article mischaracterising GPs' views about the government's healthcare bill and wrote the following complaint to the BBC:

The BBC news website today ran a prominent story featuring claims by some lobbyists that many GPs support the government's NHS bill. 

The results of a recent survey according to which 90% GPs would support the RCGP in calling for the NHS bill to be withdrawn can be found here http://www.rcgp.org.uk/news/press_releases_and_statements/health_bill_survey_results.aspx

This shows unambiguously that the quoted lobbyists' views are highly unrepresentative of those of GPs as a whole.

Since it does not mention this important information, the BBC story gives the impression that GPs support the NHS bill, when in fact the opposite is true.

Please change the story so as to mention the survey results.

Today this response came back (quoted in full except some irrelevant links):

Many thanks for your message, and interest in the site. The story does reference the fact that the Royal College of GPs is opposed to the government reforms. 

Our extensive coverage of the reforms over many months has given a lot of prominence to the opposition of many of the leading professional groups (see examples below). 

In this instance we felt it was newsworthy that a group of doctors had come out in favour of the reforms, partly because this is not an organised voice from which we have heard much. 

We strive for balance in our news coverage at all times, and while it may be true to say that the majority of doctors have deep concerns about the reforms, this is not a universal view.

What I wrote back:

Thank you for your prompt reply, which I find deeply unsatisfactory.

(i) As far as I or cntrl-f can see, neither the phrase "Royal College of GPs" nor any other information about GPs' overall opinions appears in the article in question. Your claim that "The story does reference the fact that the Royal College of GPs is opposed to the government reforms" is therefore incorrect. I am astonished that you have made such an incompetent error.

(ii) Whether or not your coverage has "given a lot of prominence to the opposition of the leading professional groups" is irrelevant to my complaint, which was that your article gives a misleading impression of GPs' opinions.

(iii) Your account makes your standards of newsworthiness seem bizarre and arbitrary. Needless to say there are many other unrepresentative groups whose organised voices rarely feature on the front page of your website.

(iv) I do not understand what you mean by 'balance' in this context. I struggle to think of an interpretation of the word that would override the duty, which your article strikingly neglects, to give the public an accurate impression of the distribution of GPs' views about healthcare reform.

I repeat, please update your article to make it less misleading, using the information I have provided.

Not even exaggerating about the astonishment: is there not some kind of procedure to ensure that complaint responses are not false?