Comments by Ockham's Beard

Given historical rates of change given a new disruptive technology, I'd say this is on par or even a little faster than usual.

Australia's government health and medical research funding body, the National Health and Medical Research Council, recently mandated that all research it funds must be open access no more than 12 months after publishing (http://www.lifescientist.com.au/article/416290/nhmrc_mandate_open_access...). Seems things are moving forward on the public access to research, albeit slowly.

One of the strongest predictors of liberal or conservative political attitudes is an individual's implicit beliefs about human motivation.

Those who implicitly see behaviour as motivated internally tend towards conservatism - hence an emphasis in conservative ideology on individual responsibility, self discipline and the world being a natural meritocracy.

Those who implicitly see behaviour as influences more strongly by external factors tend towards liberalism - hence a corresponding emphasis on community and collective environment, on rehabilitation rather than retributive punishment and a scepticism about the world being a natural meritocracy.

While these are intuitive beliefs about motivation, the question becomes: how are we really motivated? And it seems the scientific evidence is falling more on the 'liberal' side of the fence. This fact ought to be sparking a lot more debate that it is right now.

More information here, if anyone's interested: http://ockhamsbeard.wordpress.com/2011/01/23/political-spectrum-2-1/

One wonders about a party that seeks to prohibit abortion under the moniker 'pro life' yet opposes pre- and post-natal support for all mothers through a national health care scheme, as offered in many developed countries. It doesn't appear that it's 'life' that the Republican party believes in, but a radical interpretation of religious scripture and a dogmatic adherence to a caricatured account personal responsibility that doesn't even distinguish between an 'accident' and rape.

Australia, like many other countries, has two 20th century parties struggling to adapt to the 21st.

Labor, state and federal, is in a funk. Its ties to unions and the old worker-versus-bosses mentality still pervade the Labor machine, alienating those on the centre and right. Its moves towards right on social policy, such as in immigration policy and refusal to legalise gay marriage, has alienated educated progressives on the left.

That said, the Liberal party is likewise in a funk. Its economic management appears more fit with contemporary views, but its stark social conservatism (federally) and refusal to take climate change seriously are distasteful to many at the centre.

One wonders when the parties will realign to fit the changes in demographic and views, particularly of non-baby boomers, or new 21st century parties might emerge to challenge the old paradigm.

America is hardly seen as a paragon of democracy in many places in the world these days anyway. Given the desperate partisan divide, the polemical nature of political rhetoric, the deadlock between the houses of Congress and the White House, the failure to deal with potentially crippling issues such as the deficit and health care, the vast influence of lobbyists and big business in government, and a dogmatic adherence to a constitution in dire need of an update - and who can blame other countries for ignoring American condescension on how to become a model democracy? That some pundits assume that America still is the beacon of democracy it once was just adds to the impression of hubris.

I was under the impression New Zealand was one of the least corrupt countries in the world. It consistently ranks in the top band in perception (or lack thereof) of corruption. And if you look at the conditions that usually inspire corruption, such as widespread poverty, lack of transparency in media and government, shoddy democracy or lack of democracy, strong tribal or sub-cultural divides etc, New Zealand doesn't really look like very fertile soil for corruption.

But, back to the earthquake, it's heartbreaking to see such a beautiful city in such a wonderful country populated by such lovely people struck like this. However, it's often in times of natural disaster that a nation's character shines through, and the tales of selfless toil to help others, along with a (signature) level-headed response about getting things back up and running as soon as possible are a credit to New Zealand as a nation and as a people.

Is weather one of the metrics? If not, I wonder whether Australian cities might not nudge ever further up the chart. People pay extraordinary amounts of money to seek out the kind of weather we experience here in Sydney most of the year.

You might also be interested in this new rendering of the political spectrum. It's based not on top-down ideology (i.e. theories concerning the possible structure of society) but on bottom-up psychology.

http://ockhamsbeard.wordpress.com/2011/01/23/political-spectrum-2-1/

The idea is that political attitudes start with an individual's worldview; eg, if I see the world as a dangerous place, I will seek out (or be receptive to) ideologies that respond to this worldview, such as authoritarianism.

Most renderings of the political spectrum, such as Sumner's, are top-down, and neglect the important aspect of what motivates people to identify with an ideology - and that's largely worldview.

“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.” - de Tocqueville

Looks like that day is rapidly approaching. At least in the sense that Congress refuses to reign in its bribes in the form of health care, defence and subsidies for fossil fuels.

Sadly, we might be watching one of the great experiments in democracy fail over the coming decades. That said, in science even a negative result is informative. Perhaps other democracies can learn from the US's failures and avoid a similar populist implosion. One can hope...

My vote: Hannibal.

Other favourites: Art of War, Behold a Red Horse, Collateral Damage.

Not sure how this comment thread turned into polemical rants about the comparative crime rates in different countries, as if they were sole measures of standard of living - or even reliably comparable. And cherry picking statistics to provide a post-hoc justification for one's preconceptions and biases is unbecoming. Then again, this is a comments thread on the internet. The entry level to contribute a thought is low, so one should expect a lot of noise and banal bluster. Although I normally see better on The Economist's site.

@Sanjiv Sabhlok The deaths from the bushfires were terrible, but so too were the unprecedented scale of those fires, the winds driving them and the dry bushland fuelling them. The deaths themselves occurred because many people in regional Australia are used to bushfires, so decided to stay to protect their properties. They were unprepared for the speed with which outbreak turned into a lethal firestorm. Most states now have policies in place to forcibly evacuate people in the path of 'catastrophic' fires.

And not sure what you mean by "crime between others in OZ". Crime rates in most parts of Australia are very low by international standards. In fact, most Australian capital cities rate in the top 50 safest and most liveable cities in the world as ranked by the likes of the Economist Intelligence Unit. What violent crime does exist tends to occur between drunken youths or criminal gangs; normal (sober, law-abiding) citizens are rarely exposed to violent crime.

On droughts and floods, the eastern coast of Australia is highly sensitive to the El Nino/La Nina cycle, as is the west coast of South America.

When El Nino is in effect - as it has been for much of the last decade - there is lower rainfall over the east of the nation, hence drought.

The current La Nina is exceptionally strong (http://www.amos.org.au/news/id/105) and is causing far greater rainfall than normal.

The current floods are not the first this season, and may not be the last. The land and catchment are at saturation point, and even a two-day heavy downpour could cause another flash flood as the water has no easy escape route.

That said, one could expect to see eastern Australia in drought again within five years if the El Nino returns, and water restrictions might be placed on Brisbane again.

As a side note, Queensland built a controversial desalination plant during the recent drought, and it's only now during a flood that it's truly come into its own by piping reliably clean drinking water up to Brisbane while the city is inundated in torrents of brown murky water.

@LexHumana
Australia's gun laws aren't "a bit more restrictive" than in the US; they're a lot more restrictive. And the statistics show the benefit. Despite our smaller population, our per capita gun death rate is around 3 per 100,000. In the US, it's around 14 per 100,000. What ever post-hoc explanations you have for the difference, such as cultural or demographic differences, you can't deny that less guns in the population means less gun deaths.

@proccw

Many other nations don't need armed citizens - with all the cost that entails in terms of crime, injuries and deaths - in order to defend against government oppression. Why does the US?

As an Australian, I don't have First of Fourth Amendment rights, yet I have all the freedoms they enshrine and have no fear that my government will revoke them any time soon, nor that there wouldn't be a sever backlash should they try. And I am thankful I live in a country with far fewer guns, and far fewer gun crimes and deaths.

"If one of the amendments is not valid then none of them are valid."

That, sir, is a false dilemma, and it is disingenuous to those who wish to revise the Bill of Rights to be less predicated upon the circumstances in which it was drafted and to make it more appropriate to contemporary times. To take their pragmatic arguments and dismiss them with dogma is unbecoming.

The American obsession with guns - and the penchant to drag out all manner of obtuse and banal arguments to provide post hoc justification for what is an irrational belief that guns = freedom - is one of the several aspects of American culture that makes it appear a very ugly nation to an outsider.

Consider that, for the first time in history, America now has tourism campaigns under way around the world. Its intrinsic appeal has clearly diminished, and things like the gun issue only serve to turn more people away.

You might find a comparison of Sydney and Melbourne drinkeries of interest. They are dramatically different, even though broader Sydney and Melbourne culture are not widely disparate (Melbournites might beg to differ).

That said, the drinking culture is very different - because of the regulation. In Sydney, pub licenses have been outrageously expensive and it's been tremendously difficult to open new establishments. End result: smaller number of larger establishments that require poker machines to stay financially viable. They're often loud and boorish.

Melbourne has many smaller bars with far fewer pokie machines. And it's a far more civilised drinking culture for the non-rowdy type.

Sydney has, in fact, introduced a new liquor license to attempt to make it more Melbournesque, to limited effect. As a non-boor Sydneysider, I can only hope it will eventually succeed.

So, regulation can make a difference, particularly over a long period of time. Regulation might even change drinking culture...

There may be very good reasons why psychopathy is stable at a low frequency in human populations. Psychopaths might have proven reproductively successful enough in populations of cooperators (i.e. individuals with normal moral proclivities) to maintain the genes that promote it.

Although unlike sickle cell anaemia, which appears to be driven by overdominant selection (favouring heterozygotes over homozygotes), psychopathy appears to be driven by frequency-dependent selection (where the success of a gene/genes depends on the other genes present in the population). As such, if the frequency of psychopathy genes reaches a certain threshold, it becomes unstable and fitness favours the moral.

However, it's almost impossible to eradicate psychopathy from the population altogether. Even eradicating the genes that promote it wouldn't preclude new mutants entering the population. As long as genes that exploit cooperative behaviour are possible, it's likely they'll appear.

Dear Sir,

Supernaturalism is false, and any institution hinging on it is prone to error, making it an unreliable foundation for producing so-called 'good'.

However, religion per se isn't necessarily bad if divorced from supernaturalism. In fact, the retreat of religion has created a vacuum that has often been filled with individualism and hedonism, causing an erosion of community bonds and a loss of the sense that we're living for something more important than ourselves - two things that most people desire and that lead to happiness and health.

This, in turn, leads many to seek value and solace from achievement and wealth, self-help books, therapists, singles nights and Oprah. And it leads some to return to religion, often of the charismatic variety because, even though philosophically vacuous, it is psychologically uplifting.

I would propose an effort to create more holistic secular alternatives to religion: institutions modelled after religion, which are based at the grass-roots community level and providing a unified, naturalistic vision of the world imbued with value and meaning, which is to be found in living life not only for oneself or one's family, but as a part of a broader community.

For that reason, I believe religion can be a force for good, only if it's naturalistic and not supernaturalist.

More information on this notion can be found here: http://ockhamsbeard.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/the-case-for-secular-morality/