A wonder of our Age is the way in which smart people can gather speedily round a good piece of writing out there on the Web and chew it over, to and fro, looking at the issues it raises and how they link to other issues. When it works well, it’s a superb force for civilisation.

Three examples, all from the USA.

  • Megan McArdle on some hard questions raised by the ‘Climategate’ papers:

    There’s been substantial evidence of what Will calls "motivated cognition" from both skeptics and advocates–for most people, this seems like some sort of a Rorschach blot that shows you whatever you already believed.  I don’t think I’ve fallen into that particular trap, because this definitely is not what I believed about major climate scientists a month ago.  But obviously, I am prey to other errors, not least the fact that I am still quite dependent on information from very motivated and often angry experts on both sides.

  • Ilya Somin is worried about the potential extremism of any sort of nationalism:

… it is extremely difficult to limit nationalism in such a fine-grained way. Once established, it readily morphs into chauvinism, protectionism and often much worse. To some extent, this is the result of people’s general “rational irrationality” about politics, which prevents them from objectively examining their political views. But, as discussed above, it is also partly the result of the inner logic of nationalism itself, which insists that we have special moral obligations to based on nationality, ethnicity, or culture. Playing with nationalism is a lot like playing with fire. It’s not inevitable that you will get burned, but the risk is high.

  • Ta-Nehisi Coates on moral, political and racial questions swirling arounnd the horrible life of Maurice Clemmons:

Look, I’m still that kid who, at 12, came to regard getting banked as kind of horror which every single one of my friends experienced, and which could only be resisted by some banking of my own. When I got stomped out on Liberty Heights, It never occurred to me that I’d been the victim of crime, that something illegal had transpired. What occurred to me was that in order to cope with these Park Heights niggers, I needed to run faster and roll harder. What occurred to me was where there was no written law, there was jungle law, and I’d best get acquainted with its finer precepts. And so I did like most my peers …

In each case the original piece is measured and thoughtful, the writer expressing a view with energy but with an open mind to other ideas and potential objections.

Then the Comments start, a gush of people pouring in. Some with more passion, some with more expert facts, some with sharper logic. Some with all three.

I’ll come back to the Nationalism one as it is an area in which I have, hem, some modest expertise.

But do look at the other two, since in differing ways there is plenty of Wisdom of Crowds on display. Not that all that Wisdom helps would-be policy-makers much, as it pulls in so many plausible and interesting yet largely irreconcilable directions.

See for example David Cameron’s climate conundrum?