Ideological Turing Tests

Not sure if it’s right to say that it’s first described by Bryan when he himself is describing what Krugman is saying,. Quote “ In his FiveBooks interview with the Browser, Paul Krugman seems to suggests an analogous test. According to Krugman, liberals have the ability to simulate conservatives, but conservatives lack the ability to simulate liberals:”

Though I suppose maybe giving it that name of Ideological Turing Test counts?

Um... libertarian socialists exist...

5MSRayne
Um... libertarian socialists exist...

The Ideological Turing Test is an exercise where you try to pretend to hold an opposing ideology convincingly enough that outside observers can't reliably distinguish you from a true believer.

The Ideological Turing Test is an exercise about pretendingwhere you pretend to hold an opposing ideology convincingly enough that outside observers can't reliably distinguish you from a true believer.

The Ideological Turing Test is an exercise about pretending to hold an opposing ideology convincingly enough that outside observers can't reliably distinguish you from a true believer.

It was first described by economist Bryan Caplan:

Put me and five random liberal social science Ph.D.s in a chat room. Let liberal readers ask questions for an hour, then vote on who isn't really a liberal. Then put [economist Paul] Krugman and five random libertarian social science Ph.D.s in a chat room. Let libertarian readers ask questions for an hour, then vote on who isn't really a libertarian. Simple as that.

Passing the ideological Turing test is a sign that you understand the opposing ideology on a deep level.

The ideological Turing test has a similar motivation to Steelmanning, but works in a different way.

The name comes from the Turing Test proposed by computer scientist Alan Turing, where a computer program must pretend to be a human while human judges try to tell it apart from real humans.

Applied to The Ideological Turing Test by Raemon ago
Created by Raemon at