The ideological Turing test (sometimes called the political Turing test[1]) is a test of a person’s ability to state opposing views as clearly and persuasively as those views are stated by their proponents. The test was originally proposed by Bryan Caplan,[2] in analogy with Alan Turing’s “imitation game”—more widely known as the Turing test—, which measures a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour indistinguishable from that of a human.
Further reading
Brin, David (2000) Disputation arenas: Harnessing conflict and competitiveness for society’s benefit, Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution, vol. 15, pp. 597–618.
Caplan, Bryan (2011) The ideological Turing test, Econlog, June 20.
Galef, Julia (2021) The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t, New York: Portfolio.
Kling, Arnold (2013) The Three Languages of Politics: Talking across the Political Divides, Washington: Cato Institute.
Related entries
Bryan Caplan | epistemic deference
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Hannon, Michael (2020) Empathetic understanding and deliberative democracy, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 101, pp. 591–611.
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Caplan, Bryan (2011) The ideological Turing test, Econlog, June 20.