The Doug Ford mention below reminded me of a concept I heard about over the weekend: The Ideological Turing Test.
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"The ideological Turing Test is the brainchild of the economist Bryan Caplan, and it is designed as a test to see whether a partisan truly understands the arguments of his or her opponent. The idea is that the partisan (say, a Conservative) is asked to answer questions or write an essay in which they are posing as their ideological opponent (say, a Liberal). If a neutral judge can’t tell the difference between the arguments of a true Liberal and those of the Conservative trying to “pass” as a Liberal, then we can conclude that the Conservative does genuinely comprehend the Liberal point of view.
"How many Conservatives out there think they could seriously pass as Liberal, and vice versa? It’s not an idle question. Because if you can’t credibly represent your opponent’s views, this means a few things. First, you probably don’t understand those views. Second, this means you can’t have a proper argument with them. Which means you are probably not taking their ideas seriously, which means, finally, that what you’re doing on is not debating them, or arguing, but performing."
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