Now that the midterm elections in the U.S. — as well as the presidential contest in Brasil — are finally over, can you pass an Ideological Turing Test? For example, let’s say you support gay marriage or oppose legalizing the sale of marijuana. Could you make a persuasive argument against gay marriage or in support of drug legalization? An Ideological Turing Test, in other words, is designed to test whether a political partisan or candidate for office correctly understands the arguments of his or her political adversaries. According to Wikipedia:

The partisan is invited to answer questions or write an essay posing as his opposite number; if neutral judges cannot tell the difference between the partisan’s answers and the answers of [his political adversary], the candidate is judged to correctly understand the opposing side. The Ideological Turing Test is so named because of its similarity with the Turing test, a test whereby a machine is required to fool a neutral judge into thinking that it is human.

We love this concept, but where would we find the requisite “neutral judges” to evaluate the test-taker’s answers?

Now argue the opposing side!