In an ideological turing test, as proposed by Bryan Caplan, people with opposing views on a contentious issue attempt to pass for one of their ideological opponents. The goal is to demonstrate your understanding of the opposite side of an issue, by testing your ability to imitate them.

In concrete terms, the mechanics are this: I am soliciting medium-length posts from people both pro- and anti-porn. Each participant should write two posts; one post should feature their actual views, and one should be a fictitious post from the opposing point of view. I will anonymize them, mix up the real and fake posts, and post them here in random order, along with polls on whether each post is real or fake. Your goal is to have people vote that both your posts are written by real adherents of the relevant ideology. At the end, I’ll reveal which is which.

If you’d like to participate, you can submit your posts here. I’m providing the following three prompts for both sides to answer:

  1. What impact does porn have on the sex lives of people who consume it?
  2. How should the production and distribution of porn be regulated?
  3. A parent walks in on their ten-year-old daughter watching anime tentacle porn. How should they handle this?

A couple of paragraphs on each, for a total of 500-1000 words per post, is a good target.

You are extra encouraged to participate if you would describe yourself as broadly anti-porn! I expect to have a lot more participants on the other side. If you are worried about connecting your opinions to your real name or usual internet handle, it is absolutely fine to include a pseudonym of your choice, and I’ll use that at the reveals.

Exact timing depends on the participants I manage to solicit, but I’m anticipating something on the order of magnitude of a month for people to submit responses, and I’ll poke people who’ve expressed interest before closing submissions.