{"id":8124,"date":"2013-10-12T14:49:53","date_gmt":"2013-10-12T18:49:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=8124"},"modified":"2013-10-12T14:49:53","modified_gmt":"2013-10-12T18:49:53","slug":"christian-hs-turing-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2013\/10\/christian-hs-turing-strategy.html","title":{"rendered":"Christian H’s Turing Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Christian H inspired the bonus question in this year\u2019s Ideological Turing Test, and took home a prize for Miss Intellectual Congeniality when his honest Christian round entry<\/a> turned out to be the one that atheist judges were most likely to rate as written by someone interesting enough to have a coffee-argument with. \u00a0However, his fellow Christians didn\u2019t recognize him as one of our own. \u00a0He was the least likely\u00a0real<\/em> Christian to be recognized as such, and only 11% of Christian judges rated him as Very Likely Christian. \u00a0His faux-atheist entry<\/a> was also received skeptically.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s written a post outlining his strategy at The Thinking Grounds<\/a>. \u00a0Here\u2019s an excerpt:<\/p>\n

In writing my entries, I did what I did last year: I wrote a Christian entry that I largely agreed with, but I was conscious of adding more Christian-culture stuff than I normally would (in other words, I pretended it was something I wrote for fellowship and added more Bible stuff); and I wrote an atheist entry that was mostly what I think I would believe if I were an atheist. This last means that I write mainly my own opinion with all of the Jesus stuff excised and some stuff I stole from my atheist friends to paper over the gaps\u2026<\/p>\n

If this is what I\u2019m doing\u2013fiddling what I think anyway around so that it sounds atheist, or anyway doesn\u2019t sound Christian\u2013am I really participating in a Turing Test? Whether or not it is a sound strategy for winning this particular game is something time alone can tell (I suspect it isn\u2019t, because I know perfectly well that the kind of atheist I would be does not look much like the kinds of atheists that populate Leah\u2019s blog any more than the kind of Christian I am does not resemble the kinds of Christians that populate Leah\u2019s blog) but I still wonder whether my tactics achieve the ends that the Turing Test is supposed to promote. The goal, as I understand it, is to prove that you really do understand your ideological opposition\u2019s reasoning. That\u2019s all well and good\u2026but are atheists really my ideological opposition? I don\u2019t think reality is anything so tidy. I agree with many of my atheist friends on a lot of matters, and I disagree with many of my Christian friends on the same matters. I might also say that social conservatives are the ideological opposition to my progressive beliefs more than any religious distinction, but I don\u2019t really think \u201cconservative\u201d and \u201cprogressive\u201d are coherent groups. Other, idiosyncratic distinctions are even more important to me: tentativeness\/certainty, for instance, or altruism\/self-interest, or capitalism\/anti-capitalism.<\/p>\n

So if I were to really participate in this Turing Test, I might be forced to write an atheist entry that\u00a0opposes<\/em>\u00a0at least polyamory, and maybe euthanasia. That exercise would force me to really understand both social conservatism and atheisms other than the one with which I\u2019m familiar.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is actually close to the reason why I haven\u2019t played after the first year. \u00a0Obviously, I could now just write atheists entries that match the thinking of 2011!Leah (though, as was the case in 2011, atheists might take issue with the strains of Platonism). \u00a0But it didn\u2019t seem that fun or challenging to see how well I could do past!me. \u00a0The\u00a0first<\/em> year<\/a>, I was interested in seeing what I would have to change in my worldview in order to build up a relatively coherent Christian. \u00a0I didn\u2019t make too different a persona, because I was most interested in what was actually\u00a0necessary<\/em> to change.<\/p>\n

A Turing Test can be challenging to try to figure out\u00a0why<\/em> someone might support a view you oppose. \u00a0This would involve flipping at least some of your policy positions, so you\u2019re arguing for something you disagree with. \u00a0But you can also stick to your preferred prescriptions, and try to suss out why people might disagree with you on the\u00a0reasons<\/em>, but agree on the ultimate outcome. \u00a0It might be fun to run an Arnold Kling-inspired three way test<\/a>, between his three ideological axes of civilization vs barbarism, freedom vs coersion and oppressed vs oppresser. \u00a0Especially if you stuck to your positions, but tried to see what it would feel like to support them in another framework. \u00a0Would you change what you thought were the weak points or what compromises you were willing to make?<\/p>\n

I think my goal, when playing Turing games, is getting to the point where you\u2019re a little enchanted by a new language. \u00a0What\u2019s hard to express, and what flows naturally? \u00a0How does the structure of the grammar\/assumptions\/etc shape what you can say and what you\u00a0must<\/em> say. \u00a0So as long as you run up against\u00a0something<\/em> strange feeling, I\u2019d guess you\u2019ve learned something useful.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christian H inspired the bonus question in this year\u2019s Ideological Turing Test, and took home a prize for Miss Intellectual Congeniality when his honest Christian round entry turned out to be the one that atheist judges were most likely to rate as written by someone interesting enough to have a coffee-argument with. \u00a0However, his fellow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":8126,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ideologicalturingtest"],"yoast_head":"\nChristian H's Turing Strategy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Christian H inspired the bonus question in this year's Ideological Turing Test, and took home a prize for Miss Intellectual Congeniality when his honest\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, 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