House of Eratosthenes

An “ideological Turing test.” You’re familiar with Paul Krugman of the New York Times. Well, the Laureate said something interesting during an interview.

Isn’t there a sense among liberals that, “We’re in the right so we don’t have to pay too much attention to conservative or Republican arguments”?

In my experience with these things – which I find both within economics and more broadly – is that if you ask a liberal or a saltwater economist, “What would somebody on the other side of this divide say here? What would their version of it be?” A liberal can do that. A liberal can talk coherently about what the conservative view is because people like me actually do listen. We don’t think it’s right, but we pay enough attention to see what the other person is trying to get at. The reverse is not true. You try to get someone who is fiercely anti-Keynesian to even explain what a Keynesian economic argument is, they can’t do it. They can’t get it remotely right. Or if you ask a conservative, “What do liberals want?” You get this bizarre stuff – for example, that liberals want everybody to ride trains, because it makes people more susceptible to collectivism. You just have to look at the realities of the way each side talks and what they know. One side of the picture is open-minded and sceptical. We have views that are different, but they’re arrived at through paying attention. The other side has dogmatic views.

Bryan Caplan (linked above) has a comment:

…[T]he beauty of the notion of the ideological Turing Test is that it’s a test. We don’t have to idly speculate about how well adherents of various ideologies understand each other. We can measure the performance of anyone inclined to boast about his superior insight.

How? Here’s just one approach. Put me and five random liberal social science Ph.D.s in a chat room. Let liberal readers ask questions for an hour, then vote on who isn’t really a liberal. Then put Krugman and five random libertarian social science Ph.D.s in a chat room. Let libertarian readers ask questions for an hour, then vote on who isn’t really a libertarian. Simple as that.

My challenge: Nail down the logistics, and I’ll happily bet money that I fool more voters than Krugman. Indeed, I’ll happily bet that any libertarian with a Ph.D. from a top-10 social science program can fool more voters than Krugman. We learn his worldview as part of the curriculum. He learns ours in his spare time – if he chooses to spare it.

I would bet money on Caplan’s side, but I think he’s over-complicated it.

Krugman has made a key error here, and it is not an uncommon one among liberals. He’s bragged about the keen insight and intellectual forensic ability among his fellow liberals, generalizing recklessly. As far as what can betray a non-liberal masquerading as a liberal, he’s offered a weak example: George Will’s article on Why Liberals Love Trains. I’ve taken pieces from it myself because it is damning and insightful.

It is George Will at his best. But it is not flattering to the progressive agenda. It is, therefore, silly and rather Krugman-like to cite this as evidence of how talented liberals are at spying counterfeits amongst themselves.

Krugman made a mistake with his phrasing, In my experience with these things. That was a blunder. It brought him down to the level of riff-raff like me, and I have experience with these things too.

If he wants me to “explain what a Keynesian economic argument is,” I can oblige him, fool him into thinking I’m a liberal hour after hour after silly hour, without getting the technical aspects of it even approximately right. All I need to do is keep my comments positive with regard to what the progressives are trying to do, and the effect it has had. Roosevelt saved us from the Great Depression, and then Reagan ruined us, Clinton saved us and then George W. Bush with those horrible awful tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent blah blah blah.

See the litmus test among liberals has nothing to do with knowledge. It has to do with faith.

You doubt me? Let Krugman apply his ideological litmus test to Peggy Joseph, the woman who thought Barack Obama was going to pay her mortgage and put gas in her car. Think she can explain Keynesian economic theory to the satisfaction of a Nobel Laureate? Not terribly likely. So when she steps in it, you think Krugman will blow the whistle on her, claiming she’s a phony liberal because she biffed some critical technical detail involved in the theory? Think he’ll call her out as a Rush Limbaugh fan in sheep’s clothing? Or will she get a pass? Three guesses, and the first two don’t count…

So if it falls to me to participate in such a test, I’ll just stay away from the knowledge and spout endlessly about my faith. Be another Peggy Joseph.

There are some things that make me hesitate. When you get to the part where an economy implodes, or explodes, or tips over like a Jenga tower, or does something disastrous because too much of the wealth is “horded” by the elites at the top, I don’t understand the mechanics of that. I can’t walk you through the steps. I cannot explain why Man A is doing just fine so long as the much wealthier Man B possesses only so much a greater share of property — but once Man B acquires a good deal more, Man A is suddenly in trouble. Can’t explain that. But I think that’s okay…I think my knowledge is deficient in a place where everybody else’s knowledge is likewise deficient. In fact, a key reason why I can’t expound on that part of it, is I’ve not seen any material I can emulate. True-and-blue liberals are always changing the subject before they get to that part of it.

So I’ll just stick to the phrase, “I don’t really know that much about this part…” and lapse back into glittering generalities. And then, just to really close the deal, every now & then I’ll act angry. “Not paying their fair share,” selfish, common good, et cetera.

Display the right emotions, you’re in. Knowledge is irrelevant. If liberals had knowledge they wouldn’t be liberals.

Apparently Paul has never talked to Thomas Sowell or Charles Krauthammer, or George Will or Mark Steyn or any number of other intelligent conservatives who know all too well what the liberal argument.

And then you have people like David Mamet and David Horowitz who used to be members of the left. Come to think of it, Krauthammer used to write and edit for The New Republic and was a speech writer for Walter Mondale. Which explains his residual fondness for a few things “left”. But all of these people have no problems articulating the arguments of the Left.
- philmon | 06/24/2011 @ 13:39
You try to get someone who is fiercely anti-Keynesian to even explain what a Keynesian economic argument is, they can’t do it. They can’t get it remotely right.

Okay, Krugman…let me take a stab at it, without using Google:

Keynesian economics is trying to spend our way out of problems. It’s the belief that government can borrow or tax to obtain money and put that money into public-works projects…which in turn employs people, who in turn spend that earned income on things, which in turn stimulates the economy. Isn’t that more-or-less it? Do I win a cookie?

(Except that you can’t net-grow an economy by taking money away from one person and giving it to another person. It’s like dipping a bucket into a lake, running to the other end of said lake, emptying the water back into the lake, and then wondering why the water level doesn’t rise. I should get ANOTHER cookie for having to explain this to someone who is paid to offer his opinion on the pages of the NY Times.)

It’s one of those wonderful ideas which doesn’t work, hasn’t worked anytime it’s been tried, and will never work, but the Left insists that if we just had the right people in charge, THEN it might work.
- cylarz | 06/24/2011 @ 19:43
All correct on the basic level.

But what they’re going to say is that “money velocity” will “entrain” more economic activity into the system in a kind of economic “bernoulli” effect. “Pump priming”, they call it.

Only the way it really seems to work it’s more like starting a siphon …

And when your kids come to the Oasis for a drink, we’ll have drunk it all.

Henry Morganthau … FDR’s treasury secretary — was on board with the New Deal in the beginning. But by 1939 he was saying:

“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.”

“I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises.”

“I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. … And an enormous debt to boot!

Keynesians will argue that FDR didn’t spend enough for it to “work”. And they are already arguing that Obama didn’t spend enough for it to “work”.

Imagine someone who comes and convinces you to give him a bunch of money and he’ll double it for you, and you do. And he loses it. And then he comes back to you and says, “well, it’s because you didn’t give me enough, see. Why if you give me more money than you did last time, I’m certain I can double it. Say, how much does your kid have in that piggy bank over there?

GO AWAY!!!!!!
- philmon | 06/24/2011 @ 20:55
“What would somebody on the other side of this divide say here? What would their version of it be?” A liberal can do that.

Heh. That’s funny! I didn’t know they gave out Nobels for mad comedy skillz.

You know, I’ve actually heard this claim several times from liberals. And when you call them on it — “go ahead, tough guy, explain conservative economics to me” — it’s invariably “lower taxes on corporations and the rich and everything will be fine.” Pretty much verbatim.

This is sophistication? This is nuance?

How do you spell “liberalism” P-R-O-J-E-C-T-I-O-N.
- Severian | 06/25/2011 @ 08:11
sorry about the unclosed bold tag. Haven’t had my coffee yet.
- Severian | 06/25/2011 @ 08:12
Happens to the best of us. Go roast.
- mkfreeberg | 06/25/2011 @ 08:20
You know, I’ve actually heard this claim several times from liberals. And when you call them on it — “go ahead, tough guy, explain conservative economics to me” — it’s invariably “lower taxes on corporations and the rich and everything will be fine.” Pretty much verbatim.

…and I remember Thomas Freidman saying, “We’ve been there, done that, and it’s not working.”

I remember asking, “I can only think of a few times in American history where we went there or did that, and to my reckoning it worked pretty darn well, actually.”
- cylarz | 06/25/2011 @ 09:37
[…] posted an interesting interview with Paul Krugman, i.e. exhibit A that Nobel prizes in anything other than hard science are […]
- College is Largely Worthless | academiczoology | 06/25/2011 @ 09:53

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Krugman’s Ideological Turing TestFriday, June 24th, 2011

Krugman’s Ideological Turing Test
Friday, June 24th, 2011