write occasional material in support of views you don’t agree with. Try to make them sound as persuasive as possible. If need be, to keep your own sense of internal balance, write a dialogue between opposing views, just as Plato and David Hume did in some of their very best philosophical works.
I can do that with macroeconomics. I used the dialogue method in my Memoirs of a would-be macroeconomist.
I find it more difficult to do with politics. The Three Languages of Politics sort of does it, although it looks more at the more simplistic and dogmatic arguments of progressives, conservatives, and libertarians.
In fact, what bothers me the most in political discussions is simple-minded dogmatism. As I watched people in my neighborhood head to the subway to the march against Trump, my head was filled with the Stephen Stills lyric, “Singin’ songs, and they’re carryin’ signs. Mostly say ‘Hooray for our side.'”
So, relative to my views, the most contrarian position I could take would be a really dogmatic view, whether it is libertarian, conservative, or progressive. But I cannot make dogmatism sound persuasive.
A better approximation of Tyler’s idea for me would be to champion central planning. To do that, I would argue primarily on grounds of risk aversion. That is not the usual progressive case, which is more utopian. I might suggest that having elites in control may limit the magnitude of mistakes. Even that is difficult for me to argue–probably the most formative experience on my political beliefs was the Vietnam War.