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Frame from Prof. Timur Kuran on "The Portal", Episode #004: "The Economics of Revolution and Mass Deception." Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

Prof. Timur Kuran on "The Portal", Episode #004: "The Economics of Revolution and Mass Deception."

5 videos recommended on HN
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1 HN user recommended this podcast episode1 month2019–2025 score 1
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Pointed to as a good explanation of preference falsification and its effects on speech and politics.

Eric Weinstein interviews economist Timur Kuran on The Portal about preference falsification and how societies where people hide their real views can tip into revolutions.

“This is a good video on it” (HN, 2019)

1 recommendations · 2 citations · Podcasts · intermediate

3 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@asabjorn Oct 2019 Recommends
on HN thread Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?
At this point I think most people are concerned about hate speech policies. Normal opinions are censored through these rules, and the claims of harm are rather dubious. Why should companies be trusted to enforce elusive controls on our speech? And is it fair that tech companies act like editors and still get Section 230 liability protections as a tech platform that no editor gets? The end result of enforcing political correctness is preference falsification, which have lots of very negative effects. This is a good video on it: [this video]
Explains preference falsification effects of speech enforcement

Citations, criticism and jokes

@wesapien Apr 2025 Cites it
on HN thread Why I don't discuss politics with friends
Timur Kuran writes about this idea (preference falsification) in "Private Truths, Public Lies". He explains that its this idea that had kept the Soviet Union (this bad idea/system) from dying sooner. People thought it was the system of oppression but in reality it was people who hated the system showed approval. [this video] "Accordingly, for all the hardships of life under communism, they remained politically submissive for years on end." [link]
Kuran on preference falsification and Soviet collapse

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