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

Eric Weinstein · 219.8K views · 2019-08-27 · 2:44:46

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Overview

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.

On Hacker News

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

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2019–2025

Topics

Microeconomics & behavioral economicsFree speech, censorship & civil libertiesWorld history
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timur kuranrevolutionspublic opinionself-censorshipeconomics

What people said

asabjorn · 2019-10 · Recommendation

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: [VIDEO]

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wesapien · 2025-04 · Reference

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. [VIDEO] "Accordingly, for all the hardships of life under communism, they remained politically submissive for years on end." [LINK]

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adolph · 2019-09 · Reference

A similar idea called "preference falsification" is put forth by Timur Kuran. See Episode 4 of the postcast "The Portal" [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Eric Weinstein, played through YouTube.

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