Prof. Timur Kuran on "The Portal", Episode #004: "The Economics of Revolution and Mass Deception."
Why Hacker News recommends it
Pointed to as a good explanation of preference falsification and its effects on speech and politics.
What it is
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.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2019 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Recommends asabjorn · 2019-10 · on “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]
Cites adolph · 2019-09 · on “Public Opinion in Authoritarian States”
A similar idea called "preference falsification" is put forth by Timur Kuran. See Episode 4 of the postcast "The Portal" [this video]
Cites wesapien · 2025-04 · on “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]