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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34500 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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It is entirely plausible they lied. I don't think that it makes much sense though from the POV that others could have replicated the GPS data and said it was false. There are dozens of motivated orgs that could have done that including multiple government agencies. A major issue I have with your position is akin to the position I have with race-IQ gap deniers: You gain incredible prestige and money for refuting it fully. Instead you just deny it vaguely. You have to look at where incentives are. They are open and obvious. If I could conduct a Wunderlicht that said black IQ is 101 and white is 99 I'd become a multimillionaire and tenured Yale professor. If you showed that dropboxes were totally not stuffed you'd be in a similar position in a different space.

I don't think that it makes much sense though from the POV that others could have replicated the GPS data and said it was false.

The geolocation data doesn't need to be false for TTV to be lying about its salience. The dozens of motivated orgs you reference did try to investigate the allegations and they didn't find anything worth pursuing. I seriously have no idea what the parallel to the race IQ debate you're making is, but I agree with this:

You have to look at where incentives are.

TTV financially depends on a credulous audience to make their money. This audience will only pay attention if the story TTV is hyping up is kept on life support. Since TTV is lying about the evidence it has, they would be conclusively outed as frauds if they show it to law enforcement. Since their interest is in continuing to make content for a gullible audience, they have an anti-interest in helping law enforcement. TTV then either make up excuses for being cagey or just lie out right about helping law enforcement when they didn't. Their audience is already self-selected for gullibility, so TTV's excuses maintain some currency where it matters.

TTV financially depends on a credulous audience to make their money. This audience will only pay attention if the story TTV is hyping up is kept on life support.

This effect is tiny compared to the financial incentives to destroy TTV.

TTV nevertheless decided to go public by releasing a widely-publicized documentary, despite acting as if assisting law enforcement is just a step too far. Their behavior makes perfect sense when you realize only the former makes them money.

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