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MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

innocenceproject.org

11–20 of 184 posts

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#11
A couple things misleading about the title.

1) Mythbusters wasn’t aware of this case

2) His confession under duress was the major factor in the release

> In 2019, the appellate court granted John post-conviction relief on the grounds of actual innocence — a rarity in Illinois — largely based on the abuse used to coerce a false confession from John.

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#12
What kind of compensation do these people typically get? I can't imagine what compensation would be enough for losing 35 years of your life, especially the years 18-53. There goes almost all dreams of becoming famous, meeting your soulmate, starting a family, etc.

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#13
post #2

Such a great show. They also censored themselves when they discovered a recipe for an incredibly easy and powerful explosive. I throw that out there as a case of self-regulation in the marketplace of ideas. Edit: Adam Savage talking about it -- https://nerdist.com/article/mythbusters-destroyed-all-eviden... Apparently it was not well known, so not an original discovery but still a legitimate use of the word. My comme…

I had to look this up, it seems it was related to the myth of a LOX tanker truck spilling/crashing and turning the road asphalt itself into an explosive. Seems kinda weird to omit this though as it's not really arcane knowledge (Pretty sure "The Martian" had a scene where they blow open an airlock with something similar).

Other mythbusters censors include dropping an entire episode about credit card hacks/fakes because Visa and friends threatened to pull ads from the network, and another episode where they accidentally caused their test mice to cannibalize each other.

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#14

What kind of compensation do these people typically get? I can't imagine what compensation would be enough for losing 35 years of your life, especially the years 18-53. There goes almost all dreams of becoming famous, meeting your soulmate, starting a family, etc.

None by default AFAIK. They can sometimes start a civil lawsuit against the state.

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#15
> Deceptive tactics — like offering leniency in exchange for a confession or falsely telling children they can go home if they confess — have been identified as risk factors for false confessions, and young people are especially vulnerable to falsely confessing as a result of these tactics.

The great american justice system

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#16
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many spaceflight movies and TV shows for example show very bad things in the future giving people a false impression that the future will be worse than the past I think The Expanse got it right, in that we're more likely in the near to medium term to get a bunch of oligarch type Jules-Pierre Maos (Hi Bezos!) running things behind the scenes. Not a utopia type technology + spaceflight + social inequity problems solv…

The Expanse is one of the TV series that I was thinking of actually when I wrote that comment. It'd be too long to write down here but I feel like while The Expanse got many things right it also portrayed all sorts of fundamental things that were completely off. For example even in the first season things that are fundamentally off that result in very different futures: * The idea that we would actively intentionally…

It sounds like fiction isn't your style, basically.

It would be a boring landscape if all the predictions which went into every science-fiction story were the ones you happen to like.

Add them up, you get Star Trek. That's great: but we already have Star Trek.

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#17
post #11

A couple things misleading about the title. 1) Mythbusters wasn’t aware of this case 2) His confession under duress was the major factor in the release > In 2019, the appellate court granted John post-conviction relief on the grounds of actual innocence — a rarity in Illinois — largely based on the abuse used to coerce a false confession from John.

The insulin inventor wasn't aware of millions of diabetic people either.

MythBusters's episode was the starting point for him. The title is okay.

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#18
post #9
post #5

This reminds me of how people get angry at me whenever I poke holes in the science of movies. Movies affect people's ideas of what is possible and what is impossible. This is why I'm also quite against, in the general case, post-apocalyptic movies that predict a future based on non-science impossible things happening. Many spaceflight movies and TV shows for example show very bad things in the future giving people a…

There's a 4chan post somewhere with a hypothesis about how people are subconsciously unable to discern between fiction and reality, even though they might be able to consciously, just as you describe.

Isaac Asimov had an essay about how, in order for fantasy to exist as a genre, you first have to understand that some things aren't real. It's been awhile since I read it, but I believe he does address that many people have a problem with fantasy because they don't really distinguish between talking about something and believing in something. Reading a story about witches becomes believing in witches or trying to be a witch.

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#19
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many spaceflight movies and TV shows for example show very bad things in the future giving people a false impression that the future will be worse than the past I think The Expanse got it right, in that we're more likely in the near to medium term to get a bunch of oligarch type Jules-Pierre Maos (Hi Bezos!) running things behind the scenes. Not a utopia type technology + spaceflight + social inequity problems solv…

The Expanse is one of the TV series that I was thinking of actually when I wrote that comment. It'd be too long to write down here but I feel like while The Expanse got many things right it also portrayed all sorts of fundamental things that were completely off. For example even in the first season things that are fundamentally off that result in very different futures: * The idea that we would actively intentionally…

Utopia makes for very boring television. Dystopian megacorporations make the future interesting to watch.

There's a reason why there's a Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting time."

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#20
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Expanse is one of the TV series that I was thinking of actually when I wrote that comment. It'd be too long to write down here but I feel like while The Expanse got many things right it also portrayed all sorts of fundamental things that were completely off. For example even in the first season things that are fundamentally off that result in very different futures: * The idea that we would actively intentionally…

Utopia makes for very boring television. Dystopian megacorporations make the future interesting to watch. There's a reason why there's a Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting time."

> There's a reason why there's a Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting time."

This cannot be true, because there is no such curse.

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