I watched the video this morning, it is very convincing but not a full proof to me.
At 1:51:10, he starts to address the question of the proof of life (for the second time actually, first time was at 1:37 about PGP signing). This time, he calls the theories not "silly" but only "a litlle bit silly" because of the amount of people who have seen him alive and should then be part of the "conspiracy", or who should also have been faked or kidnapped. He names John Pilger, his advocate, close friends and family, and the people of the Ecuador embassy as the social proof that would involve a very high cost to fake.
Then for the live aspect of the video, after mentioning the intellectual interest of the block hash, he also criticize the block hash solution because "average Joe" will still have to rely on "crypto experts" to trust the timing proof yielding us back to relying on social proof anyway.
I agree with that, and agree that friend and familly would be very costly to fake, so I'd now need some proof of them claiming they have talked with J.A. and the kidnapped theory would be over.
But the truth, here, is that we always rely on social proof, and that there is a relation of cost to fake a social proof. So the more "reputable" people, the better the social proof. Bitcoin users all know the value of a block hash, they are far more numerous than reliable people who may testimony he is alive. So Bitcoin hash is a great proof of timing since a large crowd will form the social proof and the proof of life is not strong since the cost to fake is still relatively limited for a government considering technology progresses.
I find strange that someone intellectually interested by the question puts forward a limited social proof while right after emphasis the imperfection of the bitcoin timestamp as only being a social proof.
Looks like he saying : it's always social proof anyway, you have one, so theories are "a bit silly".
Well no, as you say, it is only all about cost to fake...
What may explain this surprizing behavior is that he starts with: "I've said it .is a bit silly.." So perhaps he explains what he has said before, probably the first time he heard about these concerns.. and then he digged theorically into the subject, finding that you always rely on social proof and somehow defending his first reaction.
So here is my proof of life process suggestion to close this boring subject:
Ecuador opens the curtains, cams outside film him through one or two mirror such that he can not be shot in straight line by a sniper. There will be many different cams outside, building the social proof. There will be some cams each of us will trust. Let's redondant it with a web live stream and now we can believe it is not CGI.
Cost to fake would be sky high, risk to be shot can become zero. So why not ?
Great points! There is also the theory that he is actually under some form of coercion. The inconsistencies in what he says may be some kind of "message" because he can't openly say what he wants to say. Anyway I don't want to go too far down that road I'm paranoid enough as it is!
It's something we have to be honest about though. Hard as it is to accept, we simply don't know as of now.