If we’re talking about a 24 hour video, then we definitely can’t find every instance of smoke. If there isn’t any smoke exactly 12 hours into the video, then it throws away the entire first 12 hours. Any evidence that could have been found in those 12 hours is gone. A binary search throws away half of the information at a time. It super can’t locate multiple instances of something happening.
I’ve been wrong in arguments before, it feels awful. The best things to do are either address the misunderstanding in the original comment, or not engage with anyone else who feels like arguing more. One thing I miss from Reddit was being able to toggle notifications on a per-comment basis.