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Comment by srckinase123 | Hacker News Reader

Conversations are different from documentaries in that they require two or more people, whereas documentaries is someone talking at you.

As for media, there are different mediums of media that allow for more trickery. For example, if a documentary says so-and-so did X, it would take some while after viewing the documentary to check if so-and-so really did X. You are putting faith with the people creating the documentary to tell you the truth. Whereas, good non-fiction books lay claims with sources to back the claims, so you can immediately go to the source to see if the claim is really true.

Also, video can be a very emotionally salient medium, thus may impede your more rational modes of thinking.

Note: I am not against documentaries, nor is this a take on the Khashoggi documentary.

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The less comically baby-with-bathwater response to the realisation that "media is not balanced truth", is to develop critical faculties for media consumption and to cross-check new information with additional evidence such as your own experience before acceptance. This is hardly a new realisation and was already explored in ancient times including by the Buddhist Kalama Sutta[0] (~450BCE) and the Chinese Mohists[1] (~400BCE), etc.

[0] https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an03/an03.065.th... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kesamutti_Sutta [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-logic-language/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohism

This isnt even true. A conversation is just two people presenting their own versions of an idea to you (like documentaries). Sure the conversation can morph the ideas you take away, but in the end if you're worried about the packaging of an idea or information literally any conversation with an "other" is subject to rhetoric like any other medium.

Sure, conversation is subject to rhetoric, but what I am saying is that you are able (insofar as you are capable) of trying to unravel the rhetoric, as the conversation involves you and another person. Thus, you have more power in conversation. Whereas, documentaries is more passive. But if you are referring to conversations that you are viewing as a passive observer, then I totally agree with you.

I can't speak for you but I think about what a documentary is showing me and consider it against what else I know, just like having a conversation with someone.

this was the argument that Socrates, according to Plato, said that the egyptian god Thoth made against doing writing!

Interesting is that in the Phaedrus?

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