Makes you wonder why the need for the incredible detail if we are just fine with blurry details.
So much of movie making is like that. No normal person comes out of a theater saying "wow, the color grading on that movie really helped the drive the main themes along, I particularly appreciated the way it was used to amplify the alienation the main character felt at being betrayed by his life-long friend, and the lighting in that scene really sent that point home". That's all film nerd stuff. But it's the lighting, the color grading, the camera shots, all this subtle stuff that the casual consumer will never cite as their reason for liking or disliking the movie that results in the feelings that were experienced.
They aren't necessary. People still connect with the original Snow White, and while it may have been an absolute technical breakthrough masterstroke for the time, by modern standards it is simple. But used well the details we can muster for a modern production can still go into the general tone of the film; compare the two next to each other while looking for this effect and you may be able to "feel" what I'm talking about.
With my comment I was referring to some things that end up being indistinguishable even if insane number of hours were put into it being photorealistic. For example, take a shot where background is heavily blurred. Maybe those assets took a lot to render, compute, used fancy hair simulations and had a lot of details, but they were very far in the distance and camera choice made them indistinguishable from a static background. This is what I am wondering - where is the balance of not doing things that are bound to not be noticed by anyone.
However it's a lossy compression of sorts, and the transform is of a different nature than we're now used to estimating for digital codecs.