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Comment by kmijyiyxfbklao | Hacker News Reader

I'm OK with you re-editing the movie as you watch it, but you can't say you watched the same movie as other people that don't do that.

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Nobody watches the same movie, the same way no man steps into the same river twice.

Some people have trouble following plot. Some people excuse themselves to use the bathroom. Some people have trouble catching all the dialog. Some people close their eyes during the scary parts. Different elements call up totally different associations in different people's brains. If you watch a movie a first time and then a second time, they're different movies. So I'm OK with watching a different movie, same as everybody else.

Often, when there's a really powerful scene, I'll rewatch it two or three times before continuing, too. Because there's more richness than I can capture with just one viewing, and I want to feel like I experience it fully before moving on. So that makes it a different movie too. I'm not going to let someone else dictate my experience.

That's perfectly true, but like Heraclitus' river, you can have a very similar experience on more than one occasion. (After the first time, at least.)

But what you are doing isn't the same river twice, it's saying "it works on my machine" but not saying you patched the binary.

Movies aren't consumed as bit-perfect binaries to begin with. They're distributed as files that way, maybe, but even the basic viewing and sound conditions are different for everyone. Color fidelity, detail, acoustic muddiness due to room reverb. Literally everyone's watching a "differently patched binary" if that's how you want to think of it.

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