[Teever]

Marconi demonstrated radio in 1895 and the first broadcast radio station started in 1920. By the 1930s Adolf Hitler was routinely using the medium to broadcast vile propaganda about Jews and others which lead to the holocaust in the 1940s.

About 40 years later the Rwandan genocide took place and many scholars attribute a preceding radio-based propaganda campaign as playing a key role in increasing ethnic violence in the aware.

Since then the link between radio and genocide seems to have decreased over time but it's likely that this isn't so much because humans have a better understanding of the medium but more so because propaganda has moved to more effective mediums like the internet.

Given that we didn't actually solve the problems with radio before moving onto the next medium it isn't likely that we'll figure out the problems with these new mediums before millions die.

[bonoboTP]

It was easy to spread lies through print and through good old fashioned word of mouth too. No radio needed.

And apropos radio, the War of the Worlds radio drama in 1938 is know to have made quite some afraid that it's real. And plenty of people collected money in communist Hungary for the sake of the enslaved Isaura (protagonist of a Brazilian soap opera). But most people adjusted and understand that radio dramas are a thing, movies are a thing, and will adjust to the fact that pixels on a screen are just that.

[Teever]

You seem to be suggesting that there's no noteworthy difference in the speed and effectiveness of different communication mediums like spoken, written, or radio and as such there's no noteworthy difference in the outcome of their deployment.

Is that a fair assessment of your comment? Is there a way to test your assertion?

[bonoboTP]

No I'm saying that people adapt, society adapts. Most people today don't shit themselves in the cinema thinking that the monster will appear among them, they understand that characters in TV series are not real and only the mentally ill will berate the actor in the street for yesterday's episode.

It will take some time but it's in fact quite easy to explain it to older relatives if you make a few custom examples.

The bigger point is that realism is a red herring. You can spread propaganda with hand drawn caricatures just as well or even better. It's a panic over nothing. The real lever of control is what news to report on and how to frame it, what quotes to use, which experts to ask and which ones not to. The bottleneck never was at HD realism.

[Teever]

> they understand that characters in TV series are not real

They do not which is why a reality TV star who is 'good at business' is the current US President.

Reality TV is the old media and people are still falling for it and the consequences of them falling for it will be felt for decades. It will be the same with newer technologies but worse.

The novel threat that something like Sora poses isn't just from realism, it's also from the fast turn around and customized messaging. It will enable the exact things you caution about but at an unprecedented scale.

This idea that it all new media is going to be just another case of 'meet the new boss same as the old boss' is ahistorical and shortsighted.

[bonoboTP]

If that's how you view the majority, you simply can't simultaneously be for democracy. It takes some impressive mental gymnastics to redefine democracy as one where somehow people can vote but all truth-production is centralized to the Expert Consensus narrative. I mean, maybe that's right. In fact basically no society till the 20th century has absolute full 1 person 1 vote election based democracy. It's an odd development. In most historic societies they restricted political affairs to certain "intellectually qualified" classes. Of course we see that as deeply unjust and exclusionary. But I'm not sure how else to interpret your type of complaint than as a wish for some kind of restriction on who can have decision power in political matters. But at the se time this is also called defending democracy. It's weird.