Well, it depends on his tone. When pondering a question, I feel like it's good to define boundaries and then work your way inwards. He sets the lower bound: all photos are modified in some way. We are okay with that. But we're not okay with this smile edit. At what point in between does it become not okay? It makes you think very specifically about why something makes you feel the way you do.

He might not be saying, "these two things are the same," but rather, "this situation is similar, what makes this one okay but not that one?"

I don't know if that's what he was doing though. But I find my discussions start off similarly. I reframe a question in the context of similar things that I already know how to feel about, and find the intersection points.