
Uncanny Valley - zootme
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley
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m463
I have a theory about the uncanny valley.

I think somehow our body is pre-wired for some smells.

Healthy food is nutritious, so it smells good.

In the same way our body knows "dead person" is a very terrible smell, even if
we have never encountered it in our life.

Maybe the uncanny valley is the same thing for vision -- we are wired to be
wary of sick or dead people, who look "off" because of an expression, their
posture, skin color, etc.

Just a theory.

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imustbeevil
That sounds like the first theory in the linked Wikipedia article.

> Mate selection. Automatic, stimulus-driven appraisals of uncanny stimuli
> elicit aversion by activating an evolved cognitive mechanism for the
> avoidance of selecting mates with low fertility, poor hormonal health, or
> ineffective immune systems based on visible features of the face and body
> that are predictive of those traits.

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pesmhey
It’s very surprising that in-group/out-group factors didn’t really make the
theories’ section.

“Looks human, but not quite what I’m used to.”

Seems like a decent way to quickly spot nonmembers of a social group. I wonder
if an experiment could classify the revulsion and compare/contrast it to
something like, when a person meets someone of an unfamiliar subculture.

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derekp7
I had a real-life experience with this phenomenon recently, when I got a
robocall made by an interactive voice responder. The dialog at first sounded
almost human, but there was something that was just a bit off with the
responses not quite matching my questions.

Typically I like to play around with telemarketers, keeping them on the line
for a while, asking dumb questions etc. instead of just hanging up on them --
especially if it sounds like a scam to begin with. But in this case it was
either a well done chat bot that I was talking to, or now that I think of it
(more likely) someone had a bunch of pre-recorded phrases that they would
choose as responses (I can see this being done by an offshore telemarketing
pit).

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anon9001
Extra Credits did an excellent job covering this as it relates to video games:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K1Kd9mZL8g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K1Kd9mZL8g)

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aaron695
Uncanny Valley has only been proven on 2d to my knowledge.

It has no relevancy to real life (Outside of watching TV)

They took a robot famous for being in the Uncanny Valley to an old age home
and the residents loved it.

It could be possible we don't have the tech yet to produce a 3D object in the
Uncanny Valley, but even when you see artistic work by artists like Ron Mueck
you'll notice in real life there is no Uncanny Valley

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AareyBaba
The movies "The Polar Express" and "Beowulf" both by Robert Zemeckis were
early attempts at using facial animation captured and transferred to digital
characters. Both had problems with the uncanny valley.

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Wistar
Pixar's Oscar-winning 1988 short "Tin Toy" by John Lasseter and, in
particular, the baby character (Billy) was the first time I had encountered
the monstrousness of the uncanny valley.

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GrantZvolsky
The article offers several explanations. Let me offer you another: Upon
perceiving a face, the brain reads its visual cues to determine its bearer's
intentions. The uncanny valley occurs when we fail to determine a perceived
individual's intent due to conflicting visual cues.

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mcv
I only recently discovered the band _Steam Powered Giraffe_ , a group of
people pretending to be 19th century robots, and particularly in some of their
older videos, they sometimes appear to enter the Uncanny Valley from the other
side, by moving in a robotic way that's simultaneously fluid, but also appears
slightly non-human.

I guess this might also be the original attraction of robotic dancing, but for
the most part we're used to it. But SPG seems to demonstrate that you can
still get that uncanny eerie feeling if you do it in just the right way.

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jraph
The HN thread on _This person does not exist_ [1] 9 months ago about generated
human faces is where I first met this concept. Search for "uncanny" and
"disturbing" (several occurrences).

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19144280](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19144280)

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83457
fyi aaron695, looks like you are shadowbanned

