[HN Gopher] The "uncanny" is the experience of a loss of control
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The "uncanny" is the experience of a loss of control
Author : background
Score : 66 points
Date : 2024-06-13 18:02 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (ykulbashian.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ykulbashian.medium.com)
| dexwiz wrote:
| I think it really has to do with a having a noticeable line
| between an articulated face and simpler body for human like
| characters.
|
| Thanos's face was really well animated. Even though it was mocap,
| he face felt like it was part of a living thing. When he talked,
| the rest of his body moved with it. I think the oversized head
| help give more room to transition. Contrast that to the faces
| from Cats. There is a clear delineation between the human face
| pasted onto the CGI cat body.
|
| Clu's face also looks pasted on to a body. All the de-aging tech
| suffers from this because they are usually pasting a CGI face
| over a real body, and the micromovements don't match. Whatever
| tech smooths out wrinkles also seems to reduce fidelity.
|
| Animatronics suffer from the same issue. Often the faces are
| highly articulated, but the rest of the body is just a frame
| covered in plastic.
|
| Worf and Gamora were both real actors in makeup, so they still
| had all the human micromovements. And anything that is fully
| animated doesn't have the same delineation.
| Helmut10001 wrote:
| Thanos's face is what I felt really uncanny and made the movie
| difficult to watch for me.
| lupire wrote:
| The AI image part would have been better if they showed an AI
| generated photorealistic scene compared to the AI generated
| cartoon scene
| stagas wrote:
| The term i like to use lately is: faf - Fake As F*ck.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Please just write 'fuck' if that is obviously what you mean.
| quesera wrote:
| F*ck is the fake version of fuck, so maybe it works for this
| case.
| printrrr wrote:
| I highly reccomend The Weird and the Eerie by Mark Fisher.
|
| He's talking most about horror and strangeness in kterature and
| film, but I think it still applies to this.
|
| One is a presence of something that should not be there and the
| other is an absence of something that should.
| lupire wrote:
| Never thought about it like that before.
|
| "A weird sound broke the eerie silence."
|
| "An eerie sound broke the weird silence."
|
| Hmm.
| EnigmaFlare wrote:
| I wonder if this is why people are uncomfortable with autistic
| people. Some subtle details of behavior are missing and they
| can't identify what because all the superficial features may be
| present. They'll tolerate it for a little while but eventually
| get sick of not being able to relax and accept the person as
| fitting into any desirable or known type of personality.
|
| Perhaps moving to a foreign country makes it easier because
| you're obviously different - like a cartoon character or upside-
| down Thatcher.
| Tknl wrote:
| I can confirm it does. Although I moved to a country with more
| direct auti friendly communication (USA to NL) and only
| recently realized I'm likely on the spectrum and this heavily
| motivated my desire to move here where communication is much
| more direct.
| lupire wrote:
| Another option is to learn to pay attention and learn to
| understand the cues the individual does display. Similar to
| learning any new to you culture.
|
| Likewise with learning to correctly interpret "resting bitch
| face" in a non mysogynistic way.
| gigaflop wrote:
| I'm high enough functioning, but still get certain minor
| anxiety pangs around those who are more actively presenting. I
| feel a bit bad about it, especially when I know from personal
| experience that they're mostly normal and well-meaning enough.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| The example of "Clu" in _TRON: Legacy_ is a bad example. In the
| movie they are inside a simulation and everybody besides the real
| humans do look a bit off, on purpose. So 3D generated young Jeff
| Bridges fits perfectly. It does add to the movie that they look
| "not completely real".
|
| Great soundtrack by Daft Punk by the way. The story is linear but
| it's still an impressive movie.
| lupire wrote:
| Being a bit off on purpose doesn't change whether they are
| uncanny.
| parrellel wrote:
| Except for that bit in the beginning where its "Young Jeff
| Bridges" that was exceptionally bad.
| kstenerud wrote:
| The author had it right up until they tried to generalize
| "uncanny" to equate to "loss of control". It's not the same
| thing. "uncanny" happens as a result of your brain not being able
| to dismiss a potential threat (and thus you remain on alert and
| can't relax fully). That's not the same thing as a loss of
| control.
|
| The author also fails to go into our evolved genetic
| psychological makeup (which varies according to what "stock" you
| hail from): Certain kinds of differences are more threatening
| than others because survivors over time have tended to naturally
| find them more threatening - you see this often with the
| insectoid-looking holes in sliced lotus root for example.
| xtiansimon wrote:
| Threat. I find artificial voices I engage with over the phone
| at work flip my threat response, because the emotional
| affectation is patently false. I feel the same way about
| certain humans who follow a strict script sprinkled with false
| concern for my feelings. It's like junk food. You can't get
| anything from the interaction that helps you to communicate.
| plusfour wrote:
| > That's not the same thing as a loss of control.
|
| Not a loss, but it is a lack. You can't have perceived autonomy
| without certainty.
| kstenerud wrote:
| The same could be said of
|
| * Buying a lottery ticket
|
| * Moving to a new city and you hope you can find a decent job
|
| * Having to choose a different brand of milk at the store
| because they're out of your regular one
|
| * Starting on a new TV series and you hope it's not shit
|
| * Organizing a party and you hope nothing goes wrong
|
| But it's not at all the same "threat" feeling.
| plusfour wrote:
| Ok, I see your point. Yes, it's a specific flavor of
| uncertainty. The ones you listed are about outcome
| uncertainty (anticipation). And uncanniness is about the
| nature of things.
| abcde777666 wrote:
| Our brain is a face reading machine. We're very attuned to
| inferring emotion and inner state based on subtle facial
| movements.
|
| Most of uncanny valley is down to the face moving in a way that
| sends disturbing emotional signals.
|
| Not too different to how you feel when seeing the weird stare of
| a Zuckerberg or Elizabeth Holmes for instance.
|
| Body language and movement would be the same, albeit simpler.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Things that look like snakes like those weird mimic moths or a
| coiled garden hose in tall grass can also trigger that uncanny
| feeling to me. I suspect serpent recognition is coded into many
| animals at a very deep level, and anything that trips that
| recognition will seem uncanny.
| hobs wrote:
| Affective Blindsight detection of snakes is real and supports
| that at least the primates have that; there's plenty other
| animals that freak out at snake like objects (cats,
| elephants, etc)
| tanseydavid wrote:
| If you have cats you can trigger this response with many of
| them, using a leather belt.
|
| If you hold the belt at the buckle end and then lay it on the
| floor while rotating your wrist back and forth, the belt will
| writhe and curl in the manner of a snake.
|
| Many/most cats will instantly respond to this and they will
| try to strike the belt while simultaneously keeping as much
| distance as they can -- but still compelled to keep trying to
| strike the threat.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Helplessness or powerlessness are very different feelings from
| uncanniness. I don't even think they're in the same direction of
| sensation.
| qwery wrote:
| I don't get the sense the author really understands the existing
| literature. In fact, I think the author has misunderstood the
| main point from Mori's 1970 paper[123], the counter-intuitive
| relationship between "affinity"[z] and human-likeness -- the
| uncanny valley itself.
|
| For a specific example, consider the discussion of Mori's "famous
| graph" near the beginning of the article.
|
| > the graph assumes you have an objective and linear way to
| measure similarity to humans. In reality, we rely on human
| intuition to know what is more or less similar, and this leads to
| wildly inconsistent determinations.
|
| Mori's graph isn't a data plot. It's a drawing to illustrate the
| concept (the "valley") in an intuitive way. I am certain that
| Mori understood very well (just from reading the paper, haven't a
| clue about anything else about him) that human perception is not
| an objective or linear function.
|
| The article circles back to repeat its own talking points many
| times, is full of strange and unsupported claims, and the author
| keeps circling back to their (mis)understanding that "more human"
| appearance should result in a proportional "less unease", i.e.
| the "myth" Mori was busting way back in 1970.
|
| This prompted me to read the paper again, so thanks for that!
|
| [123] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6213238
|
| [z] https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/11496/what-
| is-a...
| squarepizza wrote:
| I agree. TFA calls out the "fundamental weakness" of the theory
| as a lack of specificity in definition and measurement, then
| goes on to make further opinionated statements as far as a
| proclaimed definition without referencing the much deeper
| history of the uncanny in literature (e.g. The Sandman,
| Frankenstein) and philosophy (Jentsch and Freud).
| lovethevoid wrote:
| Agree, and there's also further research in babies that have
| demonstrated the "facial recognition" or "more human appearance
| = safer" isn't all that true, as babies will look at congruent
| objects (two blocks over one smaller block over a round
| background) just as much as faces (Macchi Cassia et al., 2008).
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Yeah, the constant repetition was actually lulling me into a
| deep boredom. And everything discussed was anecdotal. No actual
| research to support anything being said. Who wrote this? Or
| upvoted it?
| randomcarbloke wrote:
| I would direct the author to Danielewski's exploration of the
| term in House of Leaves:
|
| https://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/uncanny/nelebemon...
|
| iirc the gist is that is hinges on the familiar but unfamiliar,
| nothing to do with control.
| sersi wrote:
| The author starts by giving 6 tiny thumbnails 3 of which are fine
| and 3 of which are uncanny. I honestly don't see how the 3 marked
| as uncanny are uncanny. They also don't mention from which
| films/media those images are.
|
| I recognized Worf, Gamora and Thanos but not the others and with
| the tiny thumbnails I don't see what's uncanny about those 3
| pictures.
| jjk166 wrote:
| We don't have a good way to numerically measure similarity to
| humans therefore the theory that it matters fails is a terrible
| argument.
| curation wrote:
| The most uncanny thing in the world is the observation of our
| subjectivity in action.
| nextworddev wrote:
| We are in an uncanny phase of history for sure
| atoav wrote:
| Uncanniness is mostly about misrecognition, bound to familar
| concepts. Something that is familiar to us will get processed
| lazily by our brains. We trust it in a certain sense. Things get
| uncanny when it is just at the tipping point of being a new thing
| that we understand as such and a familiar thing that we know. And
| because it is at a tipping point this can chaotically oscillate
| back and forth between familiar and unfamiliar within a short
| timespan. The resulting overlap of emotions feels "spookier" than
| a unfamiliar thing alone would feel.
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