Greg Laden is a blogger, writer and independent scholar who occassionally teaches. He has a PhD from Harvard in Archaeology and Biological Anthropology, as well as a Masters Degree in the same subjects. He is a biological anthropologist, but for many years before going to graduate school to study human evolution, he did archaeology in North America. He thinks of himself as a biologist who focuses on humans (past and present) and who uses archaeology as one of the tools of the trade. Greg blogs regularly on ScienceBlogs at http://www.scienceblogs.com/gregladen/.
Dr. Joseph J. Salvo attended Phillips Andover Academy, received his A.B. degree from Harvard University and his Master and Ph.D. degrees in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University. Dr. Salvo joined the GE Global Research Center in 1988. His early work focused on the development of genetically modified bacteria and fungus, for the production of novel high performance polymers. In the mid 1990's he turned his group's efforts towards developing large-scale internet-based sensing arrays to manage and oversee
business systems. Most recently, he and his team have developed a number of complex decision engines that deliver customer value through system transparency and knowledge-based computational algorithms. Commercial business implementations of his work are currently active in Europe, and Asia as well as North and South America.
Dr. Peter Tu received his undergraduate degree in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo, Canada, and his doctorate from Oxford University England.
In 1997, he joined the Visualization and Computer Vision Group at the GE Global Research Center in Niskayuna, NY. He has developed algorithms for the FBI Automatic Fingerprint Identification System. He is the principle investigator for the ReFace program, which has the goal of automatically computing the appearance of a person’s face from skeletal remains. Dr. Tu has also developed a number of algorithms for the precise measurement of specular and high curvature objects. His current focus is the development of intelligent video algorithms for surveillance applications.
When I was a little kid, I woke from a nap to a sense of strangeness that eventually led to horror. My eyes opened and I could see in a jar sitting on a shelf near by bed, the reflection of my bedroom window, with the porch and the yard visible outside in the bright afternoon sun. That was as it should be. But there was also something there that should not have been there. There was the arm of a giant hair monster extending up from below the window ledge, groping around, I assumed, for a way to open the window and come inside and eat me.
Years later, I was heading home from the University when something strange happened. I walked through the parking lot to my car, a dark blue Volvo sedan with a car seat in the back. When I got up to the car, I found that my key did not work in the lock. As I kept fiddling with the key, getting somewhat worried that I was going to have to call a locksmith, I noticed that there was stuff on the front seat that I didn't remember being there when I left the car earlier in the morning. That was just as strange as the lock not working, if not stranger. Then, I noticed there was also stuff in the backs seat that was not supposed to be there. And, the car seat ... it was not my car seat! Someone had broken into my car and switched Julia's car seat for another car seat!!!! OMG!!! How strange!
Of course, both of these events were examples of misconception resulting in an uncanny feeling. In the first case, the hair arm of the monster was a caterpillar I had captured and imprisoned in the jar the day before. In the case of the Volvo, I was simply at the wrong car, which was coincidentally parked pretty close to where I usually parked in that lot, coincidentally with a car seat in the back as mine had as well.
Yes, folks, today's main topic on Collective Imagination Blog is The Uncanny.
To understand and revel in the uncanny, you need to read three things other than this here blog post. I'm suggesting an order to read them in (which is the order they were written in) but you can read them in any order. You need to start at Seed Magazine, then end up here. Then, please leave comments on Peter's blog post or this blog post telling us how we've got it all wrong.
And, if you dare, leave us with a story about your own venture into Uncanny Valley.
Into Uncanny Valley: New findings shed light on a century's worth of bizarre explanations for the eerie feeling we get around lifelike robots. An article in Seed Magazine by Joe Kloc.
Perfect Strangers: The eerie emotional response brought on by near-duplicates of our selves raises interesting questions about perception and expectations. A "Featured BLogger" piece on Seed Magazine's web site by Greg Laden.
The Uncanny Valley - A Computer Vision Perspective, a blog post on Collective Imagination by Peter Tu
We are looking forward to your responses. But don't get the uncanny feeling that we are following you around on the Internet or anything like that ...
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Comments
I recall flipping through cable channels one night and coming across a group of men in suits singing to a crowd at some small event. I do sing as a hobby, but I had never sung in a suit, or in a group as small as this one, or in a venue like this one, as far as I could remember -- and yet, there was a man in the group who looked exactly like me, to the point that I racked my brains wondering if I might ever have performed at any event like this. Nothing... this was surely someone else, who resembled almost perfectly. I was transfixed, unable to change channels, considerably bemused, until the performance ended (alas, without a clue as to my doppel's identity).
Posted by: William | November 16, 2009 12:21 PM | Reply
My interpretation of the uncanny valley effect is that it is something that all humans do when they encounter another human; in effect they do a Turing test to see if the entity they are encountering is “human enough”. If the other human fails the Turing test, then xenophobia is triggered.
Essentially it is a test of the communication protocols that the two humans are using to communicate, their respective “theories of mind”. In a very fundamental sense, all that can be communicated are mental concepts, as instantiated in mental hardware as brain states. To communicate a mental state, one translates the mental concepts into language via a theory of mind, transmits the data stream of the language, the receiving party collects the data stream and then translates it back into mental concepts via their resident theory of mind. If the two individuals don’t have the same translation protocols for translating the language data stream into mental concepts (i.e. the same “theory of mind”), they cannot communicate. The only possible things that they can communicate are mental states that both brains are able to instantiate. If the neurological hardware doesn’t have the capacity to support thinking a mental concept, that concept cannot be thought.
If the error rate becomes too high, then the other party “fails” the Turing test and xenophobia is triggered.
I think this is the source of essentially all bigotry and racism. Such things are the “default” interaction mode when someone fails the Turing test. Xenophobia can also be learned and a person can train themselves to not invoke xenophobia when they meet someone who fails their Turing test, or they can make their Turing test so narrow and specific that everyone invokes xenophobia.
This is why the Teabaggers hate liberals so much. They are unable to understand liberals as human beings, so xenophobia is invoked, feelings of hate are produced, and reasons are made up post-hoc to justify why there is such hatred. I think this is the same with all forms of bigotry. This is why arguing with Teabaggers is useless. They didn’t arrive at their feelings of hatred by facts and logic, facts and logic won’t change how they feel.
It is the feelings that come first, the rationalizations are latched onto later and don’t need to make any sense. This is why the Obama “death panel” meme was so effective. The Conservatives have such hatred of Obama, that they do feel he is like Hitler. The feelings of hatred are about the Teabaggers not having the capacity to understand what Obama stands for, what he is doing, how he is thinking and what he intends to do. They have latched onto their feelings of hatred and are justifying the intensity of those feelings with truly wacky ideas, that Obama is a terrorist and that Obama wants to kill millions of people, just like Hitler did. It is pure delusion.
I actually come at this through my autism research. Usually xenophobia is triggered via the uncanny valley because there are cultural differences in body language, customs, accents, word use, myriad little things that are difficult to articulate. Many of these are completely unconscious communication modalities and are very difficult to teach or mimic. People from different cultures have them, the details are simply different and it shows up as an increased error rate. In contrast, people with autism lack (to a degree) the brain structures that perform these subtle communication protocols. People with autism can’t produced a nuanced communication with all the detailed cultural protocols because they don’t have the neurological hardware to do so. This lack of the protocols due to the lack of the hardware triggers the uncanny valley in a gigantic way. This is why people with autism are so abused. This is why curebie parents “hate” autism so much. What has happened is that because their child cannot communicate with them the way they are hard-wired to expect, xenophobia against their own child has been triggered. I think this is the reason for the stories of changelings, the triggering of the uncanny valley in a parent by their child. The curebie parents have then displaced the feelings of hatred they have for their child with autism onto what they perceive as having “caused” the autism, big pharma, vaccines, mercury, or anyone who is not “fighting” with them against the monstrous evil that has occurred (i.e. the neurodiverse who don’t perceive there to have been a monstrous evil).
Posted by: daedalus2u | November 16, 2009 1:03 PM | Reply
The above explanation makes a lot of sense. Think about words associated with racism and xenophobia - different, imperfect, unthinking, inhuman... the underlying theme is that all these are defense mechanisms, intended to distance the subject from the entity that is "not human enough". Words intended to denigrate the other to a status of a robot or an automaton...
What influences our tolerance for false positives though? Is it being raised in a racially-mixed environment, interacting with other races at childhood -- or is it a conscious action?
Posted by: Jim | November 16, 2009 1:39 PM | Reply
This reminds me of something that happened to me when I was a kid, perhaps 13 or 14 at most.
We had a pure-breed beagle, Molly. I grew up in a small town, so everyone pretty much new each other. Our neighbors knew we had a beagle.
One day, I walked out from our den, only to walk in to the living room in time to see a neighbor walk through the front door with a dog that looked very much like Molly ... except it was a basset hound, which, while similar in many ways to beagles, are much larger dogs.
It took me several moments to realize it was not the same dog. I can still remember the feeling I had in my gut before I realized it was a completely different dog, and I'm 28 now.
That incident brought on some weird reoccurring dreams. I'd dream of, say, my mom sleeping in the bedroom, only to walk into another room to find her there. Creeeeepy.
Posted by: marilove | November 16, 2009 3:02 PM | Reply
I left out some important info! The neighbor actually thought it *was* Molly, but it happened to be another neighbor's dog. When Molly came out, and we comared the sizes, it was pretty funny.
Posted by: marilove | November 16, 2009 4:31 PM | Reply
Jim #3, I think it happens when people lose the ability to form a "creole", that is when the "theory of mind" that one uses to communicate with becomes essentially fixed. I think that is when one can no longer learn a first language.
I think there is plasticity and one can learn to not be xenophobic, but I think it takes effort for most people who are neurologically typical. People who are on the autism spectrum (I think) have a lot easier time not being xenophobic.
I talk about this a lot in my post on "theory of mind" vs "theory of reality" which is the URL under my nym.
Posted by: daedalus2u | November 16, 2009 7:34 PM | Reply
Wow, this really makes you think about identity and xenophobia, racism and tolerance and what it means to be you. For what it's worth, here's my story of the uncanny valley:
I was living in a small apartment with a roommate, and one night I had a dream that took place in a room with sideways fold-down berths, like a nautical vessel. Gradually as I came to consciousness, I realized that I was seeing this room while awake, and what's more, I couldn't move my arms or legs. Just when I was starting to panic about some kind of bizarre abduction, my roommate walked in sideways through the "back" of a "berth," and I realized I was looking at my bedroom sideways. During the night, my head had flopped down off the side of my bed, such that I was facing the open door, which looked at that angle like a fold-down berth. At that angle, my kinesthesia had been thrown off, such that I felt like I was paralyzed.
Posted by: Matthew | November 18, 2009 9:13 AM | Reply
Let's put it the other way. I "blame" the human perception of reality. If something is not quite right (or at least seems so), we try to adapt the reality, not the perception. You see this especially in politics... :)
Posted by: vac_65 | November 20, 2009 1:33 PM | Reply
Good point, vac
Posted by: anon | November 20, 2009 1:57 PM | Reply
Reading Greg Laden's piece made me wonder if the uncanny valley could have originated as a self-preservation response when we were intermingling with neanderthals...? Apparently we interbred, but it could still be possible that something was ingrained in humans to be wary of these "almost-humans" and avoid them to make sure that our own species was preserved.
Posted by: Josh | November 20, 2009 5:12 PM | Reply
Regarding the Turing test and almost-human "others". In rural communities there is the perception that everything (food, water, goods, happiness) is in limited and finite supply. So when a stranger or a group of strangers compete for the same pool of goods with the indigenous people, then every pretext, every motive to exclude the newcomers is good enough. And the best is "They are not humans like us". Scary...
Posted by: vac_65 | November 20, 2009 7:27 PM | Reply