The "uncanny" is the experience of a loss of control • Hacker News Board

Re: The "uncanny" is the experience of a loss of control

#31

Post by dclowd9901 » Fri, Jun 14, 2024, 5:14 PM UTC

qwery wrote: post #16

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 objecti…

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?

Re: The "uncanny" is the experience of a loss of control

#32

Post by kstenerud » Fri, Jun 14, 2024, 5:46 PM UTC

plusfour wrote: post #23

kstenerud wrote: post #9

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 wha…

> 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.

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.

Re: The "uncanny" is the experience of a loss of control

#33

Post by gigaflop » Fri, Jun 14, 2024, 6:18 PM UTC

EnigmaFlare wrote: post #7

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…

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.

Re: The "uncanny" is the experience of a loss of control

#34

Post by parrellel » Fri, Jun 14, 2024, 6:21 PM UTC

TacticalCoder wrote: post #8

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.

Except for that bit in the beginning where its "Young Jeff Bridges" that was exceptionally bad.

Re: The "uncanny" is the experience of a loss of control

#35

Post by atoav » Fri, Jun 14, 2024, 6:32 PM UTC

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.

Re: The "uncanny" is the experience of a loss of control

#36

Post by plusfour » Fri, Jun 14, 2024, 7:06 PM UTC

kstenerud wrote: post #32

plusfour wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

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.

Re: The "uncanny" is the experience of a loss of control

#37

Post by johnsmith4739 » Sat, Jun 15, 2024, 1:14 PM UTC

For what's worth - we have 2 perception systems, top down (essentially pattern recognition) and bottom up (requires sense-making). When we experience something that doesn't fit the first - automatic - our homeostasis is diminished as we experience less orientation/control ("what's this?"). Surprise is the emotion that activates this reassessment of our approach to the given stimulus. Quickly followed by our attention and then cognitive appraisal of the given stimulus that wasn't classifiable by the top-down automatic system.

The "uncanny" experience is given by this dissonance - "it looks like a face while it's not a face" - and it is just a shape of surprise as emotion. Surprise is a short lived emotion, quickly followed by a different one. The unease associated with the idea of "uncanny" is when we experience disgust as the second emotion. Not everybody experiences that. Some of us experience another emotions, like anticipation/curiosity.

The need for orientation, or to understand what is going on, is tightly interwoven with a sense of control. To have clarity about a situation is to have a sense of control and options become more apparent. When we don’t know what is going on in our environment, there can be high levels of stress and anxiety.

Re: The "uncanny" is the experience of a loss of control

#38

Post by EnigmaFlare » Tue, Jun 18, 2024, 1:37 AM UTC

lupire wrote: post #25

EnigmaFlare wrote: post #7

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…

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.

The people who would do the learning aren't the people suffering from being misunderstood so they won't.

I feel like I've improved at detecting fake smiles though, and am more comfortable seeing resting bitch face or real grumpy face than a fake smile that might be hiding hostility.