WEBVTT - Is the Uncanny Valley Real? 0:00:01.120 --> 0:00:04.600 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works 0:00:04.600 --> 0:00:13.600 dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, 0:00:13.640 --> 0:00:16.599 and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:20.279 doing the robot, which means this is stuff you should know. 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:26.000 Robot stot. I knew i'd get a laughout. EA, sooner 0:00:26.040 --> 0:00:28.680 or later? Did you do the robot? Can you do 0:00:28.720 --> 0:00:31.520 the robot? I think I've seen you do pretty bad robot. 0:00:32.159 --> 0:00:35.080 I don't know about pretty bad robot. I can do 0:00:35.120 --> 0:00:38.720 a pretty great robot, that's what you've seen. I can't 0:00:38.760 --> 0:00:41.480 do any of that stuff. Yeah, I can't really either, 0:00:42.080 --> 0:00:45.800 and didn't really. If if you're claim to fame is 0:00:45.880 --> 0:00:49.240 like a really great robot dance, I don't know, maybe 0:00:49.720 --> 0:00:52.360 take up some other hobbies as well, kind of round 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:54.880 that out. You don't want them to be the only 0:00:54.920 --> 0:00:58.360 thing you're good at, right, because if you list that 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:03.840 on the dating site, you might turn ladies off. Yeah, 0:01:04.520 --> 0:01:07.920 according to e Harmony, Yeah, that's foreshadowing. I love that one, 0:01:07.959 --> 0:01:12.600 don't you. Yeah, that's some issues with that whole Oh yeah, yeah, 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:15.400 we'll get to that. This is tad all right. Well, 0:01:15.440 --> 0:01:18.160 let's start the at the beginning. Almost the beginning. Chuck, 0:01:18.240 --> 0:01:21.240 let's go back to nineteen seventy, which was the beginning 0:01:21.280 --> 0:01:24.319 of the greatest decade in the history of humanity. Yeah, 0:01:24.440 --> 0:01:26.680 neither one of us were born yet I can finally 0:01:26.720 --> 0:01:29.840 even say that I'm still not even born. It must 0:01:29.880 --> 0:01:36.680 feel good. Yeah, okay, well, welcome to the club. I guess. Thanks. 0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:39.360 And in nineteen seventy, we're not just going just anywhere 0:01:39.360 --> 0:01:42.000 at nights seven, We're going to Japan in nineteen seventy. 0:01:42.640 --> 0:01:45.479 Japan was pretty cool in the seventies. Yeah, a lot 0:01:45.480 --> 0:01:50.080 of bell bottoms, a lot of ninja running around. Still, um, 0:01:50.560 --> 0:01:55.960 there were calculators being wheelded all over the place. Probably 0:01:56.160 --> 0:01:58.920 it was a good time, good good time for Japan, right, 0:02:00.280 --> 0:02:02.920 and one of the one of the things that was 0:02:03.000 --> 0:02:05.880 going on in nineteen seventy. I could not, for the 0:02:05.920 --> 0:02:10.120 life of me find what issue of this journal it 0:02:10.200 --> 0:02:12.280 came out in what month, But at some point in 0:02:12.400 --> 0:02:17.800 nineteen seventy there was an obscure journal, a Japanese academic 0:02:17.880 --> 0:02:21.640 journal called Energy, and at some point during that year 0:02:21.680 --> 0:02:27.080 it published a article by a Japanese roboticist, and his 0:02:27.200 --> 0:02:31.760 name is Massa Hiro Mori. Thank you, I have a 0:02:31.760 --> 0:02:36.120 lot of practice, and uh, Massa Hiro Omori uh published 0:02:36.120 --> 0:02:39.200 this article and he named it Bukimi no Tani gen 0:02:39.280 --> 0:02:41.919 show is actually the full name of the whole thing. 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:45.240 And as we'll see, it's kind of difficult to translate 0:02:45.360 --> 0:02:50.880 into English, right, and it took many, many years after 0:02:51.040 --> 0:02:54.200 he wrote this article for it to be translated into 0:02:54.240 --> 0:02:57.240 English for anybody even try to attempt it. So basically, 0:02:57.480 --> 0:03:02.400 Mori was this robotic cyst and he wrote this essay 0:03:02.440 --> 0:03:04.240 and at the time he just put it out there 0:03:04.320 --> 0:03:08.520 and went back to work, started teaching more and more roboticists. 0:03:08.520 --> 0:03:11.480 The whole new generation of roboticists learned under him and 0:03:11.560 --> 0:03:15.519 his his work just kind of sat there. Um unobserved 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:18.560 that article, i should say, and then in two thousand 0:03:18.720 --> 0:03:23.040 five a rough translation of it was leaked out wasn't 0:03:23.080 --> 0:03:28.280 intended for publication, and the world entirely changed, right because 0:03:28.360 --> 0:03:32.680 Massa Hiro Morty had in his article put his finger 0:03:32.760 --> 0:03:35.960 on something that no one had before in his capacities 0:03:35.960 --> 0:03:39.840 a roboticist and a human and that was what we 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:45.680 call today the uncanny Valley. Yeah, so that's um the 0:03:45.760 --> 0:03:49.960 idea that, uh, you're making a robot and we'll see 0:03:49.960 --> 0:03:52.680 this apply some more than just robots. But in his case, 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:54.360 you're making a robot and you want to make it 0:03:54.400 --> 0:03:59.440 look like a person um, which I guess not all roboticists, 0:04:00.160 --> 0:04:02.440 some of them like the clunky jets and style robots 0:04:03.320 --> 0:04:06.200 like Rosy. But I guess if you're Mori, you're you're 0:04:06.320 --> 0:04:10.040 on the path to designing lifelike robots. And the closer 0:04:10.120 --> 0:04:14.520 you get to that lifelike look, everything's going great. Everything's 0:04:14.560 --> 0:04:16.440 going great, people are like, this is so cool, this 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:18.679 is so cool, and then all of a sudden, people 0:04:18.680 --> 0:04:24.200 go oh like right as it approaches it's most or basically, 0:04:24.200 --> 0:04:28.280 when it reaches its most lifelike capacity, that this whoever's 0:04:28.320 --> 0:04:33.520 making it can conjure people are repulsed by it. Yeah, 0:04:33.560 --> 0:04:37.080 which is something that most people who ever hear of 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:40.159 the Uncanny Valley are like, yeah, you know, that's I've 0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:43.000 noticed that. That's happened to me before too. But the 0:04:43.000 --> 0:04:45.960 thing is, Chuck, it doesn't it doesn't actually make sense, right, Like, 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:50.280 we know a robot is a robot. Yeah, so you know, 0:04:50.480 --> 0:04:52.280 maybe you could be afraid that it's gonna like pick 0:04:52.360 --> 0:04:54.240 you up and break you in two or something like 0:04:54.279 --> 0:04:57.400 a cartoon, but that's different than being creeped out by 0:04:57.520 --> 0:04:59.560 like why would we be creeped out by a robot? 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:02.200 And this is what Morey put his finger on, was 0:05:02.960 --> 0:05:06.480 there's something to this and it doesn't make sense, and 0:05:07.000 --> 0:05:10.520 he he didn't. It wasn't even just um this article 0:05:10.560 --> 0:05:13.720 that he wrote. He created a graph as well that's 0:05:13.720 --> 0:05:18.039 become quite famous that um really kind of gets the 0:05:18.040 --> 0:05:20.599 point across more than anything else. Yeah, And he wasn't 0:05:20.640 --> 0:05:23.000 even the first person to to go over this and 0:05:23.040 --> 0:05:26.640 to put a put some thought to it. Freud of course, 0:05:26.680 --> 0:05:30.200 because he'd like to think about everything. He thought about 0:05:30.200 --> 0:05:33.240 a little bit. And before Freud, there was a a 0:05:33.360 --> 0:05:38.400 Geman name anst yinched. Oh nice. I did not realize 0:05:38.400 --> 0:05:41.520 that's how his last name should be pronounced. That's good stuff. 0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:42.719 I think I put a tea on the end, but 0:05:42.760 --> 0:05:46.440 the teas in the middle, yinch. Yeah, I think that's right. 0:05:46.839 --> 0:05:49.600 I've been saying, Gentch. We don't. We'll have to look 0:05:49.600 --> 0:05:51.400 that up. Then. I think you're no. I think of 0:05:51.480 --> 0:05:54.680 the two of us, you're you got the German down. Uh. 0:05:54.720 --> 0:05:58.880 And he had a little term called um heimlich uh 0:05:58.920 --> 0:06:01.400 that he called it so like you know, different languages 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:04.680 had different names for it. Um and you go back 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:07.200 in time, all the way back to like the seventeenth century, 0:06:07.680 --> 0:06:10.560 and people were and I guess you know, robots didn't 0:06:10.560 --> 0:06:13.160 look super lifelike back then, but whatever their version of 0:06:13.200 --> 0:06:17.200 life like was. Uh. In the sixteen hundreds, people were like, 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:20.360 I don't like that. Why is it looking at me? Yeah, 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:23.280 it's got a quill and it's writing things. But like 0:06:23.320 --> 0:06:27.719 you said, Maury made this graph because he was a roboticist, 0:06:27.800 --> 0:06:29.479 and he thought, you know, let's look at this on 0:06:29.520 --> 0:06:33.359 a plotted out so we can stare at it. And 0:06:33.560 --> 0:06:37.560 on the X axis he had human likeness. Then on 0:06:37.600 --> 0:06:40.160 the y axis he had affinity, like whether or not 0:06:40.400 --> 0:06:43.479 you like the way this thing looks. And just as 0:06:43.680 --> 0:06:46.240 we're talking about um, the graph went up and up 0:06:46.640 --> 0:06:49.600 as uh, things got more lifelike and people like the 0:06:49.640 --> 0:06:52.200 way look And then at a certain point there's that 0:06:52.360 --> 0:06:56.720 valley there's a big dip. Uh. That really just kind 0:06:56.720 --> 0:07:01.080 of says it all right, And again this all makes 0:07:01.080 --> 0:07:04.400 sense intuitively, but as we'll see, that's it's been very 0:07:04.440 --> 0:07:07.400 difficult to prove. And one of the reasons why it's 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:12.760 confounded research thus far is because we were not even 0:07:13.600 --> 0:07:17.240 sure what more meant by some of the words he chose, 0:07:17.320 --> 0:07:19.880 at least as far as translating them to English. Right. 0:07:20.680 --> 0:07:26.480 Um For example, boukimi. Right, it was translated in two 0:07:26.560 --> 0:07:31.040 thousand five as uncanny, but um again that that original 0:07:31.080 --> 0:07:34.600 translation was not intended for publication, but it leaked out, 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:39.760 and so Uncanny Valley became, you know, the the way 0:07:39.800 --> 0:07:42.000 we all think of it here in the West. But 0:07:42.120 --> 0:07:47.160 boukimi more closely resembles something like eerie. Like I've seen 0:07:47.160 --> 0:07:51.960 it explain that, Um, a word like boukimi means more 0:07:52.080 --> 0:07:55.960 than uncanny is just weird or remarkable or noteworthy. It's 0:07:55.960 --> 0:07:58.960 not necessarily something that gives you the creeps. Boukimi is 0:07:59.000 --> 0:08:05.720 something that that gives you the creeps, like Steve Bukimi's exactly. Um. 0:08:05.840 --> 0:08:10.440 So bukimi probably more should be should have been translated 0:08:10.480 --> 0:08:14.240 the Eerie Valley. But by the time an actual official 0:08:14.320 --> 0:08:19.000 translation that um Mori signed off on came out in 0:08:19.040 --> 0:08:21.520 two thousand twelve, the cat was out of the bag. 0:08:21.560 --> 0:08:24.040 Everybody knew of it as the Uncanny Valley, and there's 0:08:24.080 --> 0:08:26.360 no way anybody who's gonna come back and be like, no, no, no, 0:08:26.400 --> 0:08:32.040 everybody stop calling it that. It's now the Eerie Valley. Okay, right, 0:08:32.520 --> 0:08:34.120 all right, And it may be one of those things 0:08:34.160 --> 0:08:36.480 where we're so used to uncanny Valley now that it's 0:08:36.480 --> 0:08:38.760 hard to imagine eerie Valley. But right, I think that 0:08:38.840 --> 0:08:41.800 was the issue. Yeah, Like, nobody's gonna go along with that. 0:08:42.960 --> 0:08:45.320 So this graph, like I said, it starts off on 0:08:45.360 --> 0:08:47.679 that left hand side, and this is where you have 0:08:47.760 --> 0:08:51.920 things that are super robotic. Um like you know, a 0:08:51.960 --> 0:08:58.000 packaging robot in a factory, um that you know, apparently 0:08:58.000 --> 0:09:00.360 most people don't have funness for I do because I 0:09:00.400 --> 0:09:05.280 love mechanical processes, um right, right, Okay, So there's there's 0:09:05.320 --> 0:09:08.480 part of the problem. It's like that's not necessarily the 0:09:09.040 --> 0:09:12.800 kind of feeling that massa Hiro Morty was talking about. 0:09:12.920 --> 0:09:16.440 He was like, yeah, yeah, you're interested in robotics and 0:09:16.559 --> 0:09:19.760 robotic arms and the industrial processes, and you love watching 0:09:19.800 --> 0:09:22.920 how it's made. Right. What he was talking about was 0:09:23.000 --> 0:09:26.800 more like how it resembles a human and then how 0:09:26.840 --> 0:09:29.800 it makes you feel in relation to its resemblance of 0:09:29.800 --> 0:09:32.680 a human. Right. Well, in that case, it makes me 0:09:32.720 --> 0:09:35.280 feel nothing because it doesn't look at all like a human. Right, Okay, 0:09:35.320 --> 0:09:37.520 So that would be at about the origin of the graph. 0:09:37.640 --> 0:09:41.040 It has no resemblance to a human really, and it's 0:09:41.080 --> 0:09:44.440 not a listening any real affinity in you at all 0:09:45.280 --> 0:09:47.520 as far as it looking like a human, right, but 0:09:47.600 --> 0:09:51.280 lots of affinity as a thing that's just that's called props. 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:54.480 So you go a little bit further on the graph 0:09:54.600 --> 0:09:58.120 and then you have things like um little stuffed animals 0:09:58.160 --> 0:10:01.720 and uh no. C three po is is a common 0:10:01.760 --> 0:10:05.440 one that's mentioned because C three p O UM, you know, 0:10:05.800 --> 0:10:08.000 is built to look like a human. He does a 0:10:08.080 --> 0:10:11.320 great robot. It talks like a human and acts like 0:10:11.360 --> 0:10:13.840 a human. But when it comes to that face, and 0:10:13.840 --> 0:10:15.400 as we'll see, the face is kind of the key 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:18.600 to all this um. For the most part, C three 0:10:18.600 --> 0:10:20.800 po looks nothing like a human in the face. So 0:10:20.880 --> 0:10:23.959 everything is still good and people love C three po. Right, 0:10:24.040 --> 0:10:26.520 So if you're looking at the graph, C three p 0:10:26.640 --> 0:10:29.679 o is going up in human likeness because he kind 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:32.800 of you know, he's got some some commonality there, and 0:10:33.520 --> 0:10:37.440 we're feeling affinity for him based on that human likeness. 0:10:37.520 --> 0:10:42.600 So it's he's going up. Okay, We're going everything's going 0:10:42.720 --> 0:10:45.760 pretty well so far, right, Chuck, that's right, Okay, So 0:10:45.800 --> 0:10:48.880 then we're gonna start hitting some areas where things start 0:10:48.920 --> 0:10:51.559 looking a little more human, a lot more human, I 0:10:51.600 --> 0:10:53.960 would say than c three p o, like say the 0:10:54.120 --> 0:10:58.720 characters in mo Wanna or Frozen, uh picks our characters 0:10:58.760 --> 0:11:01.880 that kind of thing where where they look like they're 0:11:01.880 --> 0:11:04.720 supposed to be human, like they're based on human, but 0:11:04.800 --> 0:11:08.160 they have very exaggerated features that you would never confuse 0:11:08.240 --> 0:11:11.640 at first glance for an actual human. Right, So they 0:11:11.640 --> 0:11:14.160 have like bi a guys, small noses, things that make 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:18.640 them cute, right, And so our affinity for them is 0:11:18.679 --> 0:11:21.600 going up as the human likeness is going up. Again, 0:11:21.800 --> 0:11:24.600 things are going really well so far, that's right, because 0:11:24.640 --> 0:11:27.200 in Mowanna and Frozen they look a little bit more 0:11:27.240 --> 0:11:29.080 like people, and we like them a lot more for 0:11:29.160 --> 0:11:33.600 that reason. And then, like you said earlier, out of nowhere, 0:11:34.200 --> 0:11:36.480 the whole thing, this line that's just been going up 0:11:36.600 --> 0:11:42.520 very pleasantly, and a nice little slope just drops downward, right, 0:11:42.559 --> 0:11:46.000 and it doesn't drop just downward, it goes actually below 0:11:46.160 --> 0:11:50.760 the X axis into negative territory. And now this is 0:11:50.760 --> 0:11:54.439 the Uncanny Valley, that's right, And that's why it has 0:11:54.480 --> 0:11:56.920 that name because it's a valley, right, And this is 0:11:56.960 --> 0:12:01.400 where those things like really really life like androids live, 0:12:02.320 --> 0:12:09.439 or um corpses live, or zombies live. Because Maury he 0:12:09.440 --> 0:12:13.920 he had the idea that if something's moving, is even 0:12:14.040 --> 0:12:17.360 creepier than something similar to it that's not moving. So 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:20.920 he actually created two lines on this graph, one for 0:12:21.040 --> 0:12:23.840 things that are animate and one for things that are inanimate. 0:12:24.080 --> 0:12:27.000 So if you look at this uncanny valley on the 0:12:27.120 --> 0:12:30.679 inanimate line, the non moving line, you've got corpses are 0:12:30.720 --> 0:12:33.199 at the bottom of it. But if you look at 0:12:33.200 --> 0:12:37.120 the animate line, it's even it dips even further below 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:39.480 than the inanimate line, and at the bottom of those 0:12:39.480 --> 0:12:42.800 are zombies. So dead people up and moving around and 0:12:42.840 --> 0:12:46.360 saying brains is as creepy as it gets as far 0:12:46.400 --> 0:12:49.520 as this graph is concerned. Yeah, and he Maria wasn't 0:12:49.520 --> 0:12:52.360 the only one that um earns yinch that we talked about. 0:12:52.440 --> 0:12:56.280 The German psychiatrists. Uh. He also talked about the fact 0:12:56.280 --> 0:12:58.800 that if you are looking at something that should not 0:12:58.840 --> 0:13:01.480 be moving and it moves. Um, I mean, I think 0:13:01.480 --> 0:13:04.640 we can all agree that a baby doll that suddenly 0:13:04.720 --> 0:13:07.520 turns its head and looks at you probably one of 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:10.440 the creepier things you can witness, right, you know, Yeah, 0:13:10.440 --> 0:13:12.680 it's about as creepy as it gets or um, have 0:13:12.800 --> 0:13:17.480 you ever been to an open casket funeral? A few? 0:13:17.840 --> 0:13:22.280 I'm not a fan at all. No, it is it 0:13:22.440 --> 0:13:25.720 makes sense. You know, we've really kind of closed or 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:28.160 put a lot of space in between us and death, 0:13:28.200 --> 0:13:29.720 way more than we used to have in like the 0:13:29.800 --> 0:13:33.640 nineteenth century sit up with the dead. Sure, right, so 0:13:33.679 --> 0:13:35.880 this seems to be like kind of a holdover from that. 0:13:36.480 --> 0:13:39.560 But if you've ever been to uh an open casket 0:13:39.600 --> 0:13:42.960 funeral and have just stared at the corpse long enough, 0:13:43.000 --> 0:13:46.000 like maybe it's arm or it's fingers or something, your 0:13:46.040 --> 0:13:49.000 brain is so anticipating that they it's about to start 0:13:49.040 --> 0:13:51.720 moving that sometimes you can creep yourself out and and 0:13:51.760 --> 0:13:54.760 make yourself think you did actually see it move. You'll 0:13:54.760 --> 0:13:57.200 also be asked to leave the funeral. Well you shouldn't 0:13:57.200 --> 0:13:59.840 be like giving a commentary about this out loud, but 0:14:00.080 --> 0:14:02.000 you can. You know, you can do it to pass 0:14:02.040 --> 0:14:06.360 the time in the funeral if you're looking to to 0:14:06.440 --> 0:14:10.199 kill some time. Uh So, here's the thing with all this, Um, 0:14:10.360 --> 0:14:13.080 we know this happens because everyone kind of has this feeling, 0:14:13.640 --> 0:14:16.199 but no one and all this research has been done, 0:14:16.200 --> 0:14:20.200 and no one is exactly sure why this happens. So, uh, 0:14:20.520 --> 0:14:23.920 Maury's essay and especially once it was translated, Um, a 0:14:23.960 --> 0:14:28.160 lot of research started happening in this area. And uh, 0:14:28.280 --> 0:14:31.520 it's problematic though, because there are there are a few 0:14:31.560 --> 0:14:36.840 different problems. One is, well, it's it's subjective. This dependent variable, 0:14:36.880 --> 0:14:40.520 whether you have an affinity for something is very subjective, 0:14:40.640 --> 0:14:44.400 so it's hard to kind of nail that down scientifically, right, 0:14:44.640 --> 0:14:48.480 all right, So the number two is human likeness, right, 0:14:48.600 --> 0:14:55.760 this is the independent variable. And if you have human likeness, 0:14:55.800 --> 0:14:58.200 like what does that mean? Like what looks human? What 0:14:58.280 --> 0:15:02.040 doesn't look human? But we haven't pinned that down. So like, 0:15:02.080 --> 0:15:04.880 if you can't pin the dependent variable down and the 0:15:04.920 --> 0:15:08.320 independent variable down, it makes it really tough to study correct. 0:15:09.000 --> 0:15:11.440 And then there's a third one too. I love this one. Yeah. 0:15:11.480 --> 0:15:14.480 The third one is, uh, you know, the original hypothesis. 0:15:14.520 --> 0:15:19.360 It doesn't have a mathematical model that like really specifies 0:15:19.440 --> 0:15:24.960 the shape of this curve, so it's still hypothetical, I guess, right, 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:28.680 Which means that so if you look at Mori's graph, 0:15:28.760 --> 0:15:31.000 it was he just basically made a line, right, It 0:15:31.040 --> 0:15:33.760 wasn't based on any studies he'd done. The whole thing 0:15:33.840 --> 0:15:38.080 was really an essay more than anything else. UM. So, 0:15:38.480 --> 0:15:42.320 researchers who are trying to seriously study the scientifically have 0:15:42.560 --> 0:15:47.040 nothing that they're actually trying to place their findings against, 0:15:47.360 --> 0:15:50.520 which leads to uh put it puts them at risk 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:54.520 for what's called the Texas sharpshooter fallacy. Greatest name fallacy 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:58.040 around and um it's it's based on the idea that 0:15:58.440 --> 0:16:00.920 if you take a sharpshooter in Texas and have them 0:16:00.920 --> 0:16:03.280 shoot at the side of a barn a bunch of times, 0:16:03.600 --> 0:16:06.360 some of them are inevitably going to hit the barn, 0:16:06.760 --> 0:16:09.240 and then the Texas sharpshooter walks up and then draws 0:16:09.280 --> 0:16:12.720 the bull's eye around the bullets that he already sunk 0:16:12.760 --> 0:16:15.480 into the side of the barn. That's the Texas sharpshooter fallacy. 0:16:15.560 --> 0:16:18.200 It's ignoring data like the ones where he missed the 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:21.320 barn in favor of ones that fall into what you're 0:16:21.360 --> 0:16:24.560 looking for, the bullet holes in the barn. You could 0:16:24.560 --> 0:16:28.360 do the same thing with the um data that you 0:16:28.400 --> 0:16:31.080 get from testing the Uncanny Valley if you have no 0:16:31.200 --> 0:16:34.480 model to fit it into already. Yeah, I think they 0:16:34.480 --> 0:16:36.600 would have done better if they would have just instead 0:16:36.600 --> 0:16:41.600 of trying to prove something, uh, to maybe just research 0:16:41.680 --> 0:16:45.040 and call it a thought experiment, you know, right, But 0:16:45.160 --> 0:16:47.680 people are taking it seriously and we'll we'll talk about 0:16:47.720 --> 0:17:16.639 some of this research right after this, chuck. Alright, So 0:17:16.680 --> 0:17:21.679 we're back. And despite the fact that this is really 0:17:21.720 --> 0:17:24.280 tough to study, it's not even established that it's a 0:17:24.320 --> 0:17:28.080 real thing in everyone's mind. By the way, Um, there 0:17:28.119 --> 0:17:31.879 there are people out there who are really studying the 0:17:32.040 --> 0:17:35.040 Uncanny Valley and trying to pin it down. Yeah. One 0:17:35.040 --> 0:17:38.320 of these people is at Dartmouth College psychologists. And I 0:17:38.359 --> 0:17:46.160 didn't look up there mascot, the the the pub darts, 0:17:46.440 --> 0:17:49.040 the fighting pub darts at Dartmouth College. We're gonna hear 0:17:49.080 --> 0:17:52.520 from Dartmouth. But her name is Talia Wheatley. Um. And 0:17:52.560 --> 0:17:54.480 she's done some research and has found that it's not 0:17:54.560 --> 0:17:59.560 just like some uniquely Western thing or American thing. It's 0:17:59.600 --> 0:18:01.760 kind of all over the world. She studied tribes and 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:06.919 Cambodia and they have the same sensitivities to these things 0:18:06.960 --> 0:18:09.920 that look human but aren't human. Uh. And they've even 0:18:09.960 --> 0:18:12.400 found that and I think it kind of all comes 0:18:12.400 --> 0:18:14.960 down to the eyes. But they found just looking at 0:18:14.960 --> 0:18:19.320 the eye can be enough. Yeah, Um, somebody can tell 0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:21.840 whether it's a human or not just looking at a 0:18:21.840 --> 0:18:24.879 picture of the eye, right. Yeah. And that's where I 0:18:24.920 --> 0:18:29.520 think people lose credibility. And and we'll talk about movies 0:18:29.560 --> 0:18:32.280 and sculpture and all that stuff, but they just never 0:18:32.400 --> 0:18:34.640 get you can't get the eyes right, Like, you can't 0:18:34.680 --> 0:18:39.760 put life in lifeless eyes? How are they try? Only 0:18:39.800 --> 0:18:44.800 God can? Uh? And there was this other experiment where they, um, 0:18:45.600 --> 0:18:48.240 you know, like where you can morph a face, uh 0:18:48.280 --> 0:18:52.119 digitally or whatever like that Michael Jackson Black or White video. Yeah. 0:18:52.240 --> 0:18:54.000 I think some people are creeped out by that even 0:18:55.160 --> 0:18:57.760 but they would show this dull image and it would 0:18:57.800 --> 0:19:00.480 morph into a human face. And basically they would have 0:19:00.520 --> 0:19:04.080 people mark where they where they thought that it would 0:19:04.720 --> 0:19:07.240 look more human than doll and it you know, it 0:19:07.320 --> 0:19:11.680 landed about the mark as far as morphing into human, 0:19:12.000 --> 0:19:14.639 which I mean you can't really apply that necessarily, but 0:19:14.800 --> 0:19:20.560 just it's interesting. Offhand point is about where the Uncanny 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:24.199 Valley happened in Maury's mind. Yeah, I would think it 0:19:24.200 --> 0:19:27.879 would be higher than that, but um, yeah, it's still 0:19:27.880 --> 0:19:31.280 super interesting. Um. And you were saying that the eyes, 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:34.199 and that's what you're betting on is that it's going 0:19:34.240 --> 0:19:36.840 to turn out to be the eyes, right. So, trying 0:19:36.880 --> 0:19:42.200 to investigate what constitutes human likeness, there's a researcher named 0:19:42.240 --> 0:19:46.120 Angela Tinwell, and she basically says, like, yes, it's all 0:19:46.160 --> 0:19:51.160 about the upper facial features and that we we detect those, 0:19:51.200 --> 0:19:55.200 we we read those, and so if there's any anything 0:19:55.240 --> 0:19:58.640 that's even just slightly off in like you know, the eyes, 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:03.520 or the brows or the wrinkles, that form um that 0:20:03.600 --> 0:20:07.280 will lead to the uncanny valley that's the creeping part 0:20:07.720 --> 0:20:10.240 or the smile too. She also says, well, yeah, and 0:20:10.280 --> 0:20:12.320 all these things kind of come down to evolution, and 0:20:12.400 --> 0:20:15.480 her point is like, you can't battle millions of years 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:19.800 of evolution that his honed are our dumb, little human 0:20:19.840 --> 0:20:24.400 brain to detect something that's off about a face. Uh, 0:20:24.600 --> 0:20:28.960 it's just too much to overcome. Basically, this other researcher 0:20:29.440 --> 0:20:35.080 named Carl F. McDorman, who's from the University of Indiana, 0:20:35.160 --> 0:20:40.359 who actually he's basically like dedicated his career to this. Now. Um, 0:20:40.440 --> 0:20:45.639 he found that certain kinds of people if you do 0:20:45.760 --> 0:20:51.000 like a personality inventory before testing for uncanny Valley sensitivity, 0:20:51.400 --> 0:20:55.399 some types of people are predictably more sensitive to the 0:20:55.520 --> 0:21:00.000 Uncanny Valley than others. Specifically, he found that very religious 0:21:00.080 --> 0:21:06.560 people that makes total sense. Yeah, neurotic people, um, and uh, 0:21:06.800 --> 0:21:12.680 people with high sensitivity to animal reminders. It's basically anything 0:21:13.080 --> 0:21:17.040 that reminds you that, hey, you're super civilized and you 0:21:17.160 --> 0:21:20.399 drive a car and you know how to play poker. Um, 0:21:20.440 --> 0:21:22.760 but you're still an animal, just as much as that 0:21:22.880 --> 0:21:27.040 ape over there is an animal reminder. Um. People who 0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:29.679 are sensitive to that kind of thing tend to go 0:21:29.760 --> 0:21:32.080 off on the uncanny Valley as well. And then people 0:21:32.080 --> 0:21:36.240 who are anxious are more likely to experience the uncanny 0:21:36.320 --> 0:21:39.320 Valley as far as McDorman is concerned. Yeah, that interesting 0:21:39.359 --> 0:21:41.600 makes sense too, because they're probably just more prone to 0:21:42.600 --> 0:21:46.159 be I don't know, just have a reaction to a 0:21:46.160 --> 0:21:48.680 lot of things like this. Right. But but we should 0:21:48.720 --> 0:21:51.960 say the science and all this, the fact that the 0:21:52.080 --> 0:21:56.240 independent and the dependent variable are still not defined, the 0:21:56.359 --> 0:22:00.080 science is this. This is like the scientific equivalent of 0:22:00.160 --> 0:22:04.200 that backward over the head half court basketball shot. Yeah, 0:22:04.400 --> 0:22:06.720 that's the level of science that these people are carrying 0:22:06.720 --> 0:22:09.679 out at this point because they're they're a lot of 0:22:09.720 --> 0:22:14.320 them sadly are conducting experiments based on something that again 0:22:14.440 --> 0:22:18.440 doesn't have a set dependent or independent variable. So how 0:22:18.480 --> 0:22:20.920 can you do that? As my question, Well, yeah, I 0:22:20.960 --> 0:22:23.560 mean because in each experiment, they're going to be using 0:22:24.440 --> 0:22:30.720 different uh stimuli, um, different faces, whether it's a doll 0:22:30.880 --> 0:22:33.879 or a wax figure or a c g I character, 0:22:34.040 --> 0:22:36.520 And then they're gonna be doing different things and have 0:22:36.560 --> 0:22:39.960 different expressions, and each person has their own subjective takes, 0:22:40.000 --> 0:22:43.040 so it is very tough thing to kind of nail down. Yeah, 0:22:43.040 --> 0:22:44.919 And I think some of them are actually trying to 0:22:45.040 --> 0:22:48.200 form the basis of this field of study right now, 0:22:48.240 --> 0:22:52.240 they're doing the groundwork. But I think some of them 0:22:52.280 --> 0:22:54.840 also are like just chasing headlines, Like there's no better 0:22:54.880 --> 0:22:57.560 way to get get into the media cycle with your 0:22:57.600 --> 0:23:01.000 study than than releasing some five endings on the Uncanny 0:23:01.080 --> 0:23:06.919 Valley people just love. Uh. One thing I thought was 0:23:06.960 --> 0:23:10.400 interesting was, um, at Princeton they tried this with monkeys 0:23:10.440 --> 0:23:13.080 and they found the same thing happened when they had 0:23:13.119 --> 0:23:17.320 these realistic looking but fake monkey faces. The monkeys were 0:23:17.440 --> 0:23:22.360 like it turned away. Um. It did make me think though, 0:23:22.400 --> 0:23:26.159 like all the you've seen these situations where like an 0:23:26.240 --> 0:23:30.040 orphaned animal has a a creepy puppet mother. Yeah, I 0:23:30.119 --> 0:23:32.720 know exactly what you're talking about, and they seem to 0:23:32.800 --> 0:23:34.879 like that. But however, and this is a bit of 0:23:34.880 --> 0:23:38.200 a spoiler, but um, towards the end of this article, 0:23:38.840 --> 0:23:41.679 it points out that human babies don't have this reaction 0:23:41.760 --> 0:23:44.360 at first either, and that it's kind of learned. So 0:23:44.640 --> 0:23:47.879 maybe that explains it. Maybe with the animals, I know 0:23:47.960 --> 0:23:52.680 you're talking about that that cage, Like, why are monkey mother? 0:23:53.560 --> 0:23:56.200 It's super creepy? Is it? Black and white photo? Well, no, 0:23:56.320 --> 0:23:58.159 I mean they do it. There's all kinds of animals. Well, 0:23:58.200 --> 0:24:00.240 they'll they have like a fake tiger or a fake 0:24:00.880 --> 0:24:04.359 duck or whatever, just so the animal will feed or 0:24:04.440 --> 0:24:06.320 I mean it's usually an animal that that milks from 0:24:06.359 --> 0:24:09.920 the mother, I guess. But um, it's a common thing 0:24:09.960 --> 0:24:14.080 they do for orphaned milk feeding or breastfeed animals. And 0:24:14.119 --> 0:24:18.040 they're always creepy. Huh. Well, I mean to us, but 0:24:18.160 --> 0:24:20.920