The Uncanny Valley Is Wrong

This Place · 235.7K views · 2020-07-27 · 18:24

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Overview

This Place argues that the uncanny valley is a flawed concept, since 'human likeness' is too broad and the supporting evidence is cherry-picked. It proposes that the creepiness really comes from how animated characters and robots move.

On Hacker News

Recommended as a convincing counterargument to the widely repeated idea of the uncanny valley.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2021–2021

Topics

Robotics Animation & visual effects Psychology & human behavior

What people said

MikeLumos · 2021-01 · Strong recommendation
As a counterpoint, here's an amazing video making a convincing argument that "Uncanny Valley" isn't a thing: [VIDEO]
Read the original HN comment ↗

Errancer · 2021-11 · Recommendation
Slightly off topic but there is an interesting argument to be made against the existence of 'Uncanny Valley' – [VIDEO] .
Read the original HN comment ↗

kortex · 2021-10 · Reference
The uncanny valley is wrong. Or rather, it is a result that appears due to the juxtaposition of robots with different goal criteria. Turns out, when you focus just on the devices which try to replicate both human likeness and emotional relate-ability (drop all the WALLe style cute but abstract ones), it's pretty linear based on how well that goal of emotional affect is achieved. [VIDEO]
Read the original HN comment ↗

Sources

Video by This Place, played through YouTube.

HN Library · Source license

Data and selection notes

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