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Removed sentences below: Weasel language without factual proof or references.
-- Himasaram 10:13, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
Reference to zombies removed, because the linked article is completely irrelevant. Only the title mentions the zombies and the rest of the article is purely about Uncanny Valley without references to cinematography. There is no evidence that zombies are inherently disgusting. The real reason is probably that zombies are designed to be disgusting, while cuddly animals are designed to be cuddly. There was no shortage of appealing and attractive zombies, though. Just recently we saw Frankenstein's monster in Van Helsing, who was not particularly disgusting.
What does that actually mean? It's easy to make computer animated characters to be human-like enough - it's possible with any degree with realism and at any realism level we had successful movies. I don't remember any revulsion-inducing character making to the screen, by the way. And if we are talking about rendering 100% realistic humans, the problem was not Uncanny Valley, it's lack of processing power (both for render and for editing).
Paranoid 14:00, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I removed the following text by 199.46.200.230:
Reason: no evidence provided that Max Headroom was an example for Uncanny Valley. Google search doesn't show any evidence either. And the pics of Max I found were not scary or revulsive at all. Paranoid 21:50, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I was tickled by the idea of an actual place called Uncanny Valley, but I'm not sure it exists. A quick web search for Uncanny Valley, CA brings up an off beat travel guide and some speculation about Uncanny Valley being where the new Sunmaid raisins girl comes from. Nothing on line points to a real place. SamuellusSoccus 19:14, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
I removed reference to Ebert, because he applies the concept indiscriminately and it's not like there are many examples. Basically it's just Gollum and various unrelated crap like bad makeup in White Chicks. His comments on Gollum are not really well stated or particularly smart (see some critique here: [2]). Paranoid 22:52, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
With all due respect, Decumanus, this is bullshit. You take a single comment about some trash (White Chicks film), which I am not sure you even read instead of relying on my words, and you twist this into "a wider application in popular culture". As two prominent (albeit with a psychotic twist) American magicians would tell, this is bullshit!.
Removed text:
Please cite your sources for these facts. And if there are no sources, there is no place at Wikipedia for our personal fantasies.
P.S. I will reply to your last comment when I calm down a bit. ;) Paranoid 19:18, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Couldn't you guys have comprimised right from the get-go? I'm saddened that what should be a process of give-and-take devolved into name-calling and cries of "bullshit!" Like a usage panel in a dictionary, an enclopedia should not DEFINE terms, but merely report on how terms are defined in actual, real-world usage. This whole argument could be settled thusly: "Some argue that the principles of the Uncanny Valley concept can be applied in other fields, such as film and animation criticism. The film critic Roger Ebert has applied the Uncanny Valley to the use of make-up and costumes of humanoid creatures in movies. However, there has not been any significant scientific study of the concept in subjective, artistic fields."
In my humble opinion the comments of some figure in popular culture on the topic does not belong in an article covering a scientific topic of human psychology.
Now someone has added the comments of some cartoonist to the page too.
The article ought to focus on the research of the scientific community on this topic.
I have removed the cartoonist reference as it is utterly irrelevant, and more akin to some sort of cyber-graffiti/web site traffic generation scheme. Mattlach 16:55, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
Roger Ebert's use of this term certainly belongs in Wikipedia. Even if an individual writer may be of the opinion that Ebert's definition is a divergent one. Encyclopedias and dictionaries, at their best, never prescribe, they describe. And no encyclopedia worth its salt ever proscribes. Forbidding specific usages or forbidding knowledge simply aren't the purpose of references. Nor should they be. Nobody owns the English language–and it seems to be taking care of itself all right without a European-style academy to police it. Likewise, Wiki would be the less if every divergent opinion resulted in an attempt to silence or exclude. Deleting entire sections seems extreme and misguided.
A prescriptive approach would be to say: "Only X's use is correct. There are these other uses, but they're wrong."
A proscriptive approach would be to say: "Only X's use is deemed original and correct by Mr. Y. Therefore, he's deleting all other texts for your own good."
The descriptive approach, traditional at least since Samuel Johnson crafted the first truly successful dictionary of the English language, would be to say: "The term originated in... The most frequently used meaning is A. The second most frequently used meaning is B. Etc."
Rather than engaging in name-calling (with or without apologies––and some would say an "apology in advance" is no apology but a waste of good electrons ), it's clear that Wiki readers would be best served by efforts to define how this term is evolving in psychology, in robotics and in film criticism. If these term were widely divergent, the differences could be handled as a disambiguation in separate articles. However, that does not seem to be the case here. These usages all involve a negative reaction to a not entirely life-like rendering. That's far less distinction than say the use of the term "inflation" in cosmology, economics, and pneumatics, where a single term is used for three entirely different phenomena, and for which disambiguation would be fully appropriate.
Academia has long since incorporated the notion that distinctions between "high culture" and "low culture" are problematic at best. The writer's comment about "some figure in popular culture" is dismissive, but in a wider critical context profoundly naive. There are no insuperable, impermeable walls between the sciences and other disciplines. All disciplines profoundly influence each other. For example, the very word "robotics" which the writer above privileges as somehow higher than, or removed from, pop cultural comment did not even originate in the sciences:
"The acclaimed Czech playwright Karel Capek (1890-1938) made the first use of the word ‘robot’, from the Czech word for forced labor or serf. Capek was reportedly several times a candidate for the Nobel prize for his works and very influential and prolific as a writer and playwright. The use of the word Robot was introduced into his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) which opened in Prague in January 1921." [1]
As to Roger Ebert, whether or not an individual writer shares a high regard for Ebert's obvious intelligence, encyclopedic film knowledge or lexical correctness is immaterial. It is a fact that Ebert is widely regarded as one of the most cogent living film critics as evidenced by his success in all print and electronic media. Granted that does not make Ebert an expert in robotics! But it certainly makes him a highly articulate and influential opinion leader. He has used this term many times in film appreciation, most recently in his critique of the film "Avatar." [2] It stands to reason that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of regular readers will pick up this term from Eberts' use of it in this review alone. Many of them will likewise appropriate it for cinematic discussions. It stands to reason that at least some of those readers will turn to Wikipedia as an aid to further understanding the meaning that they have abstracted from Eberts' context: his meaning.
Wiki is ill served by deleting it.
Un Mundo ( talk) 18:20, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
References
Shouldn't the Y-Axis be labeled "Empathetic response" (or maybe "Emotional connection"), as the text describes? It doesn't describe the degree of emotion, but rather the positiveness of it.
Personally, I think the whole graph is ridiculous. And the examples pointless and arbitrary. Though I really like the concept of this article.
I removed a link to rotten tomatoes reviews of The Polar Express. Although I incorporated a small note in the section on computer animation, some may view this removal as my bias against the UV theory. So let me assure you that it is not, it's just my bias against sensationalism and insincere reporting of facts. Yes, there was at least one review [8] that called the CGI effects "more frightening than endearing", but
I have a very strong suspicion (again) that when someone doesn't like an animated work, he starts rationalising this dislike by appealing to the Uncanny Valley theory. Again, even though something needs to be written about it (come to think of it, I probably should add something along these lines, although that would be only my speculation, so it isn't good either...) Paranoid 21:00, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
this is starting to look like a significant fraction to me.
One of the problems with the polar express is the perception that it's supposed to look realistic. Unfortunately, that concept has pervaded the public perception of the movie, but it was NEVER true. The characters are not supposed to look "real". They're supposed to look like the paintings from the original book, which they "do". Fade ( talk) 15:25, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
Not that I think Roger Ebert is an expert on Uncanny Valley, but for what it's worth, here is what he says about this film [19]:
Not that it proves or disproves anything, but I thought some of you may be interested. Paranoid 10:07, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
two interesting related links.
Here's a web page on the Incredibles and how it avoids the Uncanny Valley.
and this: LATimes: The Race for Best Picture Grows Animated
Horn, the studio chief, said he was frustrated by the reviews. [...]
"I want to say, 'Excuse me, do you think the eyes of the characters in Pixar's movies — are they dead eyes? They aren't real, human eyes,' " Horn said.
To which I would answer that the Pixar eyes are animated by humans with great experience in capturing and exaggerating nuances of human expression, rather than relying on automated motion capture. He doesn't get why Pixar is better at this.
You may not agree with the arguments presented in the article or the references supporting them, but stripping sources from an article is fundamentally bad. PARTICULARLY the actual book about the subject! See Wikipedia:Cite sources - David Gerard 12:43, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
this article could use some images. like asimo or aibo or something? maybe some animatronic movie characters? - Omegatron 02:33, May 19, 2005 (UTC)
Despite many citations, "The Buddha in the Robot" contains no mention at all of the uncanny valley - I've read it all!
The first use I've seen is in "Robots: Fact, Fiction, and Prediction" by Jasia Reichardt (1978), page 26-27. Unfortunately no clear citation is given there.
However, I understand that the original article was writen in Japanese and the proper citation is:
M. Mori, Bukimi no tani (the uncanny valley), Energy, Vol. 7, pp. 33–35, 1970.
This is given by Hiroshi Ishiguro, "Android Science - Toward a new cross-interdisciplinary framework" [20]
Dave Chatting 6 July 2005 23:16 (UTC)
How could this work possibly not be considered pseudoscience? There's an extremely complex curve on this graph. I don't have immediately access to the original work, or the ability to understand Japanese. How does it justify such a complex curve? What was the methodology used to gather the data? How did they quantify "anthropomorphism" independently from "emotional response"? How many samples were gathered? Are the results reproducible? These questions absolutely must be answered for any scientific work. If my assumption that they were ignored is correct, this is pseudoscience. - Slamb
Given that the principle remains an unproven hypothesis for the time being, I think the sections {# 1 Valley of familiarity, # 2 Effects of movement, # 3 The significance of the uncanny} can be removed without any harm to the information content of the article. They attempt to demonstrate the principle with thought experiments, which really don't have much interest or explanatory power. The section on examples in film provides all the examples that should be necessary. -GRB.
If you're looking for scientific research and not just anecdotal evidence: The makers of flight simulators have discovered that if the simulations are too real, the pilots in training would get motion sickness. Making the simulation more obviously fake fixed the problem. Unfortunately, I read this a long time ago and don't remember the source. 24.14.172.8 ( talk) 17:34, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
To call this "pseudoscience" is to give it more credence than it deserves. From what is presented here, UV is just pure speculation. The opening paragraph calls UV a hypothesis but the article immediately attributes undue credence to it with the header "Theoretical basis" and then continues with various "theories" and explanations. Until something is proven, or at least has some basis in fact, one is speculating on fantasy. It is a waste of time to discuss various causes of a phenomena before establishing that the phenomena exists in the first place. The article fails to do that. As Slamb asks, "where is the data?" Something that makes "sense in a lot of ways" does not confirm existence. Nor does a plethora of people (or reviewers), discussing it. Science and history is rife with examples of "common sense" or "common knowledge" that was totally wrong. In reading the article, I had the distinct impression that Mori got an idea, threw some curves on a graph and called it "good" with no more basis in fact than the sex life of aliens. I don't know if the UV exists or not. What I am saying is before one speculates on the basis for a behavior, the behavior must be shown to exist. Otherwise one is blowing smoke.
ArtKocsis (
talk) 12:17, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
There is far too much emotion and not enough objectivity in this discussion. The notion of the Uncanny Valley is neither a hard science nor is it pseudoscience; it falls under the field of psychology, which is a social science. As such, inter-subjective reports are relevant if collected in a wide enough sample under suitable conditions. I do agree with the objection over the word 'hypothesis' - the right word would be 'conjecture' (
/info/en/?search=Conjecture).
Metamorphmuses (
talk) 03:44, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
I spotted a bit of POV in here, don't know if anyone wants to have a go at fixing it. Here's the end of one paragraph.
And here's the beginning of the next:
It goes straight from saying that some refute that filmmakers have dealt with it, to stating as fact that it appears in the Final Fantasy film. If I were to try fixing it, I'd probably end up hacking out most of the paragraph, so I'll give someone else a go. - Vague | Rant 11:23, September 12, 2005 (UTC)
I added a counterpoint to the POV of not encountering it based on two of Pixar's films (one is a less known short one, which whilst on their site isn't made as apparent as you might expect). Again, the content is based on opinion, but I hope I made clear it's simply a counterpoint in the debate, not something that's been empirically studied. Feel free to move it around as you think necessary. Sir Brutus
I never had any problems with the Final Fantasy movie or The Flight of the Osiris. What a complete, steaming pile of horseshit. Final Fantasy just plain flopped, nothing more. Roger Ebert, who talks about the Uncanny Valley in his review of Team America: World Police said nothing about it in his (positive) review of Final Fantasy. Ebert: "She has an eerie presence that is at once subtly unreal and yet convincing. Her movements (which mirror the actions of real actors) feel about right, and her hair blows convincingly in the wind. The first closeup of her face and eyes is startling because the filmmakers are not afraid to give us a good, long look--they dare us not to admire their craft." Wow, he sounds truly disgusted there, doesn't he? Can anyone cite any sources that lead to any research on the uncanny valley and its relationship to this movie, or to the Polar Express? Any actual research, rather than speculation? Maybe--just a crazy guess here--The Incredibles did better because Pixar has a reputation for fun movies and the commercial showcasing a movie with a train that slides on ice and dancing waiters didn't generate the same kind of excitement.-- SpacemanAfrica 04:39, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure, but I have the feeling that the middle paragraph is the source article for the Uncanny Valley, printed in full. Is this true? -- till we ☼☽ | Talk 11:20, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
I don't think so, the source states that, "Copyright (c) 2005 Karl F. MacDorman and Takashi Minato. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2." This contribution was also made by User:Macdorman, presumably the article's author. -- Dave Chatting 18:42, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
Minato and I translated the work and posted the work, so I am not sure which copyright I am supposed to have violated. Masahiro Mori asked that the work be included in the workshop proceedings, so I listed it with your standard GNU CopyLeft notice. If I made an error, I will correct it. -- Karl MacDorman, November 10, 2005.
I don't know, it seems to me that this section isn't needed. It offers too little relevant information to be useful for someone trying to understand what the Uncanny Valley effect is, instead it just gives references that people have made to the effect. Unless someone disagrees, I'll remove it. MrC 05:28, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
The use of references is good, but we shouldn't just copy the original paper word-for-word, as this article appears to. The first person references, unusual style, and other anomalies ought to be fixed. -- Explodicle 04:25, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
I removed the word 'mechas' and replaced with 'androids' in reference to AI:Artificial Intelligence. 'Mechas' is a Japanese anime term for a humanoid robot, the scientific term is 'android' (lit, man-like). -- Sir Brutus
I understand that the translation is GPL'd, but I imagine the original source text isn't; is this still ok? Either way, the material needs to be edited for a more encyclopedic tone or perhaps moved to WikiSource or something. TomTheHand 18:00, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
You cannot simply strip Masahiro Mori's name from his article, or the names of the translators, and remove the use of the first person. If Mori said "watakushi" ("I"), we translated it as "I." If we had translated it as something else, it would have been a mistranslation.
If you cannot deal with translations of original works, paraphrase the material and be clear that the ideas are Mori's. Otherwise, remove the translated article.
By the way, the discussion of Mori has factual errors, both here and under his bibliographical entry. To my knowledge, he did not perform psychological experiments. The dependent axis in the graph is familiarity, not emotional response. -- Macdorman 21:13, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
Feel free to add and re-write this section, someone tried to remove it. I feel it should stay seeing as computer and consoles are getting more and more powerful. We'll be seeing a lot of Uncanny Valley in games in the near future. Havok (T/ C/ c) 22:06, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
The following comes from Roger Ebert's review of Disney's The Wild, a computer-animated feature film. [21]
I doubt that many audience members will be disturbed by such matters, but I thought the movie's lip-synching was too good. The mouths of the characters move so precisely in time with their words that the cartoon illusion is lost, and we venture toward the Uncanny Valley -- that shadowy area known to robot designers and animators, in which artificial creatures so closely resemble humans that they make us feel kinda creepy. Lip-synching in animation usually ranges from bad to perfunctory to fairly good, and I think fairly good is as good as it should get. In "The Wild," it felt somehow wrong that the dialogue was so perfectly in synch.
I think The Wild is about as up for discussion as Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, The Incredibles or The Polar Express as far what's artificial looking too real goes.
The uncanny valley is specifically about meeting robots in the real-world, not about the representation of humans in art, movies, or video games. I think many people are simply excusing 'bad animation' with the 'uncanny valley', and forgetting that reality and it's representation are two quite different phenomenon, and evoke very different responces.-- Davémon 18:11, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Okay Robotman, while you're clearly on some kind of subversive mission from the government of the uncanny valley (dude totally kidding please don't freak out) the link to an explanation of the concept is totally acceptable. What are the fast majority of such links and external reading if not that? So what if this is a somewhat humorous version of the concept: Did you even read it? it explains the concept more concisely than the article? Thechosenone021 19:15, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Actually another suggestion I have regards the chart at the top, which should get some examples of positive valued stills like photography or, alternatively a painting. I don't know if the chart is CC. Thechosenone021 18:26, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
There are five sources? And about five hundred weasel words. This article is in a sorry state, indeed. Kasreyn 02:38, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
I've removed the weasel tag, the OR, and the no references tag. I see no evidence of these, and there's no sign of discussion here to resolve any issues. If anyone wants to put them back, I'd like to see some discussion here about specifics. - CHAIRBOY ( ☎) 07:07, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
It has been said the best way to accomplish convincing human movements and to "jump" the Uncanny Valley in computer animation is to combine both motion capture and keyframing techniques.
Sounds like weasel-words to me. Motion capture is clearly not a good way to get around the Uncanny Valley, as anyone who has ever seen motion captured 3d will probably be able to tell you. If anything, motion capture (which is almost always used independent of physics models) only enhances the Valley.
In the introduction of the article, it reads: "The name captures the idea that a robot which is "almost human" will seem overly "strange" to a human being and thus will fail to evoke the requisite empathetic response required for productive human-robot interaction."
Why "productive"? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Serialized ( talk • contribs) 13:43, 8 January 2007 (UTC).
I'm not sure how commenting works, but I have a question. In the Theoretical basis section, it says "This could explain why it is particularly disturbing for the human eye to see these humanlike entities engaging in sexual activity (see below)." I don't see the part it was referring to "below". Am I missing something, or is the article missing something?
I propose we add (back) a section identifying the Polar Express movie as the best example yet of this phenomenon.
Googling "polar express hanks creepy" you get 41000(!) hits. Previous discussion have identified lots of critics using words suggesting they're experiencing the revulsion of Uncanny Valley.
Please don't demand that these critics should identify their revulsion as Uncanny Valley before we can include them. They might not even be aware of the phenomenon.
We should not have to wait until this movie becomes the subject of a scientific article.
Have a look at the "reaction" section of the movie's page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Polar_Express_%28film%29#Reaction for a good text we could include.
85.227.226.243 09:04, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
Masahiro Mori wrote in Japanese. The title of his work was "Bukimi no tani." Translators chose to translate "bukimi" as "uncanny," but they could have just as well translated it as "eerie." There is no evidence that Mori ever read or was influenced by Ernst Jentsch or Sigmund Freud.
Karl MacDorman ( talk) 17:10, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
I wonder how the normal response to disfiguring tattoos, piercings, and mutilations is addressed by this concept.
To me it seems intuitively obvious that as something comes close to human form, it can have attractive or repulsive traits of human appearance. So it seems like the "valley" should only exist with certain approaches to human form and not others, depending on whether the un-humanness exaggerates positively or negatively perceived traits. Wnt ( talk) 21:28, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
This section, with its reference to a 30 Rock episode that mentioned the uncanny valley, was removed. I think it belongs in the article, (a) because it's interesting and (b) because it's evidence of the term's entrance into mainstream consciousness. Korny O'Near ( talk) 16:02, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm removing this section for the following reasons:
- It describes Red Dwarf as a Robotic UK sitcom. This seems to give a misleading idea of the series in general. - In Red Dwarf, Kryten states that earlier models of his line were identical in appearance to human beings, leading to massive unpopularity because people couldn't stand the idea of robots that looked just like people. This is not the Uncanny Valley in action, and therefore I believe this is an inappropriate reference.
Kurosau ( talk) 16:50, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
The page linked to shows nothing uncanny and "Details about the story and gameplay of Heavy Rain itself remain scarce", so why is it referred to here. Remove it? 78.147.48.148 ( talk) 02:50, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
I believe there are many subtle references to the uncanny valley in many Japanese animation, notabily Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.
- Throught out the series the think tanks, or Tachigoma, gathers data and developes personalities, to the point where they have a philosophical discussion on why the operators look human and why they are so inhuman in appearence. - There are also a few people who rejects androids and even a religion who rejects any body modification. Mo_yong246 4:35 23 Feb 2009
I have very often heard video game reviewers talk about the uncanny valley, check for example the Zero Punctuation on Oblivion or Gametrailer's review on Riddick: assault on Dark Athena. Is that at least worth a mention? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.206.139.28 ( talk) 20:18, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
"Human suspicion of realistic robots and avatars may have earlier origins than previously thought." See this BBC article. Copana2002 ( talk) 16:45, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
In this story, the author notes the fact that the theory does not appear to be rooted in empirical observation. An interesting read, in any case. AniRaptor2001 ( talk) 19:45, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
"Like Humans, Monkeys Fall Into The 'Uncanny Valley' " covers research mentioned on
All Things Considered
today. The ATC story also reports the idea that one of the
Final Fantasy films -- i guess
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within -- lost money due to the UcV effect and killed the studio.
--
Jerzy•
t 01:08, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
While my mention of the following is, on my part, not only OR but very casual and unqualified OR, the facile use of a "valley" metaphor should set off alarms that i am surprised not to hear addressed beyond the "heterogene[ity]" comment that
The "valley" is a 2-dimensional construct (despite the evocation of 3-D valleys), really amounting to a minimum that is implicit in the curve Mori drew, following unstated logic, thru the sparse data points. The graph depends on an incoherent (one suspects subjective) concept of a one-dimensional variable "lifelikeness", when in fact "positivity of human reaction" is bound to be a function of too many dimensions to really identify. Falling into a "valley" along one route as "lifelikeness" increases does not imply that there are no routes along which "human reaction" monotonically increases toward indiscernable difference from human. In fact, the David Hanson critique suggests to me that Mori's curve reflects nothing more or less than Mori inventing prematurely a scale that amounts to position in a series of approaches (reflecting perhaps only the order in which Mori or the studio chose to try adding new dimensions to the mix), as opposed to achieving objectively higher values of any more relevant single variable.
I'm anxious to hear what conclusions qualified researchers have been led to addressing the issues i have hinted at here.
--
Jerzy•
t 01:08, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
Ah, this is why Wikipedia is mocked the world 'round. When it isn't rife with Simpsons, South Park, and Family Guy references, we have prejudicial editing to support the hippest, coolest, most chic buzzwords as legitimate scientific ideas, when they're really junk science
Look at the first reference link in the article. The Popular Mechanics article. You only used it for the highly limited purpose of affirming "yes, this hypothesis exists". But did you actually read it? Did you notice where an MIT Director of Robotics said that it is mere conjecture? Where is that reflected in the article? Where in the article is the analysis that this is not legitimate science, and not even a legitimate hypothesis to scientifically examine, that it's just a fashionable, everyday intuition that people like to have bull sessions about?
Here, I'll copy the quotes and force you to actually read them. Then, perhaps we can have some intellectual integrity around here and elevate this would-be "encyclopedia" out of its squalor. Maybe it can one day be a featured article; an article of the highest caliber, among the elite ranks of Wii Sports and 4Chan
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/robotics/4343054.html
(all emphasis mine) 76.105.10.80 ( talk) 07:45, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
Many predators have evolved the trait to mimic other animals, in order to lure in their prey. I propose that the 'uncanny valley' is simply a vestigial defense against something which looks and acts like something familiar, but is not quite right. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.12.153.249 ( talk) 16:44, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
Hi
I just came to give the article a once over and assess it for the Robotics project and the first thing I see is:-
"The uncanny valley is a hypothesis regarding the field of robotics. [1]"
When you clock on the link it appears that the first ref actually says that the uncanny valley is a myth ??!?!?! Serious work needed lol !
Chaosdruid ( talk) 23:16, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
Under "films and Television" some mention could be made about the part the "uncanny valley" plays in the discrimination against "Andrew" in the film Bicentennial Man. The same tenseness is felt against the robots, (and even the deity-like computer program), by Will Smith's character in I Robot, but the discussion about it and even rebellion against it are stated mre clearly in Bicentennial Man. Of course, both of the original novels which pre-dated the movies are even better examples. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.116.205.162 ( talk) 22:22, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
Those who have had lots of plastic surgery should fit somewhere in Uncanny Valley. That slight revulsion of "who that used to be." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.83.4.77 ( talk) 08:32, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
They also should be mentioned in regards to Uncanny Valley since their act The Clinkers was based on moves that were robotic. Probably the best live-action example of it.
The ABC television show Hungry Beast had a segment about the uncanny valley, and Bruce Carter, Creative Director of Animal Logic (a digital visual effects company), made an appearance. He said "The uncanny valley, at the end of the day, is the gap between seeing and believing.", which could be shortened to "The uncanny valley... is the gap between seeing and believing." I think it's an excellent description, but am unsure of where to place it in the article. Also, I agree that the scientific validity of the uncanny valley must be addressed. The article is valuable either way, though, because it is a significant idea in popular culture, if nothing else. Jimothylad ( talk) 05:40, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
Oh and here's a link [ [22]]
If there is an award for "Wikipedia article with the highest bullshit density per square inch", I'd like to nominate this one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.140.46.73 ( talk) 17:15, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
A fictional syndrome referred to in a fictional TV programme requires a real life citation to verify its existence? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.154.176.132 ( talk) 17:08, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
The “Hypothetical basis” section is too - I don't know, academic? Look at it, "Automatic, stimulus-driven appraisals of uncanny stimuli elicit aversion by activating an evolved cognitive mechanism for the avoidance of selecting mates with low fertility, poor hormonal health, or ineffective immune systems based on visible features of the face and body that are predictive of those traits." It's like it was stripped directly from an academic paper. Can someone rewrite the section in more reader-friendly English?
The "Design principles" section, aren't the first two design principles basically the same thing?:
I removed a sentence in this section referring to the Cheetham et al. article which said: "The effect of this mechanism on the perception of faces used to represent the hypothesis' dimension of human likeness has been clearly demonstrated." It seemed overall to be quite vague, and based on the article's abstract it also seemed irrelevant to this section of the article.
Maybe the original author or someone else can figure out how to better integrate it into this section, or into another area of the article?
PostScarcity ( talk) 17:00, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
This article seems pretty well developed. I added few cite needed tags, but once they are addressed this could be considered for a GA, I think. -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:35, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
The second bullet point paragraph under the "Criticism" heading appears to be quite a lot of novel synthesis of several unrelated sources. It begins with a proposition, veers into discussion of Capgras syndrome, which isn't related to the uncanny valley in any demonstrable way, then makes claims which don't make sense about the applicability of Capgras syndrome to the claim made in the first sentence, and suggests that this material somehow proves the original assertion, which it doesn't. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 02:24, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
BBC: Is the uncanny valley real? -- Rev L. Snowfox ( talk) 22:06, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
It seems to me these sections are redundant, and the article would be improved by merging them.
There are different ways of doing this, and I am not sure which is best. For example,
I'm sure there are other possibilities as well. Thoughts?
PostScarcity ( talk) 20:28, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
Ok here comes the linguistic question, it seems that in English a stuffed animal has two definitions: 1. a dead animal that has been stuffed 2. a soft toy in the shape of an animal.
My general knowledge of languages is not good enough to understand the meaning of words in every language but it seems like wikipedia is divided into two parts.
Some took the 1st meaning (dead animal) :
Russian (чучело животного), German (ausgestopftes tier), Dutch (opgezet dier), Italian (animale impagliato),
Some took the 2nd (an animal-like toy):
Japanese (毛绒娃娃), Spanish (Peluche), Bulgarian (Плюшена играчка), French (animal en peluche), Swedish (kramjur),Finish (pehmolelu).
Obviously the mistake comes from the translation from English chart that was originally in Japanese I suppose. Due to this issue I think it is necessary to make corrections in all the wikipedias that misinterpreted the term. But I need to know for sure which meaning was used in original Japanes text (if it was in Japanes). Can anyone help?
I haven't waded through the entire article (or this page) completely, so this may already be somewhere in there already. Has there been an research on whether this phenomenon exists in non-human species? I don't know exactly how one could measure it - or even if you could measure it - short of a mind-meld. But I wonder about this when giving my cat the purported "kitty kiss" slow eye-blink. Jimw338 ( talk) 03:43, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
This was documented in 2009. [1]
Gorkelobb ( talk) 18:59, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
References
As the heading says. This bit about "good design" isn't a criticism of the concept like the other bullets are. It acknowledges the existence of the valley but offers a way to reduce or eliminate the effects—most tellingly, it suggests adding "cartoonish" and non-human elements, which is exactly what the "uncanny valley" suggests would make for a less unsettling object. It belongs in the previous section, "Design Principles". WP Ludicer ( talk) 13:01, 14 September 2019 (UTC)
I have removed this example from the "In Visual Effects" section:
Susana Polo uses the term "uncanny valley" in reference to a non-human character. However, the term only refers to human characters, not animals, so Polo used it incorrectly. Though the bison may have appeared creepy for having a human-like face, it is not an example of the uncanny valley and so doesn't belong in the article. -- Atkinson ( talk) 05:55, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
References
Why was the previously featured diagram removed? I find it illustrates the issue pretty good:
Arny ( talk) 14:16, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
References
I know that there is a hypothesis that states that aliens are the reason why the Uncanny Valley exists in the first place, but most of the sources one could find are merely just pseudoscientific ufology journals. Regardless, it is still a theory of note. What do you folks think? Mebigrouxboy ( talk) 01:29, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
This article has a focus or AI, robots, animation and CGI, all artificial things, but doesn't really speak to the elephant in the room, real life humans that fit into the Uncanny Valley and how to deal with that phenomenon. Deep down we all know it exists but no-one ever talks about it, eg burn victims, genetic abnormalities, war/accident causalities, men dressed a women and women who dress as men etc. All of these things exist in real life yet it's as if we all have to just bite our tongue and not talk about it or ever mention it as if that will somehow magically make it go away. These are real things and not talking about them doesn't make them go away, so I'm raising it here. 101.184.62.229 ( talk) 23:50, 16 October 2022 (UTC)
Now that I come to realize my rephrasing of the abstract (intro/summary) paragraph is still a bit hard to comprehend, I welcome anyone to critique or even rewrite it entirely. I appreciate a previous editor admitting the concept of verisimilitude to illustrate theoretical strength. :) Zyploc ( talk) 01:42, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
Silent movie film stock was poor at capturing features so face makeup was used to enhance features. This had the effect of making faces more symmetrical. Usually symmetry is perceived as beauty. But faces already very symmetrical made more symmetrical by makeup were perceived as uncanny. Adding an asymmetrical feature like a visible mole, AKA beauty mark, reduced the uncanny effect.
The reduction of detail in early films allowed the visual system to process the image faster than full detail reality. This resulted in the perception that the figures in the film were moving in an uncannily slow motion. So every third frame was removed resulting in unnaturally faster motion but in the perception of a more natural speed motion. A side effect was the motion was jerky, and flickering. One reason silent films were called "flickers". The same thing happens with animated cartoons, and posterized live action film. Cartoon action is speeded up with fewer than normal frames, and posturized or rotoscoped live action is often left unspeeded resulting in a slow motion appearance of such films. 2600:8807:5400:28F0:DC35:5AA8:77A1:4161 ( talk) 17:32, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
The section, citation included, was added in 2009 [23], but was removed in 2021 [24] as the user who added the citation is a co-author of the source cited.
This is a niche enough topic that I'm not sure there is a different source. Should original citation be added again, or should the entire bullet point just be scrapped? miranda :3 20:42, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
was it toy story 1 or 2 that everyone complained abt the almost-lifelike kids being so creepy? this and polar express remain the two primary examples of the concept for some of us oldtimers. 2601:19C:527F:7890:385E:D8E2:747F:2765 ( talk) 13:04, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
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Removed sentences below: Weasel language without factual proof or references.
-- Himasaram 10:13, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
Reference to zombies removed, because the linked article is completely irrelevant. Only the title mentions the zombies and the rest of the article is purely about Uncanny Valley without references to cinematography. There is no evidence that zombies are inherently disgusting. The real reason is probably that zombies are designed to be disgusting, while cuddly animals are designed to be cuddly. There was no shortage of appealing and attractive zombies, though. Just recently we saw Frankenstein's monster in Van Helsing, who was not particularly disgusting.
What does that actually mean? It's easy to make computer animated characters to be human-like enough - it's possible with any degree with realism and at any realism level we had successful movies. I don't remember any revulsion-inducing character making to the screen, by the way. And if we are talking about rendering 100% realistic humans, the problem was not Uncanny Valley, it's lack of processing power (both for render and for editing).
Paranoid 14:00, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I removed the following text by 199.46.200.230:
Reason: no evidence provided that Max Headroom was an example for Uncanny Valley. Google search doesn't show any evidence either. And the pics of Max I found were not scary or revulsive at all. Paranoid 21:50, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I was tickled by the idea of an actual place called Uncanny Valley, but I'm not sure it exists. A quick web search for Uncanny Valley, CA brings up an off beat travel guide and some speculation about Uncanny Valley being where the new Sunmaid raisins girl comes from. Nothing on line points to a real place. SamuellusSoccus 19:14, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
I removed reference to Ebert, because he applies the concept indiscriminately and it's not like there are many examples. Basically it's just Gollum and various unrelated crap like bad makeup in White Chicks. His comments on Gollum are not really well stated or particularly smart (see some critique here: [2]). Paranoid 22:52, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
With all due respect, Decumanus, this is bullshit. You take a single comment about some trash (White Chicks film), which I am not sure you even read instead of relying on my words, and you twist this into "a wider application in popular culture". As two prominent (albeit with a psychotic twist) American magicians would tell, this is bullshit!.
Removed text:
Please cite your sources for these facts. And if there are no sources, there is no place at Wikipedia for our personal fantasies.
P.S. I will reply to your last comment when I calm down a bit. ;) Paranoid 19:18, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Couldn't you guys have comprimised right from the get-go? I'm saddened that what should be a process of give-and-take devolved into name-calling and cries of "bullshit!" Like a usage panel in a dictionary, an enclopedia should not DEFINE terms, but merely report on how terms are defined in actual, real-world usage. This whole argument could be settled thusly: "Some argue that the principles of the Uncanny Valley concept can be applied in other fields, such as film and animation criticism. The film critic Roger Ebert has applied the Uncanny Valley to the use of make-up and costumes of humanoid creatures in movies. However, there has not been any significant scientific study of the concept in subjective, artistic fields."
In my humble opinion the comments of some figure in popular culture on the topic does not belong in an article covering a scientific topic of human psychology.
Now someone has added the comments of some cartoonist to the page too.
The article ought to focus on the research of the scientific community on this topic.
I have removed the cartoonist reference as it is utterly irrelevant, and more akin to some sort of cyber-graffiti/web site traffic generation scheme. Mattlach 16:55, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
Roger Ebert's use of this term certainly belongs in Wikipedia. Even if an individual writer may be of the opinion that Ebert's definition is a divergent one. Encyclopedias and dictionaries, at their best, never prescribe, they describe. And no encyclopedia worth its salt ever proscribes. Forbidding specific usages or forbidding knowledge simply aren't the purpose of references. Nor should they be. Nobody owns the English language–and it seems to be taking care of itself all right without a European-style academy to police it. Likewise, Wiki would be the less if every divergent opinion resulted in an attempt to silence or exclude. Deleting entire sections seems extreme and misguided.
A prescriptive approach would be to say: "Only X's use is correct. There are these other uses, but they're wrong."
A proscriptive approach would be to say: "Only X's use is deemed original and correct by Mr. Y. Therefore, he's deleting all other texts for your own good."
The descriptive approach, traditional at least since Samuel Johnson crafted the first truly successful dictionary of the English language, would be to say: "The term originated in... The most frequently used meaning is A. The second most frequently used meaning is B. Etc."
Rather than engaging in name-calling (with or without apologies––and some would say an "apology in advance" is no apology but a waste of good electrons ), it's clear that Wiki readers would be best served by efforts to define how this term is evolving in psychology, in robotics and in film criticism. If these term were widely divergent, the differences could be handled as a disambiguation in separate articles. However, that does not seem to be the case here. These usages all involve a negative reaction to a not entirely life-like rendering. That's far less distinction than say the use of the term "inflation" in cosmology, economics, and pneumatics, where a single term is used for three entirely different phenomena, and for which disambiguation would be fully appropriate.
Academia has long since incorporated the notion that distinctions between "high culture" and "low culture" are problematic at best. The writer's comment about "some figure in popular culture" is dismissive, but in a wider critical context profoundly naive. There are no insuperable, impermeable walls between the sciences and other disciplines. All disciplines profoundly influence each other. For example, the very word "robotics" which the writer above privileges as somehow higher than, or removed from, pop cultural comment did not even originate in the sciences:
"The acclaimed Czech playwright Karel Capek (1890-1938) made the first use of the word ‘robot’, from the Czech word for forced labor or serf. Capek was reportedly several times a candidate for the Nobel prize for his works and very influential and prolific as a writer and playwright. The use of the word Robot was introduced into his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) which opened in Prague in January 1921." [1]
As to Roger Ebert, whether or not an individual writer shares a high regard for Ebert's obvious intelligence, encyclopedic film knowledge or lexical correctness is immaterial. It is a fact that Ebert is widely regarded as one of the most cogent living film critics as evidenced by his success in all print and electronic media. Granted that does not make Ebert an expert in robotics! But it certainly makes him a highly articulate and influential opinion leader. He has used this term many times in film appreciation, most recently in his critique of the film "Avatar." [2] It stands to reason that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of regular readers will pick up this term from Eberts' use of it in this review alone. Many of them will likewise appropriate it for cinematic discussions. It stands to reason that at least some of those readers will turn to Wikipedia as an aid to further understanding the meaning that they have abstracted from Eberts' context: his meaning.
Wiki is ill served by deleting it.
Un Mundo ( talk) 18:20, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
References
Shouldn't the Y-Axis be labeled "Empathetic response" (or maybe "Emotional connection"), as the text describes? It doesn't describe the degree of emotion, but rather the positiveness of it.
Personally, I think the whole graph is ridiculous. And the examples pointless and arbitrary. Though I really like the concept of this article.
I removed a link to rotten tomatoes reviews of The Polar Express. Although I incorporated a small note in the section on computer animation, some may view this removal as my bias against the UV theory. So let me assure you that it is not, it's just my bias against sensationalism and insincere reporting of facts. Yes, there was at least one review [8] that called the CGI effects "more frightening than endearing", but
I have a very strong suspicion (again) that when someone doesn't like an animated work, he starts rationalising this dislike by appealing to the Uncanny Valley theory. Again, even though something needs to be written about it (come to think of it, I probably should add something along these lines, although that would be only my speculation, so it isn't good either...) Paranoid 21:00, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
this is starting to look like a significant fraction to me.
One of the problems with the polar express is the perception that it's supposed to look realistic. Unfortunately, that concept has pervaded the public perception of the movie, but it was NEVER true. The characters are not supposed to look "real". They're supposed to look like the paintings from the original book, which they "do". Fade ( talk) 15:25, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
Not that I think Roger Ebert is an expert on Uncanny Valley, but for what it's worth, here is what he says about this film [19]:
Not that it proves or disproves anything, but I thought some of you may be interested. Paranoid 10:07, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
two interesting related links.
Here's a web page on the Incredibles and how it avoids the Uncanny Valley.
and this: LATimes: The Race for Best Picture Grows Animated
Horn, the studio chief, said he was frustrated by the reviews. [...]
"I want to say, 'Excuse me, do you think the eyes of the characters in Pixar's movies — are they dead eyes? They aren't real, human eyes,' " Horn said.
To which I would answer that the Pixar eyes are animated by humans with great experience in capturing and exaggerating nuances of human expression, rather than relying on automated motion capture. He doesn't get why Pixar is better at this.
You may not agree with the arguments presented in the article or the references supporting them, but stripping sources from an article is fundamentally bad. PARTICULARLY the actual book about the subject! See Wikipedia:Cite sources - David Gerard 12:43, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
this article could use some images. like asimo or aibo or something? maybe some animatronic movie characters? - Omegatron 02:33, May 19, 2005 (UTC)
Despite many citations, "The Buddha in the Robot" contains no mention at all of the uncanny valley - I've read it all!
The first use I've seen is in "Robots: Fact, Fiction, and Prediction" by Jasia Reichardt (1978), page 26-27. Unfortunately no clear citation is given there.
However, I understand that the original article was writen in Japanese and the proper citation is:
M. Mori, Bukimi no tani (the uncanny valley), Energy, Vol. 7, pp. 33–35, 1970.
This is given by Hiroshi Ishiguro, "Android Science - Toward a new cross-interdisciplinary framework" [20]
Dave Chatting 6 July 2005 23:16 (UTC)
How could this work possibly not be considered pseudoscience? There's an extremely complex curve on this graph. I don't have immediately access to the original work, or the ability to understand Japanese. How does it justify such a complex curve? What was the methodology used to gather the data? How did they quantify "anthropomorphism" independently from "emotional response"? How many samples were gathered? Are the results reproducible? These questions absolutely must be answered for any scientific work. If my assumption that they were ignored is correct, this is pseudoscience. - Slamb
Given that the principle remains an unproven hypothesis for the time being, I think the sections {# 1 Valley of familiarity, # 2 Effects of movement, # 3 The significance of the uncanny} can be removed without any harm to the information content of the article. They attempt to demonstrate the principle with thought experiments, which really don't have much interest or explanatory power. The section on examples in film provides all the examples that should be necessary. -GRB.
If you're looking for scientific research and not just anecdotal evidence: The makers of flight simulators have discovered that if the simulations are too real, the pilots in training would get motion sickness. Making the simulation more obviously fake fixed the problem. Unfortunately, I read this a long time ago and don't remember the source. 24.14.172.8 ( talk) 17:34, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
To call this "pseudoscience" is to give it more credence than it deserves. From what is presented here, UV is just pure speculation. The opening paragraph calls UV a hypothesis but the article immediately attributes undue credence to it with the header "Theoretical basis" and then continues with various "theories" and explanations. Until something is proven, or at least has some basis in fact, one is speculating on fantasy. It is a waste of time to discuss various causes of a phenomena before establishing that the phenomena exists in the first place. The article fails to do that. As Slamb asks, "where is the data?" Something that makes "sense in a lot of ways" does not confirm existence. Nor does a plethora of people (or reviewers), discussing it. Science and history is rife with examples of "common sense" or "common knowledge" that was totally wrong. In reading the article, I had the distinct impression that Mori got an idea, threw some curves on a graph and called it "good" with no more basis in fact than the sex life of aliens. I don't know if the UV exists or not. What I am saying is before one speculates on the basis for a behavior, the behavior must be shown to exist. Otherwise one is blowing smoke.
ArtKocsis (
talk) 12:17, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
There is far too much emotion and not enough objectivity in this discussion. The notion of the Uncanny Valley is neither a hard science nor is it pseudoscience; it falls under the field of psychology, which is a social science. As such, inter-subjective reports are relevant if collected in a wide enough sample under suitable conditions. I do agree with the objection over the word 'hypothesis' - the right word would be 'conjecture' (
/info/en/?search=Conjecture).
Metamorphmuses (
talk) 03:44, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
I spotted a bit of POV in here, don't know if anyone wants to have a go at fixing it. Here's the end of one paragraph.
And here's the beginning of the next:
It goes straight from saying that some refute that filmmakers have dealt with it, to stating as fact that it appears in the Final Fantasy film. If I were to try fixing it, I'd probably end up hacking out most of the paragraph, so I'll give someone else a go. - Vague | Rant 11:23, September 12, 2005 (UTC)
I added a counterpoint to the POV of not encountering it based on two of Pixar's films (one is a less known short one, which whilst on their site isn't made as apparent as you might expect). Again, the content is based on opinion, but I hope I made clear it's simply a counterpoint in the debate, not something that's been empirically studied. Feel free to move it around as you think necessary. Sir Brutus
I never had any problems with the Final Fantasy movie or The Flight of the Osiris. What a complete, steaming pile of horseshit. Final Fantasy just plain flopped, nothing more. Roger Ebert, who talks about the Uncanny Valley in his review of Team America: World Police said nothing about it in his (positive) review of Final Fantasy. Ebert: "She has an eerie presence that is at once subtly unreal and yet convincing. Her movements (which mirror the actions of real actors) feel about right, and her hair blows convincingly in the wind. The first closeup of her face and eyes is startling because the filmmakers are not afraid to give us a good, long look--they dare us not to admire their craft." Wow, he sounds truly disgusted there, doesn't he? Can anyone cite any sources that lead to any research on the uncanny valley and its relationship to this movie, or to the Polar Express? Any actual research, rather than speculation? Maybe--just a crazy guess here--The Incredibles did better because Pixar has a reputation for fun movies and the commercial showcasing a movie with a train that slides on ice and dancing waiters didn't generate the same kind of excitement.-- SpacemanAfrica 04:39, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure, but I have the feeling that the middle paragraph is the source article for the Uncanny Valley, printed in full. Is this true? -- till we ☼☽ | Talk 11:20, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
I don't think so, the source states that, "Copyright (c) 2005 Karl F. MacDorman and Takashi Minato. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2." This contribution was also made by User:Macdorman, presumably the article's author. -- Dave Chatting 18:42, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
Minato and I translated the work and posted the work, so I am not sure which copyright I am supposed to have violated. Masahiro Mori asked that the work be included in the workshop proceedings, so I listed it with your standard GNU CopyLeft notice. If I made an error, I will correct it. -- Karl MacDorman, November 10, 2005.
I don't know, it seems to me that this section isn't needed. It offers too little relevant information to be useful for someone trying to understand what the Uncanny Valley effect is, instead it just gives references that people have made to the effect. Unless someone disagrees, I'll remove it. MrC 05:28, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
The use of references is good, but we shouldn't just copy the original paper word-for-word, as this article appears to. The first person references, unusual style, and other anomalies ought to be fixed. -- Explodicle 04:25, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
I removed the word 'mechas' and replaced with 'androids' in reference to AI:Artificial Intelligence. 'Mechas' is a Japanese anime term for a humanoid robot, the scientific term is 'android' (lit, man-like). -- Sir Brutus
I understand that the translation is GPL'd, but I imagine the original source text isn't; is this still ok? Either way, the material needs to be edited for a more encyclopedic tone or perhaps moved to WikiSource or something. TomTheHand 18:00, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
You cannot simply strip Masahiro Mori's name from his article, or the names of the translators, and remove the use of the first person. If Mori said "watakushi" ("I"), we translated it as "I." If we had translated it as something else, it would have been a mistranslation.
If you cannot deal with translations of original works, paraphrase the material and be clear that the ideas are Mori's. Otherwise, remove the translated article.
By the way, the discussion of Mori has factual errors, both here and under his bibliographical entry. To my knowledge, he did not perform psychological experiments. The dependent axis in the graph is familiarity, not emotional response. -- Macdorman 21:13, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
Feel free to add and re-write this section, someone tried to remove it. I feel it should stay seeing as computer and consoles are getting more and more powerful. We'll be seeing a lot of Uncanny Valley in games in the near future. Havok (T/ C/ c) 22:06, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
The following comes from Roger Ebert's review of Disney's The Wild, a computer-animated feature film. [21]
I doubt that many audience members will be disturbed by such matters, but I thought the movie's lip-synching was too good. The mouths of the characters move so precisely in time with their words that the cartoon illusion is lost, and we venture toward the Uncanny Valley -- that shadowy area known to robot designers and animators, in which artificial creatures so closely resemble humans that they make us feel kinda creepy. Lip-synching in animation usually ranges from bad to perfunctory to fairly good, and I think fairly good is as good as it should get. In "The Wild," it felt somehow wrong that the dialogue was so perfectly in synch.
I think The Wild is about as up for discussion as Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, The Incredibles or The Polar Express as far what's artificial looking too real goes.
The uncanny valley is specifically about meeting robots in the real-world, not about the representation of humans in art, movies, or video games. I think many people are simply excusing 'bad animation' with the 'uncanny valley', and forgetting that reality and it's representation are two quite different phenomenon, and evoke very different responces.-- Davémon 18:11, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Okay Robotman, while you're clearly on some kind of subversive mission from the government of the uncanny valley (dude totally kidding please don't freak out) the link to an explanation of the concept is totally acceptable. What are the fast majority of such links and external reading if not that? So what if this is a somewhat humorous version of the concept: Did you even read it? it explains the concept more concisely than the article? Thechosenone021 19:15, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Actually another suggestion I have regards the chart at the top, which should get some examples of positive valued stills like photography or, alternatively a painting. I don't know if the chart is CC. Thechosenone021 18:26, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
There are five sources? And about five hundred weasel words. This article is in a sorry state, indeed. Kasreyn 02:38, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
I've removed the weasel tag, the OR, and the no references tag. I see no evidence of these, and there's no sign of discussion here to resolve any issues. If anyone wants to put them back, I'd like to see some discussion here about specifics. - CHAIRBOY ( ☎) 07:07, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
It has been said the best way to accomplish convincing human movements and to "jump" the Uncanny Valley in computer animation is to combine both motion capture and keyframing techniques.
Sounds like weasel-words to me. Motion capture is clearly not a good way to get around the Uncanny Valley, as anyone who has ever seen motion captured 3d will probably be able to tell you. If anything, motion capture (which is almost always used independent of physics models) only enhances the Valley.
In the introduction of the article, it reads: "The name captures the idea that a robot which is "almost human" will seem overly "strange" to a human being and thus will fail to evoke the requisite empathetic response required for productive human-robot interaction."
Why "productive"? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Serialized ( talk • contribs) 13:43, 8 January 2007 (UTC).
I'm not sure how commenting works, but I have a question. In the Theoretical basis section, it says "This could explain why it is particularly disturbing for the human eye to see these humanlike entities engaging in sexual activity (see below)." I don't see the part it was referring to "below". Am I missing something, or is the article missing something?
I propose we add (back) a section identifying the Polar Express movie as the best example yet of this phenomenon.
Googling "polar express hanks creepy" you get 41000(!) hits. Previous discussion have identified lots of critics using words suggesting they're experiencing the revulsion of Uncanny Valley.
Please don't demand that these critics should identify their revulsion as Uncanny Valley before we can include them. They might not even be aware of the phenomenon.
We should not have to wait until this movie becomes the subject of a scientific article.
Have a look at the "reaction" section of the movie's page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Polar_Express_%28film%29#Reaction for a good text we could include.
85.227.226.243 09:04, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
Masahiro Mori wrote in Japanese. The title of his work was "Bukimi no tani." Translators chose to translate "bukimi" as "uncanny," but they could have just as well translated it as "eerie." There is no evidence that Mori ever read or was influenced by Ernst Jentsch or Sigmund Freud.
Karl MacDorman ( talk) 17:10, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
I wonder how the normal response to disfiguring tattoos, piercings, and mutilations is addressed by this concept.
To me it seems intuitively obvious that as something comes close to human form, it can have attractive or repulsive traits of human appearance. So it seems like the "valley" should only exist with certain approaches to human form and not others, depending on whether the un-humanness exaggerates positively or negatively perceived traits. Wnt ( talk) 21:28, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
This section, with its reference to a 30 Rock episode that mentioned the uncanny valley, was removed. I think it belongs in the article, (a) because it's interesting and (b) because it's evidence of the term's entrance into mainstream consciousness. Korny O'Near ( talk) 16:02, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm removing this section for the following reasons:
- It describes Red Dwarf as a Robotic UK sitcom. This seems to give a misleading idea of the series in general. - In Red Dwarf, Kryten states that earlier models of his line were identical in appearance to human beings, leading to massive unpopularity because people couldn't stand the idea of robots that looked just like people. This is not the Uncanny Valley in action, and therefore I believe this is an inappropriate reference.
Kurosau ( talk) 16:50, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
The page linked to shows nothing uncanny and "Details about the story and gameplay of Heavy Rain itself remain scarce", so why is it referred to here. Remove it? 78.147.48.148 ( talk) 02:50, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
I believe there are many subtle references to the uncanny valley in many Japanese animation, notabily Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.
- Throught out the series the think tanks, or Tachigoma, gathers data and developes personalities, to the point where they have a philosophical discussion on why the operators look human and why they are so inhuman in appearence. - There are also a few people who rejects androids and even a religion who rejects any body modification. Mo_yong246 4:35 23 Feb 2009
I have very often heard video game reviewers talk about the uncanny valley, check for example the Zero Punctuation on Oblivion or Gametrailer's review on Riddick: assault on Dark Athena. Is that at least worth a mention? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.206.139.28 ( talk) 20:18, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
"Human suspicion of realistic robots and avatars may have earlier origins than previously thought." See this BBC article. Copana2002 ( talk) 16:45, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
In this story, the author notes the fact that the theory does not appear to be rooted in empirical observation. An interesting read, in any case. AniRaptor2001 ( talk) 19:45, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
"Like Humans, Monkeys Fall Into The 'Uncanny Valley' " covers research mentioned on
All Things Considered
today. The ATC story also reports the idea that one of the
Final Fantasy films -- i guess
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within -- lost money due to the UcV effect and killed the studio.
--
Jerzy•
t 01:08, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
While my mention of the following is, on my part, not only OR but very casual and unqualified OR, the facile use of a "valley" metaphor should set off alarms that i am surprised not to hear addressed beyond the "heterogene[ity]" comment that
The "valley" is a 2-dimensional construct (despite the evocation of 3-D valleys), really amounting to a minimum that is implicit in the curve Mori drew, following unstated logic, thru the sparse data points. The graph depends on an incoherent (one suspects subjective) concept of a one-dimensional variable "lifelikeness", when in fact "positivity of human reaction" is bound to be a function of too many dimensions to really identify. Falling into a "valley" along one route as "lifelikeness" increases does not imply that there are no routes along which "human reaction" monotonically increases toward indiscernable difference from human. In fact, the David Hanson critique suggests to me that Mori's curve reflects nothing more or less than Mori inventing prematurely a scale that amounts to position in a series of approaches (reflecting perhaps only the order in which Mori or the studio chose to try adding new dimensions to the mix), as opposed to achieving objectively higher values of any more relevant single variable.
I'm anxious to hear what conclusions qualified researchers have been led to addressing the issues i have hinted at here.
--
Jerzy•
t 01:08, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
Ah, this is why Wikipedia is mocked the world 'round. When it isn't rife with Simpsons, South Park, and Family Guy references, we have prejudicial editing to support the hippest, coolest, most chic buzzwords as legitimate scientific ideas, when they're really junk science
Look at the first reference link in the article. The Popular Mechanics article. You only used it for the highly limited purpose of affirming "yes, this hypothesis exists". But did you actually read it? Did you notice where an MIT Director of Robotics said that it is mere conjecture? Where is that reflected in the article? Where in the article is the analysis that this is not legitimate science, and not even a legitimate hypothesis to scientifically examine, that it's just a fashionable, everyday intuition that people like to have bull sessions about?
Here, I'll copy the quotes and force you to actually read them. Then, perhaps we can have some intellectual integrity around here and elevate this would-be "encyclopedia" out of its squalor. Maybe it can one day be a featured article; an article of the highest caliber, among the elite ranks of Wii Sports and 4Chan
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/robotics/4343054.html
(all emphasis mine) 76.105.10.80 ( talk) 07:45, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
Many predators have evolved the trait to mimic other animals, in order to lure in their prey. I propose that the 'uncanny valley' is simply a vestigial defense against something which looks and acts like something familiar, but is not quite right. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.12.153.249 ( talk) 16:44, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
Hi
I just came to give the article a once over and assess it for the Robotics project and the first thing I see is:-
"The uncanny valley is a hypothesis regarding the field of robotics. [1]"
When you clock on the link it appears that the first ref actually says that the uncanny valley is a myth ??!?!?! Serious work needed lol !
Chaosdruid ( talk) 23:16, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
Under "films and Television" some mention could be made about the part the "uncanny valley" plays in the discrimination against "Andrew" in the film Bicentennial Man. The same tenseness is felt against the robots, (and even the deity-like computer program), by Will Smith's character in I Robot, but the discussion about it and even rebellion against it are stated mre clearly in Bicentennial Man. Of course, both of the original novels which pre-dated the movies are even better examples. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.116.205.162 ( talk) 22:22, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
Those who have had lots of plastic surgery should fit somewhere in Uncanny Valley. That slight revulsion of "who that used to be." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.83.4.77 ( talk) 08:32, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
They also should be mentioned in regards to Uncanny Valley since their act The Clinkers was based on moves that were robotic. Probably the best live-action example of it.
The ABC television show Hungry Beast had a segment about the uncanny valley, and Bruce Carter, Creative Director of Animal Logic (a digital visual effects company), made an appearance. He said "The uncanny valley, at the end of the day, is the gap between seeing and believing.", which could be shortened to "The uncanny valley... is the gap between seeing and believing." I think it's an excellent description, but am unsure of where to place it in the article. Also, I agree that the scientific validity of the uncanny valley must be addressed. The article is valuable either way, though, because it is a significant idea in popular culture, if nothing else. Jimothylad ( talk) 05:40, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
Oh and here's a link [ [22]]
If there is an award for "Wikipedia article with the highest bullshit density per square inch", I'd like to nominate this one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.140.46.73 ( talk) 17:15, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
A fictional syndrome referred to in a fictional TV programme requires a real life citation to verify its existence? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.154.176.132 ( talk) 17:08, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
The “Hypothetical basis” section is too - I don't know, academic? Look at it, "Automatic, stimulus-driven appraisals of uncanny stimuli elicit aversion by activating an evolved cognitive mechanism for the avoidance of selecting mates with low fertility, poor hormonal health, or ineffective immune systems based on visible features of the face and body that are predictive of those traits." It's like it was stripped directly from an academic paper. Can someone rewrite the section in more reader-friendly English?
The "Design principles" section, aren't the first two design principles basically the same thing?:
I removed a sentence in this section referring to the Cheetham et al. article which said: "The effect of this mechanism on the perception of faces used to represent the hypothesis' dimension of human likeness has been clearly demonstrated." It seemed overall to be quite vague, and based on the article's abstract it also seemed irrelevant to this section of the article.
Maybe the original author or someone else can figure out how to better integrate it into this section, or into another area of the article?
PostScarcity ( talk) 17:00, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
This article seems pretty well developed. I added few cite needed tags, but once they are addressed this could be considered for a GA, I think. -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:35, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
The second bullet point paragraph under the "Criticism" heading appears to be quite a lot of novel synthesis of several unrelated sources. It begins with a proposition, veers into discussion of Capgras syndrome, which isn't related to the uncanny valley in any demonstrable way, then makes claims which don't make sense about the applicability of Capgras syndrome to the claim made in the first sentence, and suggests that this material somehow proves the original assertion, which it doesn't. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 02:24, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
BBC: Is the uncanny valley real? -- Rev L. Snowfox ( talk) 22:06, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
It seems to me these sections are redundant, and the article would be improved by merging them.
There are different ways of doing this, and I am not sure which is best. For example,
I'm sure there are other possibilities as well. Thoughts?
PostScarcity ( talk) 20:28, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
Ok here comes the linguistic question, it seems that in English a stuffed animal has two definitions: 1. a dead animal that has been stuffed 2. a soft toy in the shape of an animal.
My general knowledge of languages is not good enough to understand the meaning of words in every language but it seems like wikipedia is divided into two parts.
Some took the 1st meaning (dead animal) :
Russian (чучело животного), German (ausgestopftes tier), Dutch (opgezet dier), Italian (animale impagliato),
Some took the 2nd (an animal-like toy):
Japanese (毛绒娃娃), Spanish (Peluche), Bulgarian (Плюшена играчка), French (animal en peluche), Swedish (kramjur),Finish (pehmolelu).
Obviously the mistake comes from the translation from English chart that was originally in Japanese I suppose. Due to this issue I think it is necessary to make corrections in all the wikipedias that misinterpreted the term. But I need to know for sure which meaning was used in original Japanes text (if it was in Japanes). Can anyone help?
I haven't waded through the entire article (or this page) completely, so this may already be somewhere in there already. Has there been an research on whether this phenomenon exists in non-human species? I don't know exactly how one could measure it - or even if you could measure it - short of a mind-meld. But I wonder about this when giving my cat the purported "kitty kiss" slow eye-blink. Jimw338 ( talk) 03:43, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
This was documented in 2009. [1]
Gorkelobb ( talk) 18:59, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
References
As the heading says. This bit about "good design" isn't a criticism of the concept like the other bullets are. It acknowledges the existence of the valley but offers a way to reduce or eliminate the effects—most tellingly, it suggests adding "cartoonish" and non-human elements, which is exactly what the "uncanny valley" suggests would make for a less unsettling object. It belongs in the previous section, "Design Principles". WP Ludicer ( talk) 13:01, 14 September 2019 (UTC)
I have removed this example from the "In Visual Effects" section:
Susana Polo uses the term "uncanny valley" in reference to a non-human character. However, the term only refers to human characters, not animals, so Polo used it incorrectly. Though the bison may have appeared creepy for having a human-like face, it is not an example of the uncanny valley and so doesn't belong in the article. -- Atkinson ( talk) 05:55, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
References
Why was the previously featured diagram removed? I find it illustrates the issue pretty good:
Arny ( talk) 14:16, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
References
I know that there is a hypothesis that states that aliens are the reason why the Uncanny Valley exists in the first place, but most of the sources one could find are merely just pseudoscientific ufology journals. Regardless, it is still a theory of note. What do you folks think? Mebigrouxboy ( talk) 01:29, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
This article has a focus or AI, robots, animation and CGI, all artificial things, but doesn't really speak to the elephant in the room, real life humans that fit into the Uncanny Valley and how to deal with that phenomenon. Deep down we all know it exists but no-one ever talks about it, eg burn victims, genetic abnormalities, war/accident causalities, men dressed a women and women who dress as men etc. All of these things exist in real life yet it's as if we all have to just bite our tongue and not talk about it or ever mention it as if that will somehow magically make it go away. These are real things and not talking about them doesn't make them go away, so I'm raising it here. 101.184.62.229 ( talk) 23:50, 16 October 2022 (UTC)
Now that I come to realize my rephrasing of the abstract (intro/summary) paragraph is still a bit hard to comprehend, I welcome anyone to critique or even rewrite it entirely. I appreciate a previous editor admitting the concept of verisimilitude to illustrate theoretical strength. :) Zyploc ( talk) 01:42, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
Silent movie film stock was poor at capturing features so face makeup was used to enhance features. This had the effect of making faces more symmetrical. Usually symmetry is perceived as beauty. But faces already very symmetrical made more symmetrical by makeup were perceived as uncanny. Adding an asymmetrical feature like a visible mole, AKA beauty mark, reduced the uncanny effect.
The reduction of detail in early films allowed the visual system to process the image faster than full detail reality. This resulted in the perception that the figures in the film were moving in an uncannily slow motion. So every third frame was removed resulting in unnaturally faster motion but in the perception of a more natural speed motion. A side effect was the motion was jerky, and flickering. One reason silent films were called "flickers". The same thing happens with animated cartoons, and posterized live action film. Cartoon action is speeded up with fewer than normal frames, and posturized or rotoscoped live action is often left unspeeded resulting in a slow motion appearance of such films. 2600:8807:5400:28F0:DC35:5AA8:77A1:4161 ( talk) 17:32, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
The section, citation included, was added in 2009 [23], but was removed in 2021 [24] as the user who added the citation is a co-author of the source cited.
This is a niche enough topic that I'm not sure there is a different source. Should original citation be added again, or should the entire bullet point just be scrapped? miranda :3 20:42, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
was it toy story 1 or 2 that everyone complained abt the almost-lifelike kids being so creepy? this and polar express remain the two primary examples of the concept for some of us oldtimers. 2601:19C:527F:7890:385E:D8E2:747F:2765 ( talk) 13:04, 23 February 2024 (UTC)