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Yea this is exactly it. The uncanny valley is not an evolved state, but rather the blind spot between two evolved states: the place where our brains lose the ability to categorize, assess, and react in a manner consistent with our better instincts and instead reacts in the form of abject terror.
Right- it’s your brain saying “this should be normal but it’s not and I don’t know why”
Our brains are so fucking needy, damn
Your brain also wrote that, damn
my brain sees your brain seeing their brain, braining about the braining brain brain
Maybe like shadows or big monkeys or a corpse? Those can be scary
However. It is also possible that our fear response to this blind spot is magnified by evolutionary forces.
Consider that humans evolved with significant inter species competition from very similar hominid groups. There could have been a half dozen nearly human species who we needed to fear. That is those who experiences a greater "uncanny valley" response, survived.
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2.2y
Honestly this is a way better answer than half the people saying corpses…. Uh…
Of all the places for this discussion to happen it's on Reddit, too. The place where r/mildlyinfuriating is filled with misplaced tiles and off-kilter light fixtures and r/pareidolia just exists. Clearly we are A) Very capable of recognizing facial patterns, and B) Very uncomfortable when any visual patterns are broken.
"No, no, it's definitely an evolutionary defense against the shape shifting alien corpses of Neanderthals" This fucking site.
This sub is just for looking at deformed animals apparently. Remember a week where three cyclops animals/humans made the front page of reddit
The "uncanny valley" effect isn't even just limited to facial patterns.
Want to make a robot that can travel 100 meters fast? Simple, get some wheels/legs and a basic chip to control them. Want to make a robot that travels 100 metres by replicating the exact bone and muscle structure of human legs? It'll be an overcomplicated mess that falls over almost immediately.
Want a robot to elicit a "friendly" emotional reaction? Simple, just stick on some googly eyes and an upward curving line and people will freaking love it. Want to elicit a friendly emotional reaction by exactly replicating a human face and its movements? Again, it'll be way overcomplicated and can look "wrong" in all kinds of ways.
That's the real "uncanny valley" - it's literally just that precisely recreating human anatomy is a bad way to do most tasks, and emotional connection is no exception to that.
finally someone else said it. you don't get the same feeling/reaction looking at a sick or dead person that looking at AI that is nearly human does. they are 2 different feelings.
When something looks almost right, but subtlety off, it feels weird. Designers don't just hate bad kerning because our ancestors were attacked by aliens that looked like giant letters (https://xkcd.com/1015/). We've all been trained from birth to recognise real human faces.
Okay but I cause this affect on others too. I'm constantly told that I look suspicious and I'm literally just out here living my life. How does your science explain that?
Edit: trick question, its because I'm neurodivergent. And my facial expressions are atypical. Thank you for coming to my TedTalk
I also often have people think i look suspicious or watch/follow me around stores. For me personally it is because of anxiety and when they see that you look visibly nervous they think you are doing something wrong. Like they see someone who is nervous and twitchy for no reason they're like "wtf are you up to?" which obviously just makes the anxiety worse and it turns into a neat little cycle.
Looking suspicious and looking uncanny can be two different things Maybe your face or some of your other traits just fits the stereotypes for suspicious or untrustworthy characters that we see in alot of films
or he’s just among us
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2.2y
We don't actually have one explanation and there are many theories, including the corpses one.
There is no way to prove anything regarding evolutionary psychology, so there is no "actual explanation", regardless of which one you feel makes the most sense.
Sick people
Yup. Sick people and people with deformities.
Not just that!
There were also a bunch of other human species around hundreds of thousands of years ago. The "uncanny valley" helped prevent us from interbreeding (not entirely, because modern humans still carry around some of their DNA in us).
This may be something that is universal across all species, in order to help with speciation. We inhabit a particular niche and are evolved to succeed at that niche. If we interbreed with other humans (homo erectus, homo giganticus, etc) it's possible that our subsequent offspring will be less fit as it will be a mixture of both niches.
Edit: If you want to do a deep dive, here is a whole paper on it that explores a number of hypotheses without coming to a satisfactory conclusion.
homo giganticus
Death by snu snu
The spirit is willing but the flesh is spongy and bruised.
If you thought giganticus refered to their size you were wrong. It actually refers to them being massively gay, and that's why they died out.
Isn't history kinda supposed to repeat itself?
Time is a flat circle, and we are nothing but scented meat.
SIGN ME UP 4 GAY GIANTS
Time to explore uncanny valley ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
This right here. My favourite ever comment on Reddit.
I think what makes things scary is the sense that the face is real but we can’t read or understand them. We’re creeped out because it appears life like but we can’t tell if it’s happy or if it wants to kill us. The fear wasn’t necessarily based on other human species (but that’s possible) rather it was based on uncertainty.
yeah, I feel like we probably came across other cro magnons who had something deeply unusual about them than other species. i don't really think it has to do much with the whole other species thing, because go look at a pic of a neanderthal, and then look at like a pic of an insane person with unusual facial features. the neanderthal just looks unattractive and threatening to me, but not really uncanny. the second gives me major uncanny vibes
What if we could communicate and they couldn’t that would be harrowing, encountering a bestial man when you’re just slightly higher intelligence (speculating here) and being like hello? And getting snarling back…
Just spooky
Man’s deepest emotion is fear. The greatest fear is fear of the unknown.
but, what about aliens? can we devolve into reptiles!
I'm not sure if I agree, when I look at an image of a neanderthal (artists are making more humane depictions of them), it doesn't trigger my uncanny valley. I just think "that's pretty cool". Maybe I'm the reason we have neanderthal DNA
There is a school of thought in Anthropology that Neanderthals are part of the homo sapien group. They just have different features due to isolation. But I think the uncanny valley was probably for other hominids.
So they were like the cold adapted Homo sapiens? That’s an interesting theory. We also interbred with Denisovans though.
Neanderthals lived in a variety of climates, not just cold. That’s kind of a pop culture myth. The periods between ice ages, called ‘interglacial’, were as warm as our times and sometimes warmer. Neanderthals thrived in interglacial periods.
Source: been nerdily reading a book on Neanderthals.
Similarly there's a school of thought that there possibly weren't as many hominids as often taught.
The dmanisi skulls suggest that many paleoanthropologists are underestimating phenotypic plasticity, with species often being distinguished exclusively on braincase volume.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmanisi_hominins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmanisi_skull_5 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2013.13972
And people interbred with Neanderthals...
So what you're saying is you'd boink with a neanderthal?
That seems off for me since chimps and various depictions of ancient humans and human ancestors don't fall into the uncanny valley; they don't give you that uncomfortable 'something's wrong' feeling.
Speak for yourself! Chimps and gorillas scare the hell out of me. I hate seeing them and avoid them at the zoo or even pictures of them. I think it’s because they’re almost human but not quite. It really freaks me out.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
Must read. That is all.
Also I love my dog.
Was always taught that we both outbred and absorbed the population (through interbreeding) of other human subspecies
Thank you
Corpses too
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2.2y
Also other human species (before we made them or they went extinct)
I'm too tired to understand the content of your parenthesis, but yes, Homo Sapiens interbred with at least four hominid species — of which only Neanderthals and Denisovans are known, though.
That and other hominids
Could be sick people, but it could also be the different variations of early humans that lived with Homo sapiens.
Have you ever seen a bipolar person in the middle of a "moment" they become uncanny in there eyes.
Source: My father was bipolar (not violent).
So maybe mentally sick people counts?
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2.2y
"Grippy Sock Jail" perfect description.
“Grippy sock jail”
If you know, you know. And I do and it still made me chuckle
As Seen on TV: NEW Yeezy Grippy Sox
In addition, zombies.
Zombies are technically just sick people
They're in that little area between sick and dead.
And terminators
Dead people look pretty off, too
Sick people, corpses, and the handful of other hominids that used to be among humans before their extinction.
Edit: I'm reading all y'alls replies but this blew up so I can't respond to 80+ people
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2.2y
Is that in the same vein as our brain seeing different images in abstract forms, like shadows and clouds? At least at a first glance.
That's more pattern recognition. We're hard wired to see certain things even if they aren't there.
Yup. Things like hope. And Smiley faces.
Corpses, sick people and other hominids all present very serious dangers, though. It’s a very plausible hypothesis.
Theres evidence of hominid interbreeding. Some of our ancestors must've had an uncanny valley fetish.
Hey baby you know they say once you go homo sapian you never go back
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2.2y
BOOM this is a much larger valid reason than "aliens bro". It's not just drunk neanderthals, we know now that many infections/serious drugs (like chemotherapy) can cause depersonalization. Also PTSD and the thousand yard stare, none of those things evolutionarily speaking (obviously chemotherapy wasn't a thing), are good and indicate the person is in severe danger and or unpredictable. A human that doesn't look quite human is a huge psychological indicator that something may be wrong or unpredictable with them and you should take guarded safety measures.
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2.2y
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2.2y
Your pfp is terrifying
Not to mention: humans.
People get “the creeps” around psychopaths, who are human. I think the uncanny valley might be a similar phenomenon.
Shit you're right. I had a close encounter with one last year and I'd definitely describe the feeling as uncanny valley-like. Not like 'omg my boss is such a psycho', like soulless eyes that make your skin crawl.
I had a job interview with this guy and something about him just set off some response in my brain like "something is wrong" don't know if he was an actual sociopath or just awkward but it was a very weird encounter
Yeah, its hard to imagine now but humanuty at one point did not soley consist of homo sapiens sapiens.
We shared the planet with varied human cousins for thousands of years. So yeah, seeing a human shape and realising its a Neanderthall which are naturally bigger, stronger and faster thsn us. New studies indicate an adult male Neanderthal fighting an adult male homo sapiens sapiens would be like an adult man fighting a toddler.
Except the toddlers figured out how to sharpen rocks and ambush in groups. Sapiens didn’t end up the sole survivors for no reason - we literally outsmarted and killed all the Neanderthals and the other species of humans
We also bred with them. Maybe we inherited THEIR fear of US
To the monsters we're the monsters
Thinking about what life must’ve been like for early hominids is so fascinating. Imagine how unsettling it would be to come across a being in the woods that looks just like you but just different enough to not be your species. Or a group of them. Armed with spears. Speaking a language that probably sounds alien
They're smaller and weaker than us, so we should be good taking their stuff. Wonder what the sharp sticks are for though.
I'm pretty sure the Neanderthal had tools too
I definitely lean heavily towards the “other hominids”.
I have a hypothesis that a majority of the humanoid creatures of myth have their roots in tales handed down generationally from times when the various “archaic humans” lived.
That faeries, giants, imps, leprechauns, dwarves, gnomes, nymphs, elves and all manner of creatures that are ostensibly human shaped bear an iota of memory from a shared history of interaction with such species as the Neanderthal and the Denisovan. Often different in sized or proportioned. Frequently malicious or mischievous unless placated by tributes but sometimes able to live alongside us, occasionally inclined to adopt lost (or stolen) children into their cultures, other times willing to ‘marry’ into our cultures or have one of theirs marry into theirs.
Obviously the vast passage of time warps these creatures, they are repurposed, mutated by the needs and whims of the story tellers. But deep down there, we have an ancient kernel of a story, a reason why we don’t go unattended into certain areas, why we leave “offerings” out of a night, why we don’t engage with strange ladies by waterways, why some places belong to other folk and why some people simply vanish.
Maybe some of these, but you can scratch dwarves and giants from that list -- people with dwarfism and giantism aren't other species; they're human and they've existed throughout recorded history.
Why not plain old everyday xenophobia? In the bad-old-days, when there were no police or tourists, the most dangerous thing around was someone new in the neighborhood that no one in the tribe ever saw before and came as a fugitive from who knows where. Anything peculiar about the stranger would signal his putative unhumanness and mark him as a menace.
If it were just humans that have this reaction then i'd agree
What other animals have this reaction?
Cats. I had a winter hat that had ears once and my cats would be confusingly terrified of me. I'd make them smell my hand and they'd relax. But then tense up and get taken aback again when they looked up. They didn't want to be scared and knew it was me but they still had a natural reaction of running.
Definitely cats! The video of a guy wearing a cat mask in front of his cats comes to mind.
LEARN MORE
that’s terrifying
My screen started glitching when it appeared on the screen. And I'm home alone. Fml
Yea that was weird af when it happened. Was gonna say something but didn't want to spook you since you looked so comfortable.
You Won't be a lone for long... so don't worry.
I always announce "TIME TO FEED MY BABIES!" before feeding my cats because of this video lol
When my sister was younger she dressed up like a black cat for Halloween. Our black cat, Shadow, was…not happy.
Reminds me of when i wore a werewolf mask and my dog saw me, did not like it one bit.
Same happened to me! I thought my dog would just be a bit confused, but she started barking and shaking. I felt pretty bad...
No more animal masks for Halloween.
Well if you saw a big ass cat in your house you'd be scared too.
Macaque monkeys, apparently.
lol, imagine being at a dinner party with these researchers. "What do you do for a living?" "I use fake monkeys to creep out real monkeys." "Uhhhh, why?" "For science, of course."
No you’d have to lead with “I work with monkeys” to get them all intrigued, with people like Jane Goodall coming to their minds. And they’ll inevitably ask what your work involves and THAT is when you tell them you scare them with fake monkeys
Chimpanzee's are known to kill the albino members of their groups...
I’d imagine lots of animals have similar reactions, but maybe not triggered by the same thing or for the same evolutionary purpose.
scared of something that looks like you but isn’t versus scared of something unfamiliar
It's being anxious of something you cannot quickly categorize.
In the uncanny valley, it's the struggle to identify something as human/not human that is unnerving.
If you can quickly identify that humanoid entity as something else you know about, the anxiety doesn't show up.
It happens to nonhuman animals, and it also happens when trying to identity subjects other than humans. There is an uncanny valley for something like a dog-like robot.
The real answer is much less sci-fi. People/animals who are sick or deformed fall into this same uncanny valley. The evolutionary imperative is more about identifying traits so heinous they would pervert the potential for propagating the species.
Apparently a self-preservation mechanism, the nearly-human thing could have diseases. Like being a ginger.
Lmao
Dead people. Dead people can transfer disease.
Probably the real reason. Quick bury/burn them before they go all creepy and get you ill with rot.
Or maybe even alive people who are very very ill looking. Like one week away from dying ill.
prince charles
Do you mean Philip, lol? I mean sure Charles isn’t the most youthful looking..a bit harsh to drop him in this thread though
Philip would be under the dead category, not the close to dead category (unless I'm missing something)
No you’re right, he’s definitely dead, just people used to meme on him heavily for looking like a corpse prior to his passing😂.
Charles on the other hand kinda looks normal for an early 70s dude.. like not the first celeb I’d think of as so old they look dead (esp given his mummy’s still alive!)
Well Princes Charles is dead to me, close enough
Dead people and rabies!
Also alive people. Humans you don't know can be dangerous. Nomadic tribes probably weren't peaceful amongst each other.
Not sure if humans you don't personally recognize cause a repulsed reaction like the uncanny valley does, though
Eh, we did evolve with 5-6 other human species present. While dead people probably contribute wouldn't it make more sense that that's why we have this reaction.
The other humans looked similar but weren't quite "us".
But we mated with some of those species..
Yeah. Like, a lot. We didnt kill them into extinction... We fucked them into extinction
Penetrative assimilation.
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2.2y
I mean some people also fuck some very uncanny valley human analogs as well (Real Doll and the like). Doesn't mean that the uncanny valley didn't result from being uneasy around different species and subspecies.
We over lapped with Neanderthals for thousands of years.
No. If you ran into a Neanderthal, they probably wouldn't kill you as long as you weren't hostile. And by that logic, other animal's should scare us even more
But diseases from the dead spread much much faster.
Would you want to touch an animal? Or would you rather touch a corpse?
Like elon musk? Or better marck Zuckerberg?
Honestly both of them trigger it for me sometimes. Well the Z man always lol.
To me, that guy is the real-life Data from Star Trek:TNG.
I'm not an anthropologist but uuuuuhhhhh neaderthals?
Corpses actually
Also monkeys
Also a good one, as they could transmit disease and attract wild animals.
Yeah, also not an anthropologist but there were other hominids in the homo genera besides humans, we just are the only ones left. Possible we had a healthy fear of other human subspecies.
Or denisovans or whatever they find from that well in China or some other variant of the human race
But homo.sapians just fucked most other homo species to extinction.
Homo Victory!
It's safe to say our branch was the one to survive, whatever happened back then
Sploosh.
Well yeah butttt you don't get fucked into extinction, you snuu-snuu into HISTORY. Denisovan and Neanderthal genes are present in homo sapien populations, like the real hairy ones maybe? which is at least incrementally more not-extinct than your friendly neighborhood thylacine. I have no source for this, jasper fforde is a fantastic writer, please tip your waiter.
Humans and Neanderthals were banging. Everyone has a bit of Neanderthal in them.
Homo Neadnerthalensis were located in Eurasia so when Homosapiens began leaving Africa they mixed and then spread to the rest of the world. Most people in Africa have a smaller amount of Neanderthal DNA than average (I said none before but it turns out the migration went both ways). Most of the non african population have about 2% Neanderthal ancestry. Then in Southeast Asia the Denisovians mixed with the incoming modern humans. There were other human species all around the world but were outcompeted rather than outbread by modern humans. I think the fact that there were other human species is really cool and that in this day in age the only thing that could really cause humans to split into different species is if a group was stuck on another planet for thousands of years.
A bit irrelevant but one of my favorite memes goes like this:
Humans as they look up at the stars: "Are we really alone in this vast universe?"
Also Humans: Kills all other human species as soon as they come into contact with them
Here’s what I love: At 50, I’m learning about something I never heard of before with the “uncanny valley” and I cannot wait to research it! Lifelong learners unite!
Couldn’t it also be a consequence of our neurology? A popular view is that our brains employ predictive coding in dealing with the data of our environment. We make immediate predictions and find discontinuity with those predictions as salient, surprising, or unpleasant. Maybe the uncanny is unsettling because we make predictions based on our conception of how people should appear, and then things don’t conform when viewed closer
This uncanny valley seems very ingrained into us, like a reflex or something.
It is either triggering a flight or fight response as a threat, or is is triggering the instincts about selecting a mate for reproduction (the "don't fuck that" response)
Jokes on you, AI Sexbots are the future.
Call me stupid but what is the uncanny valley?
It’s when a thing looks very very much like a person but is also creepy in a way that people aren’t. An infamous example is the dead, lifeless eyes of the characters in The Polar Express.
I've never understood that polar express example, it's never trigger the uncanny valley effect for me.
Same here, I always use the example of exaggerated smiles and bulging eyes. Kinda like momo.
It’s when a thing looks very very much like a person but is also creepy in a way that people aren’t. An infamous example is
The Burger King thing in the Burger King TV commercials.
It's the place between human and like a mannequin. It's the creepiness of something almost human
It's because of other homo species, like neanderthals.
We are afraid of pale people (ghosts, vampires, etc) as pale people are generally ill. Distancing yourself means you're less likely to get ill and pass on your genes.
We don't like strange eyes as humans are exceedingly good at determining where another human is looking with human eyes. We're suspicious creatures, if I can't see exactly where your eyes are looking, I get nervous. And nervous people lash out.
We don't like big teeth cos... Duh.
We don't like slithering/scaley/sibilant as we inherently appear to be afraid of snakes. A big evolutionary race between both them and us.
Most things horror films (etc) play on is the evolutionary history of our species. Our primal instinct is to fear the unknown; for those who were not afraid wandered off into the night and we found but scraps of flesh and pools of blood.
Some of us might have Irish parents. Doesn’t mean pale is scary looking
My coworker is a white south African. He went to some incredibly remote places in Africa on some mission thing. He was the first white person the locals had ever seen. They screamed and RAN from him, calling him their word for "vampire". He is not a pale dude (super tanned), but compared to the locals, he was very light skinned.
They had some pretty intense superstitions around pale skin. Kinda relevant to your statement.
Jesus christ your bringing up some dark memories, when I was a kid I grew up in a small Welsh village where the only people I'd regularly see other than Welsh people were the Chinese couple who owned a local chinese take away.
Because of that my 4 year old shit brain had no idea people with darker than lightly tanned skin existed, and then one week I went on holiday to some place, I forgot where, and saw a very dark skinned man, I apparently screemed and started crying, calling him a chocolate man.
I feel real fucking bad looking back, this is the reason why we need multi-cultural media and TV shows for kids, the world isn't filled with just people from our local town, people are constantly saying we are putting black and Asian characters into movies and tv shows for the sake of it, but it's actually really good for younger generations to familiarise themselves with the existence of other ethnicities, at the end of the day I believe that one of the main reasons why racism is so prevelent is because a lot of people just arent used to seeing other people from different ethnicities, eventually if we keep mixing and representing in media, I believe the colour of our skin will have just as much significance as the colour of our hair.
That's funny you say that. My cousin is from a small town in rural Ontario. The first time she saw a black person when she was also around 4/5, she asked why he was made of chocolate. No crying though, just serious confusion. Lmao little kid brains immediately going to chocolate.
Don't feel too bad, I did similar when I was 3.
I'm from a town in Scotland, and basically it's 99.999% white people.
At age 3, my parents took me on holiday to Florida, and on day one, whilst eating at a Shoney Bear's restaurant, 3 year old me was presented with my first black person (the waiter). To which I announced to my mum, "That man's very dirty." 😬
Well my parents wanted the ground to swallow them up. They apologised and explained we're from Hicksville Scotland, and the guy just laughed and was really nice about it. Said don't worry, it's one of the nicest things he's been called 🤣
And as evidence of how great the guy was about it, he actually gave me a Shoney Bear pin, which is still at my parents house almost 30 years later.
Chimps want to know your location.
no, it just means it exists so they wouldn't fuck monkeys on accident
Wow, we committed genocide so hard on other hominids, that it imprinted on our survival instincts. NEAT.
just afraid of things that look different then us but are close to us is all i see it. its the same for any animal, they get uneasy if somethijg looks like them but isnt aka cats and a cat plushy/dogs and a dog plushy. hell even mirrors make some animals anxious if they recognize its their species but not nessasairly them
Isn’t it obvious? Sometime in the deep past we lived in the long term presence of alien bipedal beings. This caused the inbuilt fear of things not human but of human shape.
These beings, realising that they should not interfere with technological development, at some point removed themselves to a safe distance. They now observe us remotely. From UFOs. Based under the abyssal sea floor plains under the major oceans. I have no proof, but it’s fun to speculate.
Thank you for your attention and goodnight. I’ll see myself out.
Me: Googles where this 'uncanny valley's is to see what it looks like. ...facepalm
Not necessarily, no. That's not how evolution works
Clearly skin walker.
Well, if you've looked into human evolution in the slightest, it would be quite obvious. Early in the evolutionary history of modern humans, there was a number of closely related species that looked human, but not. The uncanny valley is the result of early humans trying to distinguish between us and Neanderthals and the various other "humans".
It was like fantasy races, but instead of orcs and elves it was more like different flavors of humans. There where hobbits though.
The uncanny valley is about ambiguity . Ambiguity freaks us out and for good reason :
“Is this berry poisonous or not ?”
“Is that a lion in the distance or a rock”
“Does this smell funny to you “
When that ambiguity is applied to human form and stands in the way of nonverbal human communication we know it as “The Uncanny Valley “
Masks , clowns , facial deformities etc are creepy because they hide key visual clues. You cannot rely on the facial cues that you would normally pick up on to tell you how to interpret their words and behaviors . You no longer know their intent
Take :”Yeah I’m totally going to call you”
Now remove the body language , mute the facial inflections and make the voice monotone …
Are they going to call you or was that a sarcastic blow-off?
Is the guy running your direction about to attack you or is he trying to get to the bus stop ?
You are relying on the kinds of visual cues that are exactly what you would remove to create something that lived in The Uncanny Valley.
So what we evolved was a fear of situations when we can’t gather enough information to know whether we are safe or in danger .
The comments are full of valid explanations, just as they are every time this is posted, but in spite of them, I love the content of this tweet. It is so subtly terrifying.
We’ve evolved to read faces, expressions and gestures on a subconscious level. That includes people who are being deceptive or unpredictable. The things that trigger the uncanny valley are the replications of people who lack those micro-twitches, subtle gestures, or natural motions/expressions. They just come off as wrong and alarming. It’s why the eyes in Polar Express looked so dead.