The science of cute

It's the opposite of the Uncanny Valley.

I've had Anne's fruitcake and it is very delicious. Rumcake is my favorite though. Or bread pudding with whiskey sauce (or bourbon sauce or rum sauce). If we're sticking to the carbs soaked in alcohol food category.

The science of cute

It's the opposite of the Uncanny Valley.

I dunno - I think it's theoretically possible for some CGI creature to posess high levels of both cuteness and Uncanny Valley-ness. Who knows - perhaps such things are created from time to time, only to be immediatly lost again as their creator's brains explode, resulting in an electromagnetic pulse that erases the vile creature from its hard drive home.

I think it's theoretically possible for some CGI creature to posess high levels of both cuteness and Uncanny Valley-ness.

I don't think so. Anything that's Sorta Cute But Off is going to trigger the Uncanny Valley response.

Yeah, kat, South Mountain was the one I mentioned. Uncle Cece talked about it too: [link]

I don't think so. Anything that's Sorta Cute But Off is going to trigger the Uncanny Valley response.

Maybe you'd end up with something like the optical illusion of the vase/two faces - the brain would be able to recognize the cute or the Uncanny Valley, but never both at the same time.

thanks bon! as ever, you ROCK. I wrote a snarky email to the editors at LATimes. you've made my day.

Goslings is Bermudan rum! Never touch the stuff.

It might very well be good, but there's too much Appleton's between me and it.

I just had someone tell me to not see King Kong because she didn't like how it ended. I explained to her that's how the first one ended, but she was adamant that they should have taken the ape back to Skull Island. "The ape dies, Hamlet dies, Romeo and Juliet die. They're tragedies." She was suprisingly resistant to the idea. You know when you realise you just can't talk to someone?

I think it's theoretically possible for some CGI creature to posess high levels of both cuteness and Uncanny Valley-ness.

Totally!

I was just listening to a podcast about AI, and this really annoying woman was talking about Kismet (an MIT research project by one of the Roomba guys) where they decided to make the robot cute, because people wouldn't interact with the adult-looking robot appropriately. Thing is, Kismet is hideous.

Kismet is freakish. I've always wanted to tell them to finish the damn thing. Of course, that might be worse.

I wonder if some day we'll have police robots that have been made cute to make them seem less threatening.

"I'm your worst nightmare - a Hello Kitty with a badge!"

Kismet is damned scary.

Of course the ape dies. What the hell did she think she was watching?

I found myself not nearly as sympathetic to the ape as Jackson meant me to be, because of the volume of collateral death. It's a tricky balance, and I don't think they managed it all that well.