There is an idea in robotics called The Uncanny Valley , and basically, (so that you don't have to read the wikipedia article, although you totally should. Because you should, OK!?!) this articulates the fact that the more closely a robot physically resembles a human being, without being a human being, the less we likely we are to trust or form a bond with it.
For example:
Imagine a Furby or Johnny 5 from the classic movie "Short Circuit", or Oon (if you don't know who that is... seriously, just get your shit together.). Generally speaking most people will be attracted to toys/robots like this because (again generally, I personally hate Furbies, but that's because I'm very sensitive to sound) we love to anthropomorphise things, to see human qualities in things that are clearly not human. We're programed from birth to seek out faces and we love to find things that loosely match that pattern. (unless we find it under the bed or in a closet, that's just messed up, right?)
Now look at this giant ball of messed up:
It's wrong. It has all the right shapes on the right surfaces, but it's still wrong. There is something about it that causes discomfort....
Why am I blathering on about this? Because I want to talk about an extension of this that I has been bouncing around in my head.
And it goes a little something like this....
A huge amount of communication is non-verbal, it's about "mind reading", looking at the tiny movements of facial muscles, paying attention to intonation, even posture and inference from previous experience; a host of factors that only become more subtle and nuanced as the number of contexts in which people have interacted grows. The fact that automata can not (as yet, I don't wanna have to call in Deckard) display these micro expressions, because they lack the machinery that generates them, that's the human brain in case that wasn't clear, is a huge part of what generates the above mentioned discomfort.
Part of what allows us to engage with other human beings is essentially the mechanics behind empathy, our high speed checking that they meet all prerequisite unknowns that lets our limbic system read these people as... well, people. We call it intuition, or being a "good judge of character" and those terms are as good as any to metaphorically describe reading non-verbal cues from someone to get a sense of them before they've had a chance to verbally account for themselves. Or, to use the vernacular, to lie about themselves.
Now to get to something that resembles a point, from a distance. And in bad lighting.
Imagine that you met a human being, an anatomically typical human being, but almost everything they did was wrong. Not just the big stuff, like dressing incorrectly, which is not cute after a certain age, but everything, the physical movements, the facial expressions, everything. There was no way to empathize because what you were looking at could not be read, and nothing to suggest that this person seeks any empathy with you, this leads the amygdala, basically the part of the brain that controls the flight or fight response, to kick in, reading this person as an unknown and therefore a potential threat. But you're not looking at something that is inherently threatening, your looking at something that anatomically looks very much like you, and this can cause discomfort. You are looking at this person from one of the summits on either side of the uncanny valley, and in some cases you have just had your first interaction with an autistic person. (Jesus that took ages to get to, and that isn't even my final point.)
For most of us, unless we have a mastered certain skills, interacting with autistic people is jarring before it becomes as rewarding as interacting with "neuro-typical" people, because learning their cues are off. So there is a name for why people feel awkward around people disabled in this way, something is wrong and we feel off, but we shouldn't so we feel more off, and until we get to really know the person in question, and develop enough context for their reactions to or actions in relation to things that feeling of "offness" continues.
There is another side to this that has been bouncing around in my head for the last couple of weeks: If you are looking out from the uncanny valley then surely the feeling is the same as if you are looking in?
Now I could be off here, I mean Autism literally means morbid self absorption, but to an autist we are similar but wrong, the reason that autistic behavior seems wrong is that autistic people don't understand why we behave they way we do. There are studies that indicate when autistic people are asked to match emotions from faces, i.e. from a photo, or just to infer from looking at someone, their amygdala fires (the fight or flight area of the brain I was talking about earlier), the very act of trying to "mind read" is threatening to autistic people.
It causes discomfort.... and honestly, I think that coming to understand that discomfort will be a huge part of helping autistic people to live with dignity in the years to come, as this becomes a more relevant to how we teach an increasing population of People with autistic spectrum disorder.
When I've recovered from writing this, and stopped returning to edit it I'll write about what I think that teaching could look like. but now it's late. But I would like to leave you with what it looks like once you get to the other side of the "Valley"
And I'll probably just let that speak for itself.
...Gently whispered hope....
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