The Uncanny Valley

What is the Uncanny Valley?

The Uncanny Valley. You may have heard of it. You may even know a lot about it. If you are the previous type of person, just stick with me here. If you don’t know what it is, read on. Allow me to give you some examples of the Uncanny Valley. Have you ever looked at a doll, and just felt extremely uncomfortable? No? Here, try this image.

You know what is even worse than creepy dolls? Distorted images of humans.

Makes you feel uncomfortable, right? That is the uncanny valley. To put it in words, it is a graph where the further you go on the x-axis, or the left, the more similar the thing is to a human. On the y-axis, the higher up the graph is, the more friendly and comfortable people are to it. It was found the graph usually steadily rises in affinity as the similarity increases, but there is a very deep drop, seemingly for no reason. Dolls fall close to the center of the uncanny valley, while distorted images of humans fall near dolls as well. Corpses are near the center, while zombies are the closest to the center of anything. This explains why zombies are so scary to us, but this all raises a very important question.

Why does the Uncanny Valley exist?

So, now you about for the uncanny valley. But this raises an interesting question. Why does it exist? Why are we so afraid of things similar to humans, for seemingly zero reason? The truth can be very disturbing.

How Evolution Works

Wait? You may be asking. Evolution? Yes. Evolution. The uncanny valley is due to evolution, but to understand it, you must understand how evolution work first. Simply, evolution evolves to ensure the best chance of survival. So, what does this mean? This means, that some point in human history, it was beneficial for your survival to be afraid of something that looks like a human but is not quite human.

Conclusion

Skinwalkers may be real boys, not now, but in the past. Be careful out there, and that shadowy figure in front of your door may not just be a jacket one day.