Month: September 2013

Rose Eveleth outlines the reasons:

One is that not being able to tell whether something is human or not can be a deeply unsettling feeling in itself. Artists and directors take advantage of this all the time for dramatic effect. The dread that viewers feel while trying to figure out who is a zombie, or Cylon, or alien might be the very same dread they feel when faced with a very realistic robot.

Another explanation focuses on the disconnect between how realistic something looks, and how well it moves.

There’s always been a lag time between how quickly designers can make things look like people, and how quickly engineers can make them move like us. If a figure that you thought was human started to move jerkily, you would recoil. Similarly, if you were to shake a robot’s hand while expecting a human touch, but instead felt cold rubber, you would be caught of guard. An unexpected break in humanness can be an unpleasant shock, one that sets off fearful and distrustful instincts. “Whenever we see something move, and we’re not familiar with the mechanism of movement, it grabs our attention,” says Andrew Olney, a psychologist at the University of Memphis who works on designing intelligent robots. “If your coffee cup started slowly moving across the table, that would kind of freak you out a bit.”

Finally, a third theory turns to evolution. It suggests that if a robot looks like a human, but moves unnaturally, our brains subconsciously classify what we’re seeing as someone with a disease. This is the same explanation proposed for most feelings of disgust. When we stand near something like faeces, rotting flesh, or a jerking robot, we experience a sudden urge to get away from it so as to avoid catching the infections it may harbour.

Previous Dish on the “uncanny valley” here, here and here.

Robert L. Strauss provides a glimpse into the training methods of psychiatrist David Burns, a leader in cognitive behavioral therapy and the author of Feeling Good.  “Theo” is a fellow therapist who is frustrated that a patient dropped out of his practice:

Although Theo is obviously upset, this is a training session, not a therapy session, and so Burns asks what the two of them should do next. Theo suggests the “externalization of voices” technique, in which the therapist (or friend or spouse) hurls the patient’s negative thoughts right back at him. It’s the patient’s job to defeat those thoughts.

“People will think I’m a loser,” Burns says, as Theo’s inner voice.

“And they’d be right,” Theo answers, disheartened. “I am a loser.” (Theo has an advanced degree from Stanford.)

Burns reminds Theo that in this exercise he needs to find positive thoughts he “believes in 100 percent” that will crush his negative thoughts completely.

Round Two.

“You have to accept that you’re not going to have a successful practice,” Burns jabs.

“It’s silly to jump to conclusions,” Theo answers.

“Well, you failed the patient who dropped out,” Burns says.

“We don’t know that,” Theo answers. “That’s black or white. That’s not how the world works.”

“Still, you don’t know what you are doing.”

“I’m learning every week. I’m having some remarkable success,” Theo says more assertively. “Openings just mean that people’s schedules change. The reality is that therapists have openings.”

“The reality is that you are a loser.”

“That’s just not true!” Theo retorts with a conviction that was entirely missing moments before.

Burns asks who won the exchange.

“I did,” Theo says.

When Theo quantifies his “after” feelings, anxiety has dropped from 75 to 40 percent, inferiority from 75 to 30. He reminds himself that therapy is a science and an art.

Beth Kephart praises memoirs that move beyond self-absorption:

[W]hat does memoir offer? What can it yield? Why am I, after all these years, still reading it, teaching it, shaping it, seeking it? The answers are many, but here I offer just one: Because memoir at its very best is the start of a conversation. It makes its interest in readers explicit, offering not just a series of life events, but a deliberate suggestion of what it is to be a human being – to experience confusion, despair, hope, joy, and all that happens in between. True memoir is a singular life transformed into a signifying life. True memoir is a writer acknowledging that he or she is not the only one in the room.

One memoir she claims gets it right:

Consider, for example, Jean-Dominique Bauby’s international bestseller The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which later became a major motion picture. It’s a slender book – a mere 132 pages. It’s a terrifying book, written by a man who, in December 1995, suffers a massive stroke that leaves him permanently paralyzed. Bauby is “locked in,” unable to move or speak. It’s his left eye that saves him – his left eye, which he relies on to blink at the slate of letters an assistant shares. Blink by blink, letter by letter, Bauby communicates his story. He was a famous magazine editor, we learn. He is trapped, we learn. But he is still alive – and still, miraculously, hopeful. And even though each word comes slowly, even though he has no words to spare, Bauby makes the explicit effort to tell us about ourselves. He looks up from where he is and acknowledges our presence.

“Christian realism requires the disavowal of war. Christians do not disavow war because it is often so horrible, but because war, in spite of its horror – or perhaps because it is so horrible – can be so morally compelling. That is why the church does not have an alternative to war. The church is the alternative to war. When Christians lose that reality – that is, the reality of the church as an alternative to the world’s reality – we abandon the world to the unreality of war,” – Stanley Hauerwas.

Previous Dish on the Christian pacifism of Hauerwas here, here and here.