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The Tipping Point of Humanness

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the isn't-that-uncanny dept.

sciencehabit writes "Robert Zemeckis, take note. Using videos that morph the face of a baby or man into a doll, researchers have figured out at what point we stop considering a face human — and start considering it artificial. The ability, the researchers say, is key to our survival, enabling us to quickly determine whether the eyes we're looking at have a mind behind them. It may also explain why so many people hated The Polar Express."

6 of 272 comments (clear)

  1. The Polar Express was a Cartoon by RobotRunAmok · · Score: 5, Funny

    No reason to hate the puppets. But this does give some indication as to why Nancy Pelosi makes so many people uneasy...

  2. Homocentric bullshit? by macraig · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My cats look directly and intently at my face every day, and it's obvious from the circumstances that they recognize that a mind with intent is attached to those eyes and they're eager to figure out what that intent might be (and whether it might adversely affect them). This is not at all a behavior exclusive to primates, much less humans. Presumably that means my cats would have hated The Polar Express, too. They're already annoyed by Tom Hanks' nasally voice.

    1. Re:Homocentric bullshit? by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 5, Insightful

      My cats look directly and intently at my face every day, and it's obvious from the circumstances that they recognize that a mind with intent is attached to those eyes and they're eager to figure out what that intent might be (and whether it might adversely affect them).

      Dogs you mean. No other animal can beat dogs when it comes to reading the human mind. Most animals don't even know to look at where we are pointing at. Dogs have evolved with humans for the last 30,000 years. I posted earlier the theory about dog-human interaction could be the one that led to sedentism that was the precursor to the domestication of plants and agriculture. Someone asked for references. See Nicholas Wade's book "Before the Dawn" for a good over view of "The Great Leap Forward". (But the main thrust of that book was building inheritance trees of the Y Chromosome, the mitochondrial DNA, DNA of the body louse, the tree of languages etc and showing how they all agree with one another and gives us clues about fixing crucial dates before the recorded history. For example lactose tolerance and cattle domestication in west-central Europe about 8000 years ago. Or the correlation between horse based civilizations and Indo-Aryan language family. )

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      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  3. Re:LOTR by TheLink · · Score: 5, Funny

    Any single frame looks just like Jeff Bridges sure, but when it's all put together the effect is still a little stiff.

    I've noticed a similar issue when watching Nicholas Cage and Keanu Reeves movies.

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  4. Re:LOTR by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've noticed a similar issue when watching Nicholas Cage and Keanu Reeves movies.

    Whoa!

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    My blog
  5. Key to survival by Arancaytar · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah, I guess it'd be pretty important if the zombie uprising ever happens, or the world is taken over by sentient dolls.