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Mitt Romney, Robotics, and the Uncanny Valley
Hugh Pickens writes "Brian Fung writes in the Atlantic that one of Romney's electoral problems is that he occupies a kind of uncanny valley for politicians, inexplicably turning voters off despite looking like the textbook image of an American president. Just as people who interact with lifelike robots often develop a strange feeling due to something they can't quite name, something about Romney leaves voters unsettled. As with the robotic version of the uncanny valley, the closer Romney gets to becoming real to a voter, the more his likeability declines. 'The effect is almost involuntary, considering the substantial advantages Romney enjoys from appearance alone,' writes Fung. 'But in person, his polished persona gives way to what appears a surprisingly forced and inauthentic character.' Political commentator Dana Milbanks adds that although Romney is confident and competent, in casual moments his weirdness comes through — equal parts 'Leave It to Beaver' corniness and social awkwardness. 'Romney's task now is to work his way out of the uncanny valley toward a more compelling style of humanity,' concludes Fung. 'But every day he lingers in it, the hill grows steeper.'"
Geez, one of the worst of the Washington Post shill-meisters. And it is Milbank, not Milbanks who has said "that the whole campaign-trail reporting gig is a complete waste of time and borderline fraudulent". How is this /. material?
People strongly involved in religion always let me this strange impression that they are hiding something, as unable to really disclose what they think.
Speaking of uncanny appearances, Endorse Liberty (a PAC that supports Ron Paul) put out some web ads featuring other politicians, including "Fake Mitt Romney". One of the first things he says is "I'm Fake Mitt Romney, which makes me a lot like the real Mitt Romney". You can see it here.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
You mean in person he comes off as a hypocritical crook, you don't say ?
End of Line.
He kinda reminds me of the futurama guys:
John Jackson:"It's time someone had the courage to stand up and say: I'm against those things that everybody hates."
Jack Johnson:"Now, I respect my opponent. I think he's a good man. But quite frankly, I agree with everything he just said."
John Jackson:"I say your three cent titanium tax goes too far."
Jack Johnson:"And I say your three cent titanium tax doesn't go too far enough."
The reason he was impeached wasn't sex. It was because:
1. He lied under oath. We call that perjury and it's a felony.
2. He lied under oath in a trial where he was having to account for unwanted sexual advances on a woman.
3. As a matter of law, we try to make at least a half-assed attempt to protect women from aggressive, unwanted sexual advances.
4. Felonies are actually named as a basis upon which a President can be impeached.
If he had just admitted the truth, there was nothing the system could have done to him because it was a civil trial and Presidents cannot be impeached for purely civil matters.
"Barack Obama is a socialist. He's trying to overhaul this country along the lines of Europe." (pauses while boos fill the hall).
"That's right, my friends. Now, Europe is a nice place to visit - I spent about five years there in France during the Viet Nam War. Bonjour, tout le monde! Comment allez-vous aujourd'hui?" (pauses, but is met by silence)
"And Switzerland is a great place to park your money for tax purposes, but I've found we have a better tax shelter right here in the Cayman Islands!" (pauses again.. scattered nervous applause)
"Not that I ever had much money in those accounts, contrary to what the elite liberal press has suggested. Maybe $30 million or so at the peak. But I am not going to apologize for being a successful businessman, I've created a lot of jobs during my career. There's Everett " (points to the someone in the crowd) "Everett worked for the printer we used at Bain Capital for the private equity contracts." (sustained applause)
"I'm going to repeal Obamacare. I'm going to win the debates - when the President starts in with one of his outrageous Keystone Cops statements I'll turn to him and say, Ten Thousand Dollar bet, Barack?"
"And when November comes, we're going to put Obama's dog on the roof of the car " (cheering starts to build) ".. and we're going to take it for a spin on the highway for a few hours, and then we're going to close down the union plant that built the car!" (wild cheers and cries of "Mitt, Mitt")
Here we go. The hard and heavy wheels of destruction are starting to turn. Inevitable I suppose.
:-)
IMO, Romney is, intellectually and experientially, the most qualified candidate for US president that we've seen in the last two centuries. I'm not sure what kind of president he'll end up being, but he is certainly qualified for the role and infinitely more qualified than the current US president.
FWIW, I had the opportunity to work in fairly close proximity to the man back in 1994. Back then I got the distinct impression that he was generally the smartest guy in the room. But what really stands out in my memory was a meeting where various topics of quantitative finance were discussed...in detail. He was very comfortable with partial differential equations.
Oh, you'll laugh about it, until you meet one. You'll sense it, deep in your brainstem, that you're prey.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
If Romney is in the uncanny valley, let's eliminate the impossible and what's left must be the truth. He clearly is not a corpse, and let's face it, zombies are fictional, so he must have some sort of prosthesis. Not a prosthetic hand, but perhaps a prosthetic forehead.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
Even before Iowa, people were claiming Romney was "electable". WTF? Why is a guy who couldn't beat a 100 year old loser in 2008 "electable"? More important, when has the "electable" candidate actually WON?? McCain was electable, and so was Bob Dole. On the other side, John Kerry was electable, and I'm pretty sure Hilary was more electable than an unknown 2 year Senator with a foriegn name.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
No, because Republicans have sacrificed virtue for "electability" as have the Democrats. So rather than voting in the primary for people who really represent their beliefs, they vote for someone who is "electable" in the process getting someone who doesn't represent their beliefs at all.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
BZZZT!!! Bullshit.
We don't call lying under oath "perjury." We call lying under oath about something material to the case at hand "perjury." Clinton did lie under oath in a deposition about Whitewater to questions that had not a damn thing to do with the case, therefore not perjury. If you go back and check, he was completely acquitted of that charge--even by several Republicans.
Also, even if he were eventually found guilty, felonies are not named as a basis upon which a President can be impeached. "High crimes and misdemeanors" is the basis. Clinton had an affair. Stop trying to conflate that with giving away our nuclear codes to China.
By the way, you might want to know that as a matter of law, we do not prosecute people because of consensual sex.
And by the way, he WAS impeached because of sex. You can try to dress it up any way you want, but that's it, period. They tried to get him on Whitewater, and they couldn't. He was completely acquitted of all of those charges, too. Maybe you don't remember so well what happened during those days, but I sure as hell do. The Republicans made some shit up and hauled him in to give a sworn deposition under oath about Whitewater. Once he got in the room, they started asking him all sorts of sordid, slimy questions that didn't have a damn thing to do with the case at hand. Everyone in that room--especially Bill Clinton--knew that the testimony would be leaked and that it had zero to do with any actual crime. It was character assassination, pure and simple. Hell, they knew they didn't have the votes to actually find him guilty, so the end goal wasn't really to remove him from office, either. The point was to get Ken Starr's report out to the public and put all of the salacious details on people's televisions; to distract the public from REAL issues.
Clinton was by far one of the best presidents we've ever had. Eight straight years of relative peace, no messy expensive international entanglements, budget surpluses, record low unemployment, booming economy with little inflation, etc. Had the Republicans not conducted their little smear campaign, there's no way come hell or high water Al Gore could lose in 2000, it would have been a Reaganesque landslide. They were desperate, and as a result, Clinton for a couple of years had a very hard time carrying out his duties as President. I kinda wish he had been able to focus on things like, I dunno, say, Osama bin Laden, instead of having to testify about where someone consented for him to put a cigar.
So stop being such a tool and persisting with this bogus "but he lied under oath, waaaah!" bullshit. He was impeached due to sex, and it was nothing but a Republican ploy to take the White House in 2000, end of story.
...when he said Romney looks like "the guy who plays the American president in a Canadian movie."
As usual reading Neil Stephenson is spot on for the average geek: Interface is about a slightly 'enhanced' presidential candidate that is the _perfect_ shill for big business.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
The deposition that Clinton lied about having sex with Monica Lewinski was for the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit. I would think having sex with an intern would be material to this case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Jones
As with Nixon it was not the crime but the cover up. Only Nixon is synonymous with being a crook and Clinton is not.
"The audience at the inauguration were puzzled by the beginning of President Romney's long-anticipated speech, in which he simply intoned: 'Attention all planets of the solar federation: we have assumed control, we have assumed control, we have assumed control..'"
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
No. Every election cycle, I take a look at the candidates and think "Are these the best of the best? Can't we do better?" The answer to both is a big NO.
These guys are the survivors of a weird winnowing process. Egotistical enough to believe they should be president, connected enough to get support, organized enough to run, stubborn enough to stick with it, and with not too many skeletons in the closet. Can speak well and doesn't appear overtly crazy or hideously ugly.
A couple of those talents are useful as president, but there isn't a 1:1 correlation.
Makes you sort of wonder if the way candidates were chosen in a smoke filled back room wasn't an improvement. I almost wish we could elect a couple committees to go and recruit a presidential candidate each for the whole population to then vote on. Call them the hypothetical R and D committees.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Mitt cannot harm a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to be harmed.
What's really uncanny is the two or three editorials per day about Romney's massive electability problems. And I only read one mainstream outlet; this story suggests other papers are doing the same thing. All this babbling about his problems and how he can't possibly win, and meanwhile he's, you know....winning. At least the nomination, and he probably has as good a chance as any against Obama in the general election.
I don't like Romney at all, but I'm still profoundly unsettled by this desperate meta-campaign to convince people he can't win. Are news outlets delusional? Are they trying to shape public policy by falsely prophesying some inevitable result? It just plain creeps me out.
There's also the first filter of wanting the position in the first place. Not just believing that they could do a good job, but wanting to be the one governing a country that is in many ways ungovernable. Power always has its attraction, but at the moment the US president seems to have only the purpose of taking the blame.
I'm a registered Republican, and this year when they called for a donation I told them: "I will not be giving money to any party this year." That was the quickest I have ever gotten off the phone with them. I hope many others told them the same thing.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Consequences can only be "unintended" for so long. We've known for decades, arguably centuries, that creating a large/popular black market will divert economic strength away from the general populace toward criminals. When you see it as it's happening, and maintain (rather than repeal) the laws that make that market remain black, it's no longer an unintended consequence. At the very best, it's a regretfully accepted/planned consequence.
You can't say "you have to break some eggs to make an omelet" and then call the breaking of eggs unintended. Oh you intended it, you just weren't completely happy about it.
Similarly, we shouldn't allow politicians a free pass on the known and anticipated consequences of the drug war. They can still support the drug war with honor, but only if they own those consequences. The authoritarian parties need to come out and say
and then finish that sentence with whatever amazing fact or political theory it is, that has been so preciously held from the public for so long. But don't fucking say, "We didn't intend to usurp your local government, overrule your doctor, disrepect people, and send money to Mexico.. we had no idea prohibition would necesitate all that," because that is just insultingly unbelievable.
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