Life With Alacrity

Extrapolative Hostility in the Online Medium

Extrapolate

To infer an unknown from something that is known; conjecture.
-- The Random House College Dictionary

Mick LaSalle, an acerbic movie reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle, writes a regular column "Ask Mick LaSalle" in the Sunday paper, where he sometimes allows others to vent their displeasure at his movie reviews. In this week's column he says something that I find very accurate to my experience with the online medium:

As for why people get hostile when they hear a differing opinion, I go back to Spinoza's definition of love and hatred. He says that people love that which they think reinforces their survival and hate that which they think threatens their survival. I believe -- this is just my humble theory, now -- that when people hear an opinion that counters theirs, their minds extrapolate from that one opinion to imagine a whole philosophical system. And then they imagine how they would fare in a world run according to that imagined system. So they go from disagreeing to feeling threatened in a matter of seconds, and they lash out. Often they write letters that begin, "You are obviously," and that's where they identify, not you, but the phantom they feel threatened by.

Over the years, I've been "obviously" liberal, conservative, gay, straight, humorless, frivolous, angry and deeply jealous of Tom Hanks. When I was 30, I remember getting accused of being a 45-year-old former hippie who drove a BMW, wore a Rolex and had done acid in the '60s. I'm not sure if I wrote back, but if I did, I would have said, "Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong." But, of course, that kind of letter is your key to acquiring distance. It lets you know that the person's real quarrel is with some middle-aged former hippie -- probably known as Dad -- and that you're just the vehicle for that day's projection.

I think that Mick LaSalle is exactly right -- I've seen this type of hostility based on extrapolation regularly in online mediums: in emails, newsgroups, wikis, blogs, etc. I've been guilty of it a few times myself, though usually for me the result is that I don't respond at all -- "Oh, he is just a flaming liberal", "She's an arch-conservative" or "He is a just a technophobe." I can then feel comfortable in ignoring the rest of his or her point of view rather then trying to understand it.

I doubt if explaining this theory to someone who writes a hostile message is useful -- they will take it as yet another attack, which will likely contribute to another cycle of flamage. But I do find Mick's theory useful as another way to read and understand hostile messages, and respond more appropriately.

Understanding this lets me add another widget to my social software toolbox: when a group process results in a hostile message, try to determine if the author is actually reacting to what you said or if their hostility is based on extrapolating to "obvious" generalities. This may not allow you to directly address the hostility, but it may help you better understand it and thus not contribute to the cycle of flames.

Robots Dancing in the Uncanny Valley, Knowledge Navigator and UI Design

At a recent unofficial gathering of Future Salon'ers, there was a discussion about a demonstration of four robots doing a japanese fan dance to music (I think it was seen at CES in Las Vegas last week). The remark was that it was vaguely disturbing because your intellect knows that they are just robots, but someplace deep in your brain you know that they are alive because of the way that they move.

There actually a wonderful web page on this topic, called The Uncanny Valley: Why Why are monster-movie zombies so horrifying and talking animals so fascinating? by Dave Bryant.

(Japanese roboticist Doctor Masahiro Mori) is not exactly a household name — but, for the speculative fiction community at least, he could prove to be an important one. The reason why can be summed up in a simple, strangely elegant phrase that translates into English as "the uncanny valley".

Though originally intended to provide an insight into human psychological reaction to robotic design, the concept expressed by this phrase is equally applicable to interactions with nearly any nonhuman entity. Stated simply, the idea is that if one were to plot emotional response against similarity to human appearance and movement, the curve is not a sure, steady upward trend. Instead, there is a peak shortly before one reaches a completely human "look"... but then a deep chasm plunges below neutrality into a strongly negative response before rebounding to a second peak where resemblance to humanity is complete.

The topic of the "Uncanny Valley" has also come up recently in a column by the movie critic Rodger Ebert, Gollum stuck in 'Uncanny Valley' of the 'Rings', where he answers a question from a reader "Should Andy Serkis, the actor of Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, get an Oscar?" where Ebert states:

The genius of Gollum is that it seems like a convincingly real creature -- but not one we have ever seen before, so that its realism does not seem creepy except in the ordinary way. If Serkis brought Gollum to life, other artists fine-tuned the balance with the Uncanny Valley. So this is something other than a conventional performance, and should not compete against characters of a different nature. Perhaps a new category is called for? Beyond the Oscar of the Uncanniest Valley?

I believe that the "Uncanny Valley" also applies to a number of other successes and failures in computer interface design. We loved Apple's "Knowledge Navigator" video, but in practice avatar-based systems have not been successful as they become a turn-off. Witness Microsoft's "Bob" and even Word's Paperclip avatar. When we see a little personality, a little "aliveness", we want a lot more, or it becomes annoying and we turn it off. However, the more "dead" it is, we are willing to forgive a lot.

The "Uncanny Valley" also relates to my previous post Seven Fingers of the Hand, as part of the art of a circus is entering and leaving the valley. As a contortionist amazes you she is entering the Uncanny Valley. As the the clown amuses you he is entering the valley. When they come back to earth and join the others, they are human again.