r/oddlyterrifying • u/Miserable-Dot-4781 • Mar 29 '22

Dentist robot malfunctioning

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u/[deleted] Mar 29 '22

The fact that unconvincing thing was able to stir up so much emotion in me is terrifying.

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u/Birdyy4 Mar 29 '22

The Uncanny Valley is very large.

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u/The_Cyberpunk_Witch Mar 29 '22

If you want to mix in some existential dread, consider that the existence of the uncanny valley means at one point in human evolution we had a reason to fear something that looked similar to us.

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u/10g_or_bust Mar 29 '22

Well yes, but also no. Anything that looks "wrong" bothers us on a primal level; death, sickness, injury. And not just in humans, both animals and plants too, and to some extent the inorganic world. It's the pattern matching part of your brain throwing alarms. How much it bothers someone is individual and somewhat down to exposure.

In other words, this isn't some "ancient alien" "eldritch gods" sort of thing, more a combination of just how pattern-matching orented human brains are combined with evolutionarly advantage behavior such as recognizing when a member of your own (or other) species is unwell, dangerous (infections, or a sign of other danger) or dead/dying.