Yes, there should definitely be an Uncanny Valley in second life, especially as somewhere you can visit.

In the UK, the real one, an area of 256m x256m is often referred to as ‘a kingdom’.

The skinned human corpses in everyday poses has been done already.

My idea is this

Skinned, partially skinned or other wise slightly mutilated corpses posed together in position from the Karma Sutra, set in ice or resin cubes, lit with UV or green light.
Music would probably be something like Tartar Lamb.

Thought this would be the ideal thread….

It’s also interesting that we find some insects attractive, like butterflies and ladybugs. Maybe because they remind us of flowers, which are on the other side of the second valley?

That could also apply to cartoon animals, especially the ones that end up in diversified markets and whose likeness you can see on pencil boxes, towels, bumper stickers, and the like.

That’s very true, the double peak… I think Dawkins mentions something about it in Selfish Gene. It’s a form of genetic nepotism (or xenophobia depending upon how you look at it).

Although any pet owner can tell you that it is nearly impossible not to impose human traits on their animals, if your cat was to suddenly start talking there would be an issue…

I haven’t mentioned it, but the Uncanny Valley theory has many, many critics and these issues are used as evidence against it. We don’t tend to see the world in gradations of life, rather as discreet packets of life.

Where I live, we call that the ‘Niall’…

niall was a friend of mine as a teenager. We once got into a fight with a bunch of older teenagers… before even a single punch was thrown, Niall slowly and carefully folded up into a ball on the pavement, assumed the foetal position and whimpered the phrase, ‘not the face’.

To go back to our animal relations, in increasing order of separation, I think other primates are kinda cute… I like monkeys. Other mammals there’s a lot of “cute” ones there (cats/dogs, pandas etc) even the ones that aren’t hugely cute we tend to at least care about (bears, wolves)

Other vertebrates… some birds are cute, very few fish are cute, you get the occasional cute reptile (same again where we’ll care about the plight of the bigger ones if they’re in trouble even if they aren’t cute) and amphibians… down to personal preference… frogs can be cute, but as a class of animals amphibians tend to be wet and slimy and not all that pleasant.

Invertebrates tend to be weeny little things that we can’t really emphasise or interact with… not so cute. I think size is an important factor here – big mammals are undeniably more liked than tiny insects, plants/trees are back on the human scale so I think that probably causes the second bump in your graph.

I’ve always thought young orangutans looked like hairy old humans. But cute.

“Come and stay in the Uncanny Valley, it’s *almost* great”

That or you’ve actually bypassed the fight or flight mechanism, overloaded what your brain can deal with and gone into full withdrawal mode (i.e. foetal position on the floor whilst making little whimpering noises)