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In last week's episode, we talked about the vague horror
of Face Swap.
Let's see what you had to say.
Josh Closs, very sorry that we ruined your lunch
and to everyone else who pointed out
the fact that a warning for the body horror
might have been a good thing to include in this episode.
You're totally right, and I'm super
sorry that we didn't even-- I think
that we have a little bit of a blind spot when it comes
to horror movies, because many of the people who work on Idea
Channel enjoy them so much that we
don't think of them as something requiring a content warning.
But that is a great point, and I'm
sorry that we overlooked that.
I just want to applaud 80aichdee's comment
on the subreddit that the TL;DR of the episode is "hell is
other computers," getting at the kind
of Sartrean/Merleau-Pontyan idea that you are literally what
other things think of and see you as.
And so that means that you are kind of stuck in yourself
in their conception of you and how
that is sort of very related to what we were talking
about in last week's episode.
This is-- like, I want to print this on a poster
and hang it on the wall.
Trumf also on the subreddit points
to a really interesting art project from a couple years
ago called Data-Masks, where an artist tried to figure out
what kinds of things algorithms mistake
as faces in the hopes of creating something that
is wearable that would sort of trick surveillance
into thinking that it had identified a face
but had not actually done so.
And I think this kind of stuff is super interesting.
Also related is the method of applying makeup or wearing
one's hair so that you can do the opposite,
so that you can fool a computer into thinking
it's not seeing a face when, in fact, it really is.
Anyways, all of this stuff-- super interesting.
These are great links, awesome things to check out.
We'll put a link to this one and all the other comments
in the doobly-doo.
Super_Dork_42, I'm sorry.
I am legitimately sorry.
I did say that we would definitely
use this image that you made, which
we're going to show right now.
It's amazing, and then we didn't use it.
Instead, we just showed a clip from "Face/Off."
And I am regretful and embarrassed.
I'm sorry.
Chris153 writes a really great comment
about how the horror that results from face swaps
might be because of how we are giving a kind of agency
where it doesn't belong, that if you don't anthropomorphize
computers or their processes in any way,
as was done in the episode, the result of failed face
swaps or even just face swaps in general
might not be horrifying so much as it is humorous.
And they talk about Dan Dennett and his ways
of looking at processes, that there
is the physical, the design, and the intentional stance
when talking about how something works,
and that the episode kind of gives
an intent to these processes and to algorithms and such,
where instead it should be given a kind of design stance.
It should be looked at from the perspective
of a complex process that is more than just
a set of instructions coming together to create a result.
And I think that this is super fair
and I think is reflected by-- is reflected
in a bunch of other comments, but was
kind of purposeful to sort of see
what happens to these sets of theories
that we were working with when-- when we treat them this way
and when we treat computers this way.
You know, getting into this object-oriented ontology
idea of what it's like-- the alien phenomenology
idea of what it's like to be a thing
and what it's like to give those things intention
or to gift them "experience" even if they don't have it
in a way that we would necessarily appreciate or be
able to understand.
But yeah, I think this is-- this is a great point
and, yeah, absolutely true.
Hannah Spierman, who wrote a comment on Facebook
about how this sort of thinking might give us insight
into the way that we're viewed by computers, sure,
but then also might give us insight into how
we are viewed by other things that are both not like us
and not like life as we tend to think of it as existing
but would still arguably be a life form and not
artificial intelligence or a computational process
in some way.
And this makes me think about a conversation
that I was having with Patrick Davison, who
is the sort of Idea Channel consulting producer--
helps out with scripts and stuff--
about how computers are really the closest thing that we have
to aliens-- other than, like, the organisms
that we find at the bottom of the Gowanus Canal
in the toxic sludge that's there-- that a computer is
really a thing that we might, when anthropomorphizing it--
perhaps incorrectly so-- can attribute processes
like thinking or deciding, you know, not quite
consciousness-- at least not yet-- but that, in doing so,
we then see how the results of those things
can be so foreign and so weird.
And so yeah.
Like, is a computer the closest thing we have to an alien?
Maybe yeah.
Hoarf, yes, I am.
And, I mean, I'm kind of doing a lot more than that.
This isn't technically related to the larger
topic of the episode.
But Pablo Rovira and Dargona had a conversation
about when I said "vaguely upsetting collages
of human, animal, and fish faces."
And Pablo Rivera said, "Because fish ain't animals, yo.
And then their conversation mimicked--
mimics exactly my thought process
in deciding to include fish specifically,
even though they are animals.
And I mean, while we're at it, humans are also animals.
But it's just-- it's weird to see my thought process laid out
as a conversation.
Thinking is dialogic, everybody.
Michael Pattie, English does have a lot of face metaphors
and phrases-- things like, you said, being two-faced, putting
in face time, being like a face man or face person,
if you're a representative of something or other.
But I think a lot of the more common ones
aren't as directly related to honor and prestige
and reputation as things like saving
face, being a face saver, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
I think that they sort of come from a slightly different
tradition or origin point.
I keep thinking about Janus and the idea
of being two-faced, as you show one face to one type of person
and you show another face to another type of person
or at a different time, which is-- which I think
is related to reputation but is slightly
different from the tradition that Michael Carr was
collecting and talking about, at least.
Chris Blake writes a really interesting comment
about prosopagnosia, which I'm not sure
if I'm saying that right.
But it's face blindness and how it
relates to this whole conversation--
this is something that I was actually
chatting with Joe Hanson about a couple days ago--
and the idea that there is a kind of algorithm at work
in the human brain that allows us to recognize
not only faces but faces of individual people
and how that relates to the "experience" of machines
and computers and their algorithms.
And it's-- I mean, it's a huge area and super interesting.
I'll put some links to some reading in the description.
But Chris writes-- part of his comment
is about his girlfriend, who has face blindness
and talks about how the show "Orphan Black"
is actually somewhat comforting, because so
many of the people who are on screen
are all the same person-- all the same face
in some way or another.
And that sort of is something that,
for someone with face blindness, is comforting and easier
to deal with than a large cast of many different people.
And I never thought about this.
And Chris writes about how this also indicates the skill
that Tatiana Maslany has in portraying these characters,
because she can differentiate between them in their actions
and their mannerisms.
And it's just-- yeah.
I'm going to be thinking about this for a while.
This was a great comment.
Thank you for sharing this, Chris.
And finally, this week in the YouTube
comments from people who make things on YouTube that I like,
Olly from Philosophy Tube switches it around
and asks whether or not from the perspective of computers
or the Borg, it's weird that we have such strong opinions
and such an easy time determining
what is and is not "actually" a face
or if, from their perspective, it would seem
just arbitrary and strange.
And this-- yeah.
I'm going to think about this later on the drive home.
And Sally Le Page would have just put it all down
to the uncanny valley, which I think is absolutely,
definitely, and positively part of this whole constellation
of things.
For me, I think the uncanny valley comes in when
I swap faces with someone.
And it looks fine.
Either I don't look that different, they
don't look that different, or our faces swap
in what appears to be a totally normal-- like, someone
could just look like that.
I recently did this with my friend, Guy.
And he also has a beard.
It's-- yeah, it's a little uncomfortable.
That, I think, is when the uncanny valley box gets ticked.
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