Time to clear out the browser!

Check out this awesome article about what creeps us out about robots.

Specifically, it talks about a very specific thing about how us humans interact, a phenomenon known as gaze avoidance. That refers to how, when we are talking to one another, we do not look at each other the whole time. We have a whole array of little tricks, like blinking, turning our heads, or shifting our stance in order to break up our gaze.

Why? For one simple reason : to avoid staring.

Staring is universally an aggressive act in the animal kingdom. In a social species, therefore, with a high level of interaction, it is vital that staring not happen accidentally.

So our gaze flits about. It has to. The only difference between a look and a stare is duration. That is why people who are on the autism spectrum get in trouble for staring at people. They lack the social sense to know why this is wrong, and to be honest, most people will not be able to explain it to them.

Blessed are the articulators.

Check out this video of a robot programmed with the proper amount of gaze avoidance.

He really looks like he’s listening carefully and attentively, doesn’t he?

Now check out this one programmed with too much gaze avoidance.

All that has been changed is the timing, and yet now the robot seems shy and embarrassed, maybe even untrustworthy. It is not a pattern that would put people at ease. It would actually make people nervous.

What a perfect exemplar for the kind of Catch-22 that shy people face. They are hesitant and afraid to make eye contact, which makes other people nervous and irritated, and they pick up on that and become more nervous and hesitant…. you get the idea.

I think this also explains why we think our dogs are hanging on our every word. They pay such close attention to us! Of course, that is really just because we are their alpha dogs and they are eager to see what comes next.

But it looks like they are listening!

Next up, we have a Splitsider article that ponders the answer to the question on every comedy nerd’s mind : what is Comedy Central going to use to replace the Colbert Report now that Colbert is taking over from Letterman?

It’s a good article, lots of solid, sensible speculation. That’s all it is, speculation, but that’s all we have right now.

I can’t see any of the current cast of correspondents on TDS being able to do a show by themselves. Not only are none of them the sort of breakout megatalent that Colbert was, the show has systematically destroyed the likability of each and every one of them. So any of them would face a huge challenge in winning us over and getting us to trust them on a new show.

And of course, the one dude who could have pulled it off was John Oliver, and he’s already gone!

I don’t know anything about the other Comedy Central Stars. I haven’t seen any of their shows. All I can do is caution that skit comedy and television hosting are two wildly different beasts and they should not assume that someone who does well in one stands a chance in the other.

Going outside the CC stable is definitely a possibility. I would give Craig Ferguson a shot except that I think he is going to be taking over another late night show, one of the second-slot ones, and thus unlikely to jump ship.

Other than his, no other names spring to mind. Hosting a late night show is such a specific kind of skill that it is hard to tell who has it without them having done it first.

I like the idea of moving @midnight back half an hour. It seems like a very fast and funny show. The only problem I see with that is that the Colbert Report has this whole setup to make a Daily Show type show, and it would be a shame to see all that writing talent and production capacity go to waste.

It’s all Colbert’s fault. He just had to go name the show after himself and thus make sure nobody else can host it!

Finally, this CNN article asks : Is the Internet killing religion?

Now I have to admit, the title of the article caused an instant eyeroll. Oh great, another ‘Is the Internet X” article crapped out by some old media dinosaur in order to convince themselves that they get this whole Internet thing.

And yes, it is taking a small bit of info way too far, like this crap always does. The fact that there is a correlation between high Internet use and religious disaffiliation (also known as checking “none” on the religion question) is absolutely meaningless without other studies to show it.

Because as any competent thinker knows, correlation is not the same as causation. All it means is that two things are happening to roughly the same degree. There may be no connection between the two things at all, or there maybe be a third factor that is influencing both of them.

But there are a few good points. Bringing news of the outside world to closed, insular religious communities could definitely have a major effect on young people leaving the faith. When they realize that all the things that their elders told them about the mean ol outside world are simply untrue, they are going to want to go find out for themselves.

Still, I think that the correlation exists simply because young people are the most likely to be disaffiliated (usually before affiliating to some other religion later in life), and young people today use MAD amounts of the Interweb.

Organized religion is failing people all over the world. It simply has nothing to offer young people. And as young people desert the churches and synagogues, there is no new blood and the religion becomes still more dominated by the aged, and they are even less likely to do the things that would make their religions relevant to the youth.

None of that can be blamed on the Internet.

The world needs new religions, religion transformed. Being a nontheistic materialist, I am not exactly the one to start one, or at least, not one that looks anything like regular religion.

I hope someone out there can do it, though. People need religion. They need a reason to go on, a reason to feel like they are not alone in the world, a reason to hang on through the bad times.

The old ways just suck donkey dingleberries.