uncanny valley, a term coined by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori in the 1970s. Mori discovered that people find robots more aesthetically appealing the more they physically resemble humans, but only up to a certain point. Once a robot appears too similar to a human, like figures in a wax museum, they become creepy, unsettling, repulsive.3 The uncanny valley fits with mimetic theory: it is not difference, but sameness, that terrifies us.
