Indicator lights vs facial expressions

2 Comments

Imagine an alternate world in which scientific and technical prowess doesn't often go hand-in-hand with difficulty in understanding the subtleties and nuances of social interaction.

In such a world, would car dashboards have facial expressions instead of indicator lights?

For bonus points, discuss the real-world implications of this question, if any, for strong AI.

Also, if God were a geek, would we have indicator lights instead of facial expressions?

(Questions prompted by noticing once again that it can be awfully hard to recognize when one is in a bad mood from within the mood. Wouldn't it be easier if we came with a "Low Mood" light that would start blinking when necessary? He asked, geekily.)

2 Responses to “Indicator lights vs facial expressions”

  1. joey

    I don’t know. Complexity can be a different type of geek from simplicity. There’s a beauty in indicator lights, in simple states that are easily defined, but there’s a geeky beauty in the infinite, too, in states so complex and changing that our fuzzy logic ability to read expressions is the only way to understand.

    reply

  2. Jed

    Yeah, okay, I’ll buy that. Certainly geeks have created or figured out abstract and complex stuff–look at chaos theory. But I think most of the geeks I know (including me) would put social interaction in a different sphere from abstract math and arcane physics. Direct and immediate perception of someone (or something) else’s complex internal state by means of a glance at a face–that’s the kind of thing a lot of geeks have trouble with, even when they’re not daunted by complexity in general.

    reply

Join the Conversation