I don't get the sense the author really understands the existing literature. In fact, I think the author has misunderstood the main point from Mori's 1970 paper[123], the counter-intuitive relationship between "affinity"[z] and human-likeness -- the uncanny valley itself.

For a specific example, consider the discussion of Mori's "famous graph" near the beginning of the article.

> the graph assumes you have an objective and linear way to measure similarity to humans. In reality, we rely on human intuition to know what is more or less similar, and this leads to wildly inconsistent determinations.

Mori's graph isn't a data plot. It's a drawing to illustrate the concept (the "valley") in an intuitive way. I am certain that Mori understood very well (just from reading the paper, haven't a clue about anything else about him) that human perception is not an objective or linear function.

The article circles back to repeat its own talking points many times, is full of strange and unsupported claims, and the author keeps circling back to their (mis)understanding that "more human" appearance should result in a proportional "less unease", i.e. the "myth" Mori was busting way back in 1970.

This prompted me to read the paper again, so thanks for that!

[123] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6213238

[z] https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/11496/what-is-a...