Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: we're back with part two of our discussion of the
Speaker 1: plate a sex Mac and I think that's what we're
Speaker 1: gonna call it, the comedy of errors that exist in
Speaker 1: the machine and artificial intelligence world. That's right. We were
Speaker 1: gonna do it as one episode, but it just went
Speaker 1: too long, had to break it up into two. But
Speaker 1: it has everything it has, uh, it has humor, it
Speaker 1: has theories of humor, it has killer robots, references to RoboCop,
Speaker 1: everything you could ask for. One of my favorite things
Speaker 1: explaining a joke to death, yes and then yes yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Basically this is a lot of joke explaining. But I
Speaker 1: think by the end of it, everyone will still retain
Speaker 1: their ability to laugh. All right, So, in thinking about
Speaker 1: what's so funny about machine failure, uh, and and even
Speaker 1: machine success along a certain you know, parameter of distance
Speaker 1: from what from what it's ultimate level of success would be,
Speaker 1: you know, AI, that's sort of succeeding but still isn't
Speaker 1: really there. Um, I guess it's worthwhile to look at
Speaker 1: what are some of the main theories out there about
Speaker 1: what humor is? Like, why do we find anything funny
Speaker 1: not just machines? Yeah, because it becomes increasingly difficult to
Speaker 1: really uh nail it down, you know, you come back
Speaker 1: to that whole idea of it's funny because it's funny
Speaker 1: or you know what when you see it. Uh. This
Speaker 1: topic has come up a few times on the show
Speaker 1: before um most recently two thousands, seventeens laughing during horror movies.
Speaker 1: That was when Christian was on the show and we
Speaker 1: talked about you know, what is it about horror movies
Speaker 1: like frightening, terrifying films that that elicits laughter from us?
Speaker 1: And then there were a few other ones in the past,
Speaker 1: The healing power of laughter, the killing joke, funny or Die.
Speaker 1: These are all episodes of stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: You can you can check out in the vault if
Speaker 1: you so desire. Yeah, and so what if you go
Speaker 1: and check those out, I'm sure you as you'll probably
Speaker 1: found before. There's no one theory of human right and
Speaker 1: nobody agrees, but there's sort of a host of competing
Speaker 1: theories that I would say aren't even always totally contradicting
Speaker 1: of one another. They they sort of partially overlap and
Speaker 1: partially contradict one another. Right, Yeah, there's not really a
Speaker 1: theory of everything per se, but like each one feels
Speaker 1: a little bit right, like each theory is is kind
Speaker 1: of fondling the elephant. Yeah, exactly. Uh So, a brief
Speaker 1: run through of a few at the top. And there's
Speaker 1: no way to explore all the theories of humor. But
Speaker 1: if you are the most commonly cited and most popular ones,
Speaker 1: one would be the superiority theory. And this is propounded
Speaker 1: in some classical works, like in the works of Plato
Speaker 1: and Aristotle. This one is actually is kind of nasty,
Speaker 1: But sometimes I guess humor is kind of nasty. It
Speaker 1: proposes that we laugh when we notice someone is less
Speaker 1: fortunate than us in one way or another, and the
Speaker 1: laughter comes from our feeling that we occupy a place
Speaker 1: of superiority. We sort of deploy it as a form
Speaker 1: of scorn on somebody else. And Plato and his Philibus dialogue,
Speaker 1: which is discussing the nature of pleasure and different kinds
Speaker 1: of pleasure, like why pleasures of the mind might be
Speaker 1: superior to pleasures of the flesh. Plato has Socrates claim
Speaker 1: that we laugh at people who do not recognize their
Speaker 1: own misfortune, for example, when people are stupid but think
Speaker 1: themselves brilliant, or when people are ugly but think themselves
Speaker 1: very handsome. And I would say this clearly doesn't cover
Speaker 1: all types of humor, Like, you know, what about self
Speaker 1: deprecating humor when you can laugh at yourself, But there's
Speaker 1: something there that is clearly present in some humor. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know, when it comes to self deprecating humor and
Speaker 1: laughing at yourself, I think it does make sense when
Speaker 1: you consider our abilities to sometimes step outside of ourselves
Speaker 1: and see ourselves as a character in a story, sort
Speaker 1: of the infectious nature of narrative there. But then also
Speaker 1: in the way that we use theory of mind way
Speaker 1: too much to try and imagine how others see us.
Speaker 1: So maybe, like, if you're trying to roll with this theory,
Speaker 1: you'd say that self deprecating humor is almost when we
Speaker 1: pretend that we are ourselves someone else and you like
Speaker 1: step step back and you scorn a different version of yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: basically like or you're just kind of imagining how scornful
Speaker 1: other people were being to you because of something you
Speaker 1: did or said or thought. Yeah. Um, I mean another
Speaker 1: thing I would just say is that unless you're a
Speaker 1: horrible person, and maybe you know, Plato and Aristotle were
Speaker 1: in some ways very smart but also very horrible people,
Speaker 1: unless you're a really bad person, you don't find most
Speaker 1: types of misfortunes of other people funny. I mean, I
Speaker 1: do see a certain distinction along Plato's lens in the Philippus,
Speaker 1: where like a person just failing to do things that
Speaker 1: you could succeed at is generally not very funny. Like
Speaker 1: somebody trying to solve a math problem you could solve
Speaker 1: and they can't do it, that's not funny. But like
Speaker 1: if a man proclaims himself to be one of the
Speaker 1: greatest brains of all time and then is making basic
Speaker 1: errors of logic and math, that's usually funny. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of it hinges on just you know,
Speaker 1: what are the stakes and what sort of misfortune is
Speaker 1: taking place? Like Another sort of example of this is
Speaker 1: when someone thinks they are refined about something, uh, and
Speaker 1: maybe they're a little snobbish about it but there, but
Speaker 1: it turns out their tastes are not quite as refined
Speaker 1: as they thought. Um. I think there was an episode
Speaker 1: of Three's Company back you know in the day, in
Speaker 1: which a don Knots character is ordering like a fine
Speaker 1: scotch at a bar and he's really talking it up
Speaker 1: like he knows what he's talking about, exactly what kind
Speaker 1: of scotch he wants, and then when the bartender finally
Speaker 1: serves it to him, he requests that the rest of
Speaker 1: the glass be filled up with root beer, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's like, like, that's that's so that's hilarious because he
Speaker 1: turns out he's not as as refined as he thought.
Speaker 1: But then it's also like we were being snobbish in
Speaker 1: making that judgment. Uh, And it's and that's always kind
Speaker 1: of a dick move, right because in anything like whatever
Speaker 1: your thing is, that you feel like you're refined and
Speaker 1: be at food or drinks or film or literature, like
Speaker 1: there was a point in your life when you were
Speaker 1: not when you were the person that was the subject
Speaker 1: of scorn. And you know, ultimately we're being fair. You
Speaker 1: should celebrate that they are at all interested in the
Speaker 1: in this thing at all and that they are on
Speaker 1: hopefully on some sort of the same journey that you are,
Speaker 1: but instead we often laugh and said, can you believe
Speaker 1: that guy just put root beer all in that sky?
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good point. So I don't know.
Speaker 1: I would say I definitely see something going on here
Speaker 1: that there are definitely elements of this in humor, but
Speaker 1: I don't think it explains all humor. I don't know
Speaker 1: if maybe, maybe, maybe not. I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: a good fit for why machines are funny, because obviously
Speaker 1: machines aren't people exactly, but maybe we sort of see
Speaker 1: them as people when we think they're funny. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think if we if you factor in the actual and
Speaker 1: or perceived abilities of AI and robots, either either what
Speaker 1: they can actually do or more I think, to the
Speaker 1: point what our science fiction and our futurist scenarios have
Speaker 1: proposed that they will do or could do one day,
Speaker 1: because we end up with this situation where like we
Speaker 1: watch our room but do something stupid, and there's it's
Speaker 1: hilarious because like, ha, you're never going to terminate or me,
Speaker 1: like you can't even you can't even deal with the
Speaker 1: uh with this rug or this pile of cat vomit. Well, actually,
Speaker 1: though I would say another reason this does kind of
Speaker 1: connect is it does kind of connect to Plato's thing
Speaker 1: about laughing atself ignorance, because one of the funniest things
Speaker 1: that I sort of identified earlier about like the D
Speaker 1: two O nine scene and all that, one of the
Speaker 1: funniest things about the ways that machines fail is the
Speaker 1: way that they are just so completely oblivious to their
Speaker 1: own shortcomings, the way they just uh, the way I
Speaker 1: think of it is that they fail and then plow
Speaker 1: straight ahead. You know, they have they have done something
Speaker 1: crucially wrong, and they do not appreciate this fact. All right,
Speaker 1: let's keep rolling. What are some other theories can discuss? Okay,
Speaker 1: next one would be like the nervous energy release theory.
Speaker 1: And this is not surprisingly at all a take that
Speaker 1: was popular with Freudians. Under this model, laughter is sort
Speaker 1: of a pleasurable release of built up psychic tension caused
Speaker 1: by fear or apprehension. Uh. And there's a certain kind
Speaker 1: of logic to this, right in the way that's a
Speaker 1: good Comedians repeatedly build at tension and then dissipated in
Speaker 1: various ways. I bet this also goes with the laughing
Speaker 1: during horror movies thing, you know, Yeah, for sure, Like you,
Speaker 1: you get your tension built up when there's something scary
Speaker 1: is about to happen, and then after it's over you
Speaker 1: you release the tension and you can laugh. Yeah. Certainly
Speaker 1: with with comedians who really leaned into like the awkwardness
Speaker 1: and the tension, like say like an Andy Kaufman. You
Speaker 1: know where their whole their whole bits or if you
Speaker 1: want to call them bits, where it's really just making
Speaker 1: everyone uncomfortable. It's not even about punchlines. It's about just
Speaker 1: creating this this tension that at some point has to
Speaker 1: be relief. Like at some point all you can do
Speaker 1: is laugh. Yeah, So there's something there. I I this
Speaker 1: clearly doesn't account for everything that's funny, you know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't account for puns and all that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Uh It, I don't know if I can see a
Speaker 1: way that it really fits with why technology failing is
Speaker 1: all that funny? No, Yeah, I don't think. I don't
Speaker 1: think there's anything particularly insightful about this theory regarding what
Speaker 1: we're talking about here today. Okay, here's another one. How
Speaker 1: about the adaptation, uh to signal play so that laughter
Speaker 1: would be an evolutionary adaptation that occurs when we're engaged
Speaker 1: in pretend aggression during play behaviors. It occurs as a
Speaker 1: signal to help everybody involved understand the fact the behaviors
Speaker 1: like chasing and wrestling and stuff are meant as play
Speaker 1: rather than as genuine aggression or harm. Yeah, this one
Speaker 1: I think is important to mention here, if only for
Speaker 1: the reason that it touches on the social nature of laughter,
Speaker 1: that that laughter is also about communicating with other people
Speaker 1: regarding various threats, etcetera. Um. It's also I wonder if
Speaker 1: this is one where our storytelling has kind of kind
Speaker 1: of led us astray as well, though, because how many
Speaker 1: um individuals that actually intends harm are laughing hysterically or sardonically.
Speaker 1: Like I'm sure it happens, I mean, and maybe one
Speaker 1: or two scenarios even come to mind where someone was
Speaker 1: did something horrible and violent and it was seen laughing,
Speaker 1: But I don't feel like it probably occurs anywhere as
Speaker 1: near as often as it does in movies where villains
Speaker 1: are constantly laughing. Be it, you know, an extreme example
Speaker 1: like the Joker, or or just any you know, you know,
Speaker 1: sardonic villain who just doing maniacally laughs while attempting to
Speaker 1: destroy the world. Uh yeah, I mean I would say
Speaker 1: this probably does go along with the theory then. I mean,
Speaker 1: if it if somebody is laughing while they're actually attempting harm,
Speaker 1: there you know their victim is not laughing so like,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I think this goes along there. Like and
Speaker 1: if they are, then it's like that scene in the
Speaker 1: original um what was a Little Shop of Horrors where
Speaker 1: or maybe it was in the remake is well too,
Speaker 1: where the uh, the the the the the evil dentist
Speaker 1: is going to work on this person and this person
Speaker 1: just wants it, They want the pain, and it just
Speaker 1: totally messes up his his vibe. Yeah, I haven't thought
Speaker 1: how it would accommodate the idea of like villains laughing
Speaker 1: while they do what they do. But I mean, I
Speaker 1: think this is clearly true in some cases that people
Speaker 1: laugh during mock aggressive play behaviors. That dogs wag their
Speaker 1: tails during mock aggressive play behaviors. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: they're growling and snarling and tumbling, but you can tell
Speaker 1: they're not really fighting because their tails are wagging. And
Speaker 1: this is a nice lead into one of one of
Speaker 1: my favorite theories, and this is one that we discussed
Speaker 1: on the show before in the past, and that's the
Speaker 1: benign violation theory. Yeah, and this theory is very popular now.
Speaker 1: This theory proposes that humor occurs when one we perceive
Speaker 1: a way in which rules or norms of some kind
Speaker 1: are broken. And these rules can be any, you know,
Speaker 1: all kinds of things. They can be grammatical rules, they
Speaker 1: could be biological classifications, they can be the rules of
Speaker 1: making sense, they can be moral norms. Uh. And then second,
Speaker 1: we recognize that there has been a violation, but it's
Speaker 1: not harmful, it's benign in nature. And then third we
Speaker 1: see this contradiction between the fact that there's a violation
Speaker 1: and the fact that it's harmless, and that contradiction triggers humor.
Speaker 1: Like we said, this one is very popular. It's supported
Speaker 1: by some empirical research. Just one example of research and
Speaker 1: support that I came across as a two thousand ten
Speaker 1: study in Psychological Science by McGraw and Warren called benign
Speaker 1: violations making im moral behavior funny and too so. To
Speaker 1: just cite one example that they talk about within that study, quote,
Speaker 1: people who are more weakly committed to a norm can
Speaker 1: recognize the violation, but are less likely to be threatened
Speaker 1: or to directly experience the violation's repercussions. Consider a news
Speaker 1: story about a church that raffles off a hummer suv
Speaker 1: as part of a promotion for its members. Engaging in
Speaker 1: such a secular promotion jeopardizes the sanctity of the church.
Speaker 1: End Although most people consider churches sacred, churchgoers should be
Speaker 1: more strongly committed to this belief than are people who
Speaker 1: do not attend church. So the researchers looked at this
Speaker 1: and they found that while churchgoers and non churchgoers alike
Speaker 1: were about equally disgusted with this story, you know, the
Speaker 1: idea that a church would be trying to get people
Speaker 1: to join by giving them a chance to win a car,
Speaker 1: non churchgoers more often found the story humorous, and so
Speaker 1: that was like non churchgoers to churchgoers finding it humorous
Speaker 1: was nine percent to sixty two percent. So the idea
Speaker 1: is that non churchgoers saw this as a benign violation
Speaker 1: and thus funny, and churchgoers saw it as a real
Speaker 1: harmful violation and thus not funny. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: that's something that's important to keep in mind. And you know,
Speaker 1: when when looking at the benign violation theory is that
Speaker 1: how ultimately subjective it is going to be. And of
Speaker 1: course that is comedy as well, so it matches up
Speaker 1: in that regard. Right, It depends on whether you actually
Speaker 1: see something as a violation and whether you actually see
Speaker 1: something as harmful or not. Now, there are different ways
Speaker 1: you could play around with the definitions and of this
Speaker 1: theory to like, like, you could make it very elastic
Speaker 1: to accommodate a lot of stuff, or you could more
Speaker 1: narrowly tailor it. I would say one problem potentially with
Speaker 1: it is that lots of things that are benign violations
Speaker 1: aren't funny at all. Uh. An example I came up
Speaker 1: with is, imagine you are not supposed to take home
Speaker 1: office supplies, but you do you take home a pin. Well,
Speaker 1: that's a violation of the rules. It doesn't it's not
Speaker 1: really harmful, it's benign, and it's not really funny. Right.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, I would I think the
Speaker 1: counter argument here would be, okay, taking one pin home
Speaker 1: from work, like that's I do that all the time,
Speaker 1: most of us do. It's one thing to take a
Speaker 1: pin home, even accidental, accidentally, take one home to you know,
Speaker 1: purposely take one home. But what have we upped it?
Speaker 1: What have instead of accidentally taking a pin home from work,
Speaker 1: you accidentally took all the pins home from work. That's
Speaker 1: funny now that it was getting into you know a
Speaker 1: little more. And I'm not saying that there's it's the
Speaker 1: funniest gag of all time, but certainly there's more room
Speaker 1: for hilarity in this scenario. Well, that starts to be
Speaker 1: more like a machine type comedic mistake because it's so uh,
Speaker 1: it's so over the top. It seems to kind of
Speaker 1: like not just violate a norm but just plows straight
Speaker 1: through it and goes all the way down right where.
Speaker 1: I guess another way that would work is if one
Speaker 1: meant to steal something of greater value, like one intended
Speaker 1: to to um to perpetrate some greater violation of office norms,
Speaker 1: and then in the end you only stole a pin,
Speaker 1: but even in a done land as well, and it
Speaker 1: really needs to be a box of pins or all
Speaker 1: the pins. Yeah, I guess you could say. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think you could probably play around with exactly how
Speaker 1: you define the terms of benign violation to maybe accommodate
Speaker 1: those counter examples. I would say also though lots of
Speaker 1: things that are funny too, people can feel like they're
Speaker 1: not at all benign, and like think of videos of
Speaker 1: people falling off skateboards and smashing their faces or the
Speaker 1: crotches and the handrails and brick walls and stuff. People
Speaker 1: find these things quite funny, and people can get really
Speaker 1: hurt in them. Yeah, I think with with that, I
Speaker 1: think part of it is that we generally see confirmation
Speaker 1: that they survived, or if we don't see confirmation that
Speaker 1: they survived whatever, they're horrible, you know, skateboarding accident was,
Speaker 1: then we at least don't see them going to the
Speaker 1: e er, you know, like we have no additional information
Speaker 1: to go on, no additional context, and we can just
Speaker 1: kind of assume that they were okay. So, and I
Speaker 1: also was wondering about this. I wondered what extent comedic
Speaker 1: interpretations of slapstick injuries in which harm generally doesn't extend
Speaker 1: beyond the punch line. Um, if these program us to
Speaker 1: to make these kind of comedic interpretations. Uh, for instance,
Speaker 1: you know, when you think about comedic violence, you think
Speaker 1: about the Three Stooges, and certainly they're just always brutalizing
Speaker 1: each other and then they're fine, and then they're back
Speaker 1: for another adventure. They're fine. You don't worry about their health.
Speaker 1: Take a good old fashioned three Stooges fingerpoke. Um, you
Speaker 1: know we have in the in the eye do you
Speaker 1: have two fingers and then you go right for the
Speaker 1: eyes and if nobody gets the block up, bam, there's
Speaker 1: like as more of a blank noise, right. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so when the Stooges do it, uh, it's hilarious, right,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of slapstick hilarity with with the double fingerpoke.
Speaker 1: But and then likewise you look at something like pro wrestling,
Speaker 1: in pro wrestling, which of course is this like sports
Speaker 1: theater thing. Uh, the fingerpoke is a comedy spot, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's if someone goes for the double eye poke,
Speaker 1: it's going to be a moment of hilarity as well.
Speaker 1: But if somebody does it in a basketball game, that's
Speaker 1: not really funny, right, or or if someone does it
Speaker 1: in most if not all combat sports, it is it
Speaker 1: is a band maneuver. Like generally, if you're going for
Speaker 1: somebody's eyes, like that's either it's either really evil or
Speaker 1: it's a move of desperation. Yeah, this does certainly make
Speaker 1: that to whatever extent the benign violation theory is true,
Speaker 1: it's highly context dependent and and maybe the truth there,
Speaker 1: if there is something to this theory is that um
Speaker 1: is that the context makes us determine what's benign and
Speaker 1: what's not right, and it's gonna be highly dependent on
Speaker 1: the culture you're in, the time you live in. I mean, certainly,
Speaker 1: just thinking of workplace humor, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: violations today that are serious that may have been perceived
Speaker 1: as more benign in days past, or as or seen
Speaker 1: as not violations at all. Oh yeah, this go back
Speaker 1: to like the nineteen eighties, and like workplace sexual harassment
Speaker 1: was a common like sitcom gag at the time. It's
Speaker 1: just like, oh, it's hilarious, you know, he's he's harassing
Speaker 1: Tina again. Uh, And now like that's not really funny
Speaker 1: at all anymore because we see that, I think, I
Speaker 1: think because people see that as a more genuine violation,
Speaker 1: not as something that's just a harmless you can wave
Speaker 1: it off, that's just ted being ted. So how do
Speaker 1: you feel about about benign violation and neural networks? Well, strangely,
Speaker 1: I do see part of a fit here. Um, because
Speaker 1: I along the lines of the Church suv example. The
Speaker 1: more serious and reverent the context in which the technology
Speaker 1: is presented, the funnier it is when it fails. I
Speaker 1: think about like ED two oh nine. This the scene
Speaker 1: is sort of made by the fact that Dick Jones
Speaker 1: and all the biz bros Are proudly boasting about this
Speaker 1: marvelous new technology that will be the future, and then
Speaker 1: it fails in such a spectacular way. I think in general,
Speaker 1: the failures of AI are much funnier when they're presented
Speaker 1: within a context of us knowing about people who believe
Speaker 1: in AI messiahs and you know AI Basilisks and Satan's
Speaker 1: and all that who who uh see this great future
Speaker 1: of of power and dominance among Aiyes, watching them mess
Speaker 1: up in hilarious ways becomes all the more poignant and perfect.
Speaker 1: All right, time to take a quick break. Well, we
Speaker 1: will be right back. Thank alright, we're back. So one
Speaker 1: more theory is the in congruity resolution theory. This is
Speaker 1: a theory that's had various forms over the years, for
Speaker 1: example advocated by Manuel Kant and others, but essentially the
Speaker 1: idea here is that there is an incongruity between expectations
Speaker 1: and reality. Laughter occurs when we realize this incongruity can
Speaker 1: be resolved, and this is there's clearly a strong element
Speaker 1: of this in lots of humors. Again, what joke involves
Speaker 1: a set up and then a punch line, and most
Speaker 1: often the set up sets you up to expect one
Speaker 1: type of thing. The punch line subverts your expectations. So
Speaker 1: that's clearly there. But then again, there are lots of
Speaker 1: things that are surprising and turn our expectations on their heads,
Speaker 1: and they're not funny. Yeah, like we incongruity has to
Speaker 1: be novel. Yeah, you know, it can't be a situation
Speaker 1: where I thought I was buying mozzarella, but I really
Speaker 1: got monster. That's not that. That's really not funny. Now,
Speaker 1: it would be funny if you thought you were buying
Speaker 1: mozzarella you got home and it was like rat eggs,
Speaker 1: especially because rats don't lay eggs. Yeah, it's like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be that would be a lot more of hilarious.
Speaker 1: One different but somewhat similar theory. I was reading about that.
Speaker 1: I'd like to read this book now that I know
Speaker 1: it exists. It's a two thousand eleven book from M
Speaker 1: I t press called Inside Jokes by the author's Matthew Hurley,
Speaker 1: Daniel Dennett, and Reginald Adams Reginald Adams Jr. And they
Speaker 1: argue against the sufficiency of any of these models we've
Speaker 1: talked about already. They propose instead that humor is an
Speaker 1: evolutionary reward system. It's a pleasurable reward feeling that we
Speaker 1: get when we recognize the inappropriateness of a mental representation
Speaker 1: and then fix it. So it's the brains. It's it's
Speaker 1: an internal reward system like we get from other things
Speaker 1: that are good for the body, like eating or something. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's the brain's reward system for debugging itself. And so
Speaker 1: you can imagine this is why many jokes have a
Speaker 1: set up. The setup prepares you to establish an inappropriate
Speaker 1: or incongruous mental representation. The punch line suddenly creates that
Speaker 1: inappropriate representation, and then the debugging that immediately happens in
Speaker 1: your brain following is rewarded with this pleasurable feeling of humor. Interesting.
Speaker 1: I think that's something that that probably matches as a
Speaker 1: model that matches with a lot of our experience of
Speaker 1: of having hilarious or ridiculous notions enter our head and
Speaker 1: then you just miss them, or you even don't, you're
Speaker 1: not even considering them, but they just rise up from
Speaker 1: the depths of your psyche. Yeah, and I think it
Speaker 1: kind of fits well with what's funny about each entry
Speaker 1: in these like machine generated pieces of text, because each
Speaker 1: moment you're going through this text, you're sort of being
Speaker 1: set up to think about the text in a certain
Speaker 1: way given the category you're already looking for, like names
Speaker 1: of spells and stuff. Then constantly you're given something that
Speaker 1: doesn't really fit, and then your brain has to debug
Speaker 1: why it doesn't really fit, and that feels good. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure it's a perfect theory that covers all of
Speaker 1: humor either, but I am interested in Maybe you know,
Speaker 1: another thing is that, like you said earlier, it's possible
Speaker 1: there's no single, perfect, overarching theory of humor, Like what
Speaker 1: if humor is a category held together not by a
Speaker 1: single all inclusive set of criteria, but by a Wittgensteinian
Speaker 1: kind of family resemblances principle. There's no one thing that
Speaker 1: that all humor is. Humor is instead multiple different related
Speaker 1: sets of things, none of which are entirely contained in
Speaker 1: a single box. By the way, you know, if you
Speaker 1: open that box, it's going to be one of those
Speaker 1: spring snakes that comes flying out, Like open the fake
Speaker 1: cannon nuts. Which one does that fit in? Um? I
Speaker 1: guess you know. It has to do with expectation, but
Speaker 1: also it's benign violation. So if you're expecting nuts, not snakes,
Speaker 1: but you've got a snake. But then, well it's not
Speaker 1: a real snake, which is a perfect animal to include
Speaker 1: in that gag given our you know, our our evolutionary
Speaker 1: response to a serpentine form. What if it's a real
Speaker 1: snake that bites you on the throat, I would like
Speaker 1: to see that happen more or what. One of my
Speaker 1: favorite gags that I did this is that a workplace
Speaker 1: at some point there was this I had to like
Speaker 1: kind of this lame boss who had a can. He
Speaker 1: had this exact gag of fake nuts, fake peanuts, and
Speaker 1: if you opened it, a snake jumped out. Um. So
Speaker 1: one day he was gone for the day and so
Speaker 1: I took the snake, got rid of the snake, and
Speaker 1: I filled it with actual peanuts, and it gave me
Speaker 1: so much pleasure. I don't I never even got to
Speaker 1: witness the payoff. But I just love the idea of
Speaker 1: him going to like pull this out on somebody or
Speaker 1: to just amuse himself, and then it's actually filled with nuts.
Speaker 1: And I don't know how lame the boss was. This
Speaker 1: was This is kind of a time in my life
Speaker 1: when all bosses were lame. So if any of my
Speaker 1: previous bosses are listening to me, I'm probably not talking
Speaker 1: about you. Well, there's another theory of humor that kind
Speaker 1: of fits that because of the way in which humor
Speaker 1: sort of interlocks with our expectations of people based on
Speaker 1: their individual characteristics. Uh So, the next one clearly doesn't
Speaker 1: account for everything that's funny, but it does have a
Speaker 1: kind of elegant, elegant connection to what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: So this is a theory of humor put forward by
Speaker 1: a philosopher named Henri Bergson in a book called Laughter,
Speaker 1: published in nineteen hundred and One of the ideas Bergson
Speaker 1: puts forward here is that laughter is often our response
Speaker 1: to rigidity, inflexibility, and failure to adapt. And this is
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why comedies involve us being aware
Speaker 1: of like the particular flaws of a character and then
Speaker 1: seeing those same flaws acted out over and over again.
Speaker 1: Think about sitcoms, like, it's not just that the characters
Speaker 1: have failures, but they tend to fail repeatedly in in
Speaker 1: individually characteristic ways. Homer Simpson is lazy, and he's thoughtless,
Speaker 1: and he's motivated by donuts and gluttony and all that. Uh.
Speaker 1: Michael Scott in the office is needy and attention seeking
Speaker 1: and unaware of how he's perceived by others. Characters have
Speaker 1: these sort of trademarks and they keep making the same
Speaker 1: kinds of mistakes over and over, and it's their inability
Speaker 1: to adapt that makes humorous in this point of view. Now,
Speaker 1: clearly this doesn't account for everything that's funny, but it
Speaker 1: sort of ties in loosely with the Hurley Dinnett Adams
Speaker 1: theory that humor rewards adaptation and mental debugging. These people,
Speaker 1: if they're making the same mistakes over and over, they're
Speaker 1: not debugging, and you're like debugging by watching them. But
Speaker 1: then again, of course we have to come back to
Speaker 1: sort of the benign violation theory a little bit here,
Speaker 1: because we don't want characters that uh failed too much,
Speaker 1: you know, like you don't want it to be like
Speaker 1: a tragic level of failure, right yeah. And of course
Speaker 1: in reality people fail to adapt all the all the time,
Speaker 1: and ways that aren't funny but are actually like sad
Speaker 1: or tragic or you know, it's something very bad about it.
Speaker 1: And then there's that whole sliding scale too, because especially
Speaker 1: with something like like Michael Scott, especially like the Office
Speaker 1: got into so much awkward territory just every week, week
Speaker 1: after week, and um, a lot of that really got
Speaker 1: into sort of painful, pitiful territory, so that they definitely
Speaker 1: changed exactly where the line was in the sand, but
Speaker 1: but still ultimately, like you know, Michael Scott didn't die
Speaker 1: at the end of an episode, well, it helped by
Speaker 1: coming back and making the character lovable, like he wasn't
Speaker 1: getting into that like sad awkwardness and then just ending
Speaker 1: in a place where you hate him, right yeah. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I think this theory about like rigidity and inflexibility and
Speaker 1: like repeating the same types of mistakes without adapting has
Speaker 1: some strong purchase on the funniest features of machine failure comedy.
Speaker 1: It's not just that the machine fails, but that the
Speaker 1: machine fails repeatedly mechanically. According to inflexible guidelines, like the
Speaker 1: way it just keeps following the rules, when a neural
Speaker 1: net text generator spits out not just one nonsensical phrase,
Speaker 1: but like reams and reams of text without acknowledging or
Speaker 1: knowing it all that the first few words didn't make
Speaker 1: any sense. Or when I think about when a glitching
Speaker 1: video game character is stuck inside a table and just
Speaker 1: keeps running in place and talking. That's one of my favorites.
Speaker 1: Or that lack of contacts, lack of context, lack of
Speaker 1: self awareness, and lack of adaptability. The way machines just
Speaker 1: plow ahead despite problems that are obvious to us that
Speaker 1: they're clearly not aware of. I think that's key to
Speaker 1: what makes them so especially funny. And in this sense,
Speaker 1: they're kind of like the Homer Simpsons and the Michael Scott's,
Speaker 1: the characters with inflexible, repetitive behaviors that lead to disaster
Speaker 1: but which they never learned from or change. You know,
Speaker 1: I can't help but come back to the idea of
Speaker 1: of a child and all of this and the child
Speaker 1: analogy here, so you know we can we can laugh
Speaker 1: at our own children's mistakes are weird interpretations because we
Speaker 1: know that they're they're largely going to adapt, they're going
Speaker 1: to grow up, uh, and that they're going to leave
Speaker 1: behind their their dragons or hopefully they're just gonna remember
Speaker 1: how to summon them in appropriate ways now. But if
Speaker 1: they're the robot is hilarious because it continues to fail,
Speaker 1: and of course also because it is a machine and
Speaker 1: not a human child. Perhaps part of the issue too,
Speaker 1: is that a machine is but a prototype, and it's
Speaker 1: next phase of advancement does not necessarily exist within itself,
Speaker 1: but in the next prototype and another individual, if you will.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good point. Yes, Like, so
Speaker 1: a child can make a funny mistake, but then the
Speaker 1: child immediately within themselves learn something and or you know,
Speaker 1: at least as the potential learn something and grow and
Speaker 1: get better at not making that kind of mistake anymore,
Speaker 1: which in some cases kind of tragic because the mistakes
Speaker 1: are glorious. Oh yeah, like half the in jokes that
Speaker 1: my wife and I make are two things that my
Speaker 1: my son has not said in years, but he said
Speaker 1: it was and it was hilarious, and now we repeat
Speaker 1: it to each other. But like most of these machines,
Speaker 1: even though they might have the ability to learn from
Speaker 1: their mistakes. They learn from their their mistakes in like
Speaker 1: new instantiations of one of themselves, like you're saying, it's
Speaker 1: the next prototype. They don't automatically learn from their mistakes.
Speaker 1: You have to do something to them to reboot them
Speaker 1: or retrain the them or something right. And if it's
Speaker 1: a video game that, yeah, this, this character is gonna
Speaker 1: keep getting stuck in that table. Maybe there'll be a
Speaker 1: patch that fixes it, but for the most part, it's
Speaker 1: going to be the sequel that tries to get it right.
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll
Speaker 1: be right back. And we're back now. I think this
Speaker 1: is all one of one of the reasons that the
Speaker 1: Black Mirror episode Metal Head from is so effective. Oh
Speaker 1: it's it's it's one of my favorites. Um this was
Speaker 1: This was again seen. And this came after years of
Speaker 1: us watching impressive, yet ultimately clumsy and imperfect Boston Dynamics
Speaker 1: walking robot videos, videos of such you know entities as
Speaker 1: Big Dog, you know, which kind of has this springy
Speaker 1: brant kind of a sound as it prances along, and
Speaker 1: it's very impressive to look at and yet at the
Speaker 1: same time, you know their videos of being kicked around,
Speaker 1: and you know, certainly if it's succeeding a lot, but
Speaker 1: also not quite it's not reaching that level of like
Speaker 1: mature technology. Yeah, though I worry how much I already
Speaker 1: sympathize with it, Like watching those Boston Dynamics robots when
Speaker 1: somebody kicks the dog. I know it's just a robot,
Speaker 1: but I don't like that person who kicked it. I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's cruel. How could you do that? Well? In the
Speaker 1: Metal Head, Uh, Basically, the whole thing is kind of
Speaker 1: a post um apocalyptic scenario, killer robot scenario, and the
Speaker 1: killer robot we see is not a juvenile prototype, but
Speaker 1: what you might classify as an adult that the technology
Speaker 1: in a proceed at a perceived level of maturity. So
Speaker 1: the Boston Dynamics Big Dog all grown up into a
Speaker 1: terrifying lethal, quadrupedal killing machine that it overcomes every challenge
Speaker 1: in the natural or man made world that it is
Speaker 1: presented with. Uh. And I think that's that's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons it is terrifying, because it's kind of like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: these things are going to grow up. We're for a
Speaker 1: lot of money and effort into making them grow up,
Speaker 1: and uh and and how are we going to relate
Speaker 1: to that technology when it reaches that point? Well, that
Speaker 1: brings us back to something you were saying earlier about
Speaker 1: like the CS Lewis quote, Like clearly our machines and
Speaker 1: their failures I think are becoming much funnier over time.
Speaker 1: Like a steam engine designed to pump water out of
Speaker 1: a coal mine is really not funny when it malfunctions,
Speaker 1: maybe like cut somebody's arm off, like it's it's not hilarious.
Speaker 1: Automatic doors are still not very funny. Maybe a little
Speaker 1: bit funnier, like I was saying, when they're trying to
Speaker 1: close on something over and over, and you know when
Speaker 1: it gets repetitive like that room buzz are funnier. Anything
Speaker 1: attempting to generate real human language or simulate direct human behaviors,
Speaker 1: like say the DARPA challenge bipedal robots. You know when
Speaker 1: you watch them like collapsing in the sand, or like
Speaker 1: when one of them like opens a door and the
Speaker 1: door goes open and then they just crumple in a
Speaker 1: heap on the ground and that kind of thing. It
Speaker 1: is definitely even funny to hear, like machines seem to
Speaker 1: get funnier. The closer they get too resembling real human behaviors,
Speaker 1: the better they simulate. And I wonder, so it's almost
Speaker 1: like there's an uncanny Valley of humor in a way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think uncanny valley definitely gets into this territory. I'm
Speaker 1: specifically reminded of Sophia, the smiling humanoid robot. It's becomes
Speaker 1: something of a meme and it's very impressive, like that's
Speaker 1: the thing. At the same time it is amazing, like
Speaker 1: this thing we be worshiped as a god in the
Speaker 1: previous dage that it smiles too fast, smiles too fast,
Speaker 1: and it's just it's not right, and you can't help
Speaker 1: but either look away or laugh. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I wonder if there there is an element. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's the whole thing, but I do wonder if
Speaker 1: it's there's sort of an undercurrent in machine humor, of
Speaker 1: a kind of nervous laughter at you know, in machines
Speaker 1: potentially becoming more human, more threatening to our sense of
Speaker 1: species specialness, and potentially more threatening to our safety. Like
Speaker 1: we were talking about, you know, I'm reminded of something
Speaker 1: we mentioned fairly often on the show. Actually, ever since
Speaker 1: our conversation with our Scott Baker about this about how
Speaker 1: you don't need terminators or matrix agents or other evil
Speaker 1: super intelligent villains who want to exterminate humans for AI
Speaker 1: to represent a threat to humanity. In fact, I'm much
Speaker 1: more worried about the threat from stupid AI that is
Speaker 1: powerful before it is wise, sort of like the way
Speaker 1: that so many examples we've discussed already just plow ahead
Speaker 1: carrying out their functions without realizing they're going the wrong way,
Speaker 1: or they're they're stuck, or they're not making any sense.
Speaker 1: Uh like attached that kind of logic to practical functions
Speaker 1: that have power over our lives, and there can be
Speaker 1: terrible consequences, which also kind of comes back to children.
Speaker 1: It's like, these are the these are the humans that
Speaker 1: will one day rule the world, and uh and just
Speaker 1: listen to the weird things that keep saying to us, right, Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I guess there's always kind of a terror at the
Speaker 1: upcoming generations in there because there's always a little bit
Speaker 1: of lack of understanding. Oh yeah, for sure, I mean
Speaker 1: kids are always going to be amusing, but also, yeah,
Speaker 1: you want you wonder, you know, if they're going to
Speaker 1: be able to really grow out of this, and then likewise,
Speaker 1: teenagers are always going to be terrifying to the older generations,
Speaker 1: right well, So bringing it back to neural networks generating text,
Speaker 1: one of the things that I see come up most
Speaker 1: often in like articles about the subject is fears about
Speaker 1: machine generated news articles, like specifically machine generated fake news
Speaker 1: or hoax news articles. Of course, I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: the version of fake news that has become a politicized term.
Speaker 1: I mean like articles that are generated to contain false information, right,
Speaker 1: even intentionally uh created it's a propaganda or misinformation, yeah,
Speaker 1: or just nonsense. And so it shouldn't come as a
Speaker 1: shock that they're already programs that can and do right
Speaker 1: fake articles from AI generated text. The problem is not
Speaker 1: that these programs exist like humans, right, hoax and propaganda
Speaker 1: articles all the time. It's not that we couldn't create
Speaker 1: them without machines. My fear is maybe about volume. Like,
Speaker 1: if the process of putting out hoax nonsense articles and
Speaker 1: stuff can be automated, you can just do so much
Speaker 1: of it. And one of the keys is that it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be good or convincing to be damaging.
Speaker 1: If you simply flood the zone of people's Internet experience
Speaker 1: with obvious nonsense and trash, they don't have to believe it.
Speaker 1: It can just do lots of damage to a culture
Speaker 1: simply by flooding out everything else, right, I mean you
Speaker 1: can you can almost imagine a future generation looking back
Speaker 1: at a time like that and saying, well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's really difficult to know exactly what they've they felt
Speaker 1: in thought because of all the nonsense that was created, say,
Speaker 1: not not just textual but video nonsense, photoshop nonsense like
Speaker 1: wh where are the real people and their actual concerns
Speaker 1: and all of this. Yeah, I really worry about the
Speaker 1: the potential for dumb, context ignorant algorithms that seemed perfectly
Speaker 1: capable of steering user is intellectably into more and more
Speaker 1: horrible in mind destroying content on platforms like YouTube, you know,
Speaker 1: and YouTube content serving algorithms that's already the world destroying AI.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing, Joe, what if it's all funny?
Speaker 1: What if it's all really funny? Well, in some cases
Speaker 1: it is like top shelf ClickHole funny, Then then I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe them all in for the age of unreasoned.
Speaker 1: I worry about this more than the kind of mind
Speaker 1: ravaging dumb ai, way more than I worry about the
Speaker 1: great basilisk I agree with you there. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: well I want to bring it back to lighter territory here.
Speaker 1: Uh the joke telling capabilities of Siri on an iPhone. Now,
Speaker 1: imagine anyone out there who has an iPhone and probably
Speaker 1: there's some degree of this in any kind of you know,
Speaker 1: voice interface system, Alexa or or what have you. But
Speaker 1: when you when you ask Serri to tell you a
Speaker 1: knockdot joke, she will tell you a knockdoc joke, and
Speaker 1: some of them are pretty funny. Um, and then she'll
Speaker 1: you you ask her other things so they'll be a
Speaker 1: hilarious response. Like if you ask her about how nine
Speaker 1: thousand she has a funny response that's you know, preprogrammed. Again,
Speaker 1: it's it's something that somebody wrote and created. This is
Speaker 1: human human augmented humor. Yeah. But one of my favorites
Speaker 1: is is one that Siri told me where clearly it
Speaker 1: was there was an error that took place, and I'm
Speaker 1: not perfectly replicating it here, but it was something like this, uh,
Speaker 1: knock knock. I say who's there? And then Siri says Sophia,
Speaker 1: And I say Sophia, who, and then she says, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: there's nobody in your call list or your contact listen Sophia.
Speaker 1: And so I never get to find out what the
Speaker 1: rest of that joke is because in asking, in responding
Speaker 1: to the knock knock joke, she thinks I'm trying to
Speaker 1: make a call. And so that that makes me laugh
Speaker 1: every time that I've heard it. That's really good. It's
Speaker 1: like a performance art kind of joke. Yeah. So it's
Speaker 1: it's trying to be, you know, actual funny joke telling,
Speaker 1: but then it gets into this machine error level of
Speaker 1: joke telling, and it's probably the more hilarious outcome of
Speaker 1: the two. There is no one called big Cat, big Cat,
Speaker 1: big Cat, big Cat in your address, but there should
Speaker 1: be that I should create that. All right, Well, there
Speaker 1: you have it. Um, I feel like we have completely
Speaker 1: explained humor and artificial intelligence. We hope you never find
Speaker 1: anything funny again. Uh yeah, as so. As always, if
Speaker 1: you want more content, you want more episodes of stuff
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Speaker 1: So you can. You can have a little fun, have
Speaker 1: a little uh, find a little humor in the idea
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