Speaker 1: Because I'm a huge fan of Chad GPP and I
Speaker 1: use it all the time, and I don't fear it.
Speaker 1: I just think this is a you know, we really
Speaker 1: are at a transformational moment in the augmentation, and I
Speaker 1: don't think the replacement by the augmentation of human intelligence.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today's episode is
Speaker 2: sponsored by Unlikely Collaborators. Their mission is to untangle the
Speaker 2: stories that hold us back as individuals, communities, nations, and
Speaker 2: humanity at large using the Perception Box lens. They do
Speaker 2: this through storytelling, experiences, impact investments, and scientific research. Unlikely
Speaker 2: Collaborators the only way forward is inward. Later on in
Speaker 2: this episode, I'll talk a lot more about the Perception
Speaker 2: Box and how it relates to this episode, But right now,
Speaker 2: let me tell you about today's guest. Today, we welcome
Speaker 2: Bob Mankoff to the show. For forty years, Bob Mancoff
Speaker 2: has been the driving force of comedy and satire at
Speaker 2: some of the most honored publications in America, including The
Speaker 2: New Yorker and Esquire. He is founder of Cartoon Collections,
Speaker 2: parent company to cartoon stock dot Com, the world's most
Speaker 2: successful cartoon licensing platform. For twenty years. As cartoon editor
Speaker 2: for The New Yorker, Bob poured over thousands of submissions
Speaker 2: each week, analyzing, critiquing, and selecting each cartoon. In two
Speaker 2: thousand and five, he helps start the New Yorker Cartoon Captured contest.
Speaker 2: Bob is the author of numerous books, including his New
Speaker 2: York Times bestselling memoir how About Never Is Never Good
Speaker 2: for You? My Life in Cartoons. In this episode, I
Speaker 2: talked to Bob about the psychology of humor, looking back
Speaker 2: at his illustrious career as a cartoonist. Bob talks about
Speaker 2: his early beginnings and the people he's mentored in the field.
Speaker 2: He explains the anatomy of a joke and reveals his
Speaker 2: all time favorite cartoons. While humans are creative creatures, Bob
Speaker 2: believes that using AI and technology can further augment our
Speaker 2: intelligence and humor by opening up worlds of possibilities. This
Speaker 2: was a really fun and chat. Bob is hilarious as
Speaker 2: he might expect, but also really thoughtful and really forward looking.
Speaker 2: I really like how he ties the future of AI
Speaker 2: to the future of creativity and also his ideas about
Speaker 2: the theories of humor. This is really fun and I
Speaker 2: know you'll have fun listening to it. So now I'll
Speaker 2: bring you the legendary Bob Mankoff BaHaB man cough. It
Speaker 2: is such an honor to have you on the Psychology
Speaker 2: Podcast today.
Speaker 1: Well, I am thrilled to be here. I'm a big
Speaker 1: fan of psychology except for us I mentioned in my
Speaker 1: note the fact that it really deals with humor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, we'll definitely talk about that today. And I
Speaker 2: know you're a big fan of psychology. I wanted to
Speaker 2: start off by understanding a little bit more of your
Speaker 2: journey into comedy, maybe even starting as a kid. You know,
Speaker 2: what were you like as like a young kid in school?
Speaker 2: Were you a good student? Were you cheeky?
Speaker 1: I don't think most people who are talented in comedy
Speaker 1: are good students. I think they I mean traditionally that
Speaker 1: happened to be good students. Traditionally, if you go back
Speaker 1: to you know, old timey comedians, you're going to see
Speaker 1: people who got kicked out of school, who found the
Speaker 1: whole school environment incredibly restrictive. And I think I did too, certainly.
Speaker 1: So I don't think I was a terrible student, but
Speaker 1: I was certainly an unattentive student. I was attending to
Speaker 1: other things. I mean, school is incredibly boring. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's an incredibly restrictive environment for a young boy
Speaker 1: in that Okay, you're supposed to sit still for hour
Speaker 1: after hour and listen to people talk to you about
Speaker 1: things that are hard to understand through talking somehow, this
Speaker 1: medieval way of communicating information. And so no, I was
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't get in a lot of trouble,
Speaker 1: but I was certainly, I would say by the fourth
Speaker 1: or fifth grade, I realized that that I was funny
Speaker 1: and that was like a card that I could play
Speaker 1: in life, although I don't think certainly at that age,
Speaker 1: you know, and the fourth filly, Oh, this is the
Speaker 1: card I'm going to play. But in an instinctive way,
Speaker 1: you understand, this is a an influence, a power that
Speaker 1: you have that can get attention and can make people
Speaker 1: like you and to make fun of other people. So
Speaker 1: it's got that, it's got this, these all these dynamics.
Speaker 1: And certainly in the environment I grew up with in
Speaker 1: the Queens in the nineteen fifties, in a Jewish neighborhood,
Speaker 1: you know this, the Jews weren't fighting. You know, when
Speaker 1: you ask a Jewish kids, like, what's the worst fight
Speaker 1: you ever got in? It was something like, well, one time,
Speaker 1: this kid really gave me a noogie. Like I would
Speaker 1: say most kids that I grew up with and now
Speaker 1: they're all in the seventies and say, have you ever
Speaker 1: been in a real fight, a real fight? That haven't? Okay,
Speaker 1: But they fought with their mouths. They fought with ranking,
Speaker 1: with insults, with that, you know, was that's that, that
Speaker 1: was the way. That was the daily kind of combat
Speaker 1: that existed. Ridicule mockery, that's a ridicular mockery. You know.
Speaker 1: Trump comes out of that too, comes out of that
Speaker 1: environment too, So he's a queen's guy. But so that
Speaker 1: I think is somehow at training ground for the you know,
Speaker 1: that kind of combat, but also for training your mind
Speaker 1: from seeing and you know, different perspectives. Then I went
Speaker 1: to the High School of Music and Art, which was
Speaker 1: one of the specialized high schools in New York City
Speaker 1: alone with Brooklyn Tech UH and Bronx High School of Science.
Speaker 1: That was a high school you had to get into
Speaker 1: and by passing a test. But it wasn't an academic test.
Speaker 1: It was a drawing test or a music test. So
Speaker 1: it was the high school that was later featured in
Speaker 1: the movie Fame and maybe the remake of Fame, although
Speaker 1: they conflated both the High School of Performing Arts with
Speaker 1: the High School of Music and Art for the movie.
Speaker 1: Music and Art had music, and it had art and art.
Speaker 1: So that was, you know, part of the journey, I guess,
Speaker 1: and then you know that that in the circuitous way
Speaker 1: led me eventually to be a cartoonist. But before I
Speaker 1: was a cartoonist, I was a psychologist, an experimental psychologist
Speaker 1: at City University, where I tortured pigeons and rats in
Speaker 1: ways that are not acceptable anymore.
Speaker 2: What did you do? What kind of studies?
Speaker 1: You know, out and out behaviorism. I've just talked with
Speaker 1: with someone from that era who was about my age,
Speaker 1: who was still you know, came out of the Skinarian tradition,
Speaker 1: the behaviorist tradition of schedules of reinforcement, the effect of reinforcement,
Speaker 1: negative and positive reinforcement on the behavior. And you know,
Speaker 1: that very polemical time of psychology, which is in some
Speaker 1: way being reenacted now, but in artificial intelligence it's being
Speaker 1: re enacted. So when you came out of the Scnarian tradition,
Speaker 1: it was the mind is a black box. You really
Speaker 1: can't know. It's inputs and outputs, inputs and outputs, and
Speaker 1: that's all you could know. You really couldn't know what
Speaker 1: was going on in there, those independent variables. So let's
Speaker 1: just look at behavior. It just goes back to Watson
Speaker 1: and to positivism and stuff. So I was very much
Speaker 1: enamored of that. It's a young man's philosophy. It's an
Speaker 1: extreme philosophy. It's you know, but eventually both it didn't
Speaker 1: make any sense to me and I didn't make any
Speaker 1: sense to them the program I was in, so I mean,
Speaker 1: and also my pigeon died, so it was like a
Speaker 1: number of things. You know, you put that you put
Speaker 1: either mice or rats, but off of pigeons in a
Speaker 1: in a skinner box and they pecked on a little
Speaker 1: disk and they got rewards for reinforced behavior. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think the there are trusive behaviorism that are important
Speaker 1: and simple, but a lot of things that are very simple.
Speaker 1: You know that behavior that's rewarded increases in frequency, and
Speaker 1: that the schedules of reinforcement the you know, one of
Speaker 1: the things we're see now with artificial intelligence is that
Speaker 1: based on a very simple, simple principle, very simple that
Speaker 1: just predicting what the next word is going to be
Speaker 1: about vast amounts of data, you get emergent behaviors. So
Speaker 1: behavior's been sort of based on that, based on that
Speaker 1: a little bit. But I drifted away from that but then,
Speaker 1: but that's in my background. So when I got interested
Speaker 1: in the psychology of humor experiments, I think I had it,
Speaker 1: still had that analytic attitude.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense. Now, you got into the performing
Speaker 2: art high school through your artwork, is that right? Like?
Speaker 2: Were you good? Was it? Cartoons? Were cartoons?
Speaker 1: At that point? What you did was you had a
Speaker 1: portfolio of things that you drew, and it could have
Speaker 1: been in landscape. You were you were setting in for art,
Speaker 1: and eventually you took courses in architecture there and painting
Speaker 1: and sculpture and all of that. And one of the
Speaker 1: things when I realized they are being there was there
Speaker 1: lots of people much more talented than me artistically. But
Speaker 1: it was satisfying to know that they all became dentists
Speaker 1: while I became a cartoonist. So it worked out I
Speaker 1: adjusted the right amount of our ability that could mesh
Speaker 1: with my humor because the other road not taken was
Speaker 1: was to be a comedian, which I thought I might be.
Speaker 1: But when I went into college and in the early
Speaker 1: seven I mean, in graduate school and ended up being
Speaker 1: a cartoonist seventy one seventy two, there weren't a lot
Speaker 1: of comedy clubs. There weren't. It wasn't didn't really afford
Speaker 1: you that possibility. So I think if I had been
Speaker 1: born a little later, five years later, I would have
Speaker 1: ended up going into comedy, not cartooning, because I think comedy, yeah,
Speaker 1: stand up. But you know, I think it worked out
Speaker 1: for me. It did because that's a very difficult field,
Speaker 1: and it's a field which is most people burn out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: Me.
Speaker 2: A cartoonist is also more suited for introverts. I don't know,
Speaker 2: are you an introvert?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: No, okay, cool, you're an extrovert of cartoonist.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty much say I'm not, okay, But but you're
Speaker 1: right about that that manyists are introverts, although I mean,
Speaker 1: I would say that there's part of me that's definitely introverted.
Speaker 1: I'm gregarious and and and but gregarious when in company,
Speaker 1: but there is part of me that I like being alone.
Speaker 1: And you know, I guess, like a lot of things,
Speaker 1: we have these dichotomies, these collar things that we see
Speaker 1: people and then we tend to say, well, and people
Speaker 1: are anywhere alonger continuum. But I think people are more
Speaker 1: a bunch. Some people, myself are what i'd call bistable.
Speaker 1: In other words, we're both We're in different situations. I
Speaker 1: have a performance aspect to me, but the other aspect
Speaker 1: to me is that you know, I'm just like exaggerating
Speaker 1: is Ooh, I'd rather not see someone and see some
Speaker 1: I've all of a sudden working on the street like
Speaker 1: many people. I think if you're extrovert to see Barry
Speaker 1: Scott count and say hey, Barry, how are you? And
Speaker 1: I'm saying, oh, I don't know. I'm not in the
Speaker 1: mood right now. So I mean, that's uh, that's my
Speaker 1: take on myself. Anyway, Maybe I really ought to lock
Speaker 1: this down. By the time I'm going to be seventy nine,
Speaker 1: I want to really find that way I am.
Speaker 2: Well, you know the term is called ambiverts. There is
Speaker 2: a term for it. Oh really, you just you invented
Speaker 2: a new term.
Speaker 1: By stable well by stable by stable as a theory
Speaker 1: about emotions, the bistability of emotions. I've heard of that
Speaker 1: hope for instance. I guess I get it from from
Speaker 1: this theory called reversal theory, which says, when it deals
Speaker 1: with humor, it says, we're often we're often in we're
Speaker 1: in different modes what's called a bona fide mode where
Speaker 1: I'm talking to you logically about whatever, and then we
Speaker 1: were a purposeful mode and then a playful mode. And
Speaker 1: when we see people in normal interaction, we see their
Speaker 1: by stable. They're moving from purposeful. They're trying to get,
Speaker 1: you know, like like Grace's maxims. Right then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden they create some sort of fantastical scenario the
Speaker 1: person understands is humor. So that's where I guess where
Speaker 1: I get that term. But the ambrovert is ambrovert is
Speaker 1: is better, and also it sounds a little bit more sexy,
Speaker 1: even though I have nothing to do with that.
Speaker 2: What I am I coined a new term to explain
Speaker 2: what I am because it took me many years to
Speaker 2: figure it out. I'm a wild introvert, is what I am.
Speaker 2: And so that's a new category. That's just an introvert
Speaker 2: who scores very high in openness to experience, you know,
Speaker 2: and I'm very so I'm a sociable introvert as well.
Speaker 1: I guess I'm like that too, and I and I
Speaker 1: don't I don't score high on So that's where I'm introverted.
Speaker 1: I don't score high. It depends what the experience is.
Speaker 1: The experience is humor or art or technology, I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I'm very open to that experience. What I'm not open
Speaker 1: to is you know, I was once asked, you know,
Speaker 1: what's your what's your travel advice in an interview, and
Speaker 1: my answer was don't go. So so I'm going on
Speaker 1: a little vacation to Dominican Republic, and but part of
Speaker 1: me is already dreading just oh, what's going to happen
Speaker 1: the plane? Is that? Not the plane crashing and just
Speaker 1: all the things. So I'm not open to like new
Speaker 1: physical experience and uh, I mean not completely close to
Speaker 1: it obviously, but open into intellectual experience. So yeah, me
Speaker 1: so certainly. And to contradict the ideas that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: I wonder if there are actually terms, you know, we
Speaker 1: think of these in terms of you know, emotions and
Speaker 1: in meat space, you know, the real world. But I
Speaker 1: think you could also look at it in terms of
Speaker 1: intellectual space, right, and I wonder if they're correlated. What
Speaker 1: do you think, you know are you know, you could
Speaker 1: be introverted or extroverted and looking at at the openness,
Speaker 1: you know, especially in the time now where people are
Speaker 1: not open to contrary views.
Speaker 2: So that's one of the facets of openness to experience
Speaker 2: is openness to new ideas I see. And then there's
Speaker 2: openness to aesthetics. There's openness to your emotions, there's open there,
Speaker 2: there's a whole bunch of different subfacets. That's actually the
Speaker 2: topic of my dissertation was called the paper with the
Speaker 2: paper that I published was called opening up Openness a
Speaker 2: four factor model.
Speaker 1: You expanded the idea. Of course, that wouldn't be what
Speaker 1: you would normally think of the It was experience.
Speaker 2: Right, that's right, you think experience, but the full domain
Speaker 2: openness experience encompasses openness to a lot of things. But yeah,
Speaker 2: the imagination and intellectual components of it are are very important,
Speaker 2: equally important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and we're yeah, that used to
Speaker 1: be a given that that's a good thing, and everybody
Speaker 1: still gives lip service to it. But that's all they
Speaker 1: give to the service to it. Most people are not
Speaker 1: or I mean, and that's I think that's more. It's
Speaker 1: more natural to not want your beliefs that you've long held,
Speaker 1: you know, contradicted. And when I say I'm looking for contradiction,
Speaker 1: I don't know how much I actually am. I think
Speaker 1: like everybody else and very much subject to confirmation bias.
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Speaker 2: look forward to welcoming you in December. Yeah. Yeah, well,
Speaker 2: just so you know, like aspects like thrill seeking and
Speaker 2: adventure seeking actually are more tied to extra version than
Speaker 2: openness to experience. So openness to experience really is about
Speaker 2: your cognitive exploration, your openistic cognitively exploring your inner and
Speaker 2: out our world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's related to humor because.
Speaker 2: The the you, yeah, it's you.
Speaker 1: Well, it's also related to the kinds of humor you
Speaker 1: like in that in that in that the degree of
Speaker 1: incongruity or lack of closure you can tolerate in humor,
Speaker 1: and in fact that you know, this guy h in
Speaker 1: the Psychology of Humor has done a lot of work
Speaker 1: on saying what are them? You know, when you do
Speaker 1: faster analysis of humor, what do you see the big domains,
Speaker 1: and what you see is people who like closure, I
Speaker 1: can explain the joke to somebody else, I can explain
Speaker 1: it to themself. To people who like weird humor or
Speaker 1: z any humor or things, and that's true, and you
Speaker 1: see a correlation they are you know now, of course,
Speaker 1: remembering what you're saying in terms of take someone who
Speaker 1: likes weird humor, they're more likely to like weird art
Speaker 1: or or atonal music or all sorts of things in
Speaker 1: which you well, you're just open to it. But then
Speaker 1: sometimes an intellectual dimension, there are some people who like
Speaker 1: things that are unusual so that they can intellectually engage
Speaker 1: with them and explain them, you know, maybe, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, when I went to the high school of
Speaker 1: music and art, coming from a bourgeois background, that was
Speaker 1: one of the things that really, this is art, what
Speaker 1: is this? But the art was there, But the art
Speaker 1: was the art of talking about the art, not the
Speaker 1: art itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, that's right. And then you know, also
Speaker 2: you can go through each of the personality means. People
Speaker 2: who are disagreeable tend to like a certain kind of
Speaker 2: cutting humor, They like making fun of other people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so in terms of the humor you find. You
Speaker 1: know this guy Rod Martin did work on this. Where
Speaker 1: you find aggressive humor clearly what that is. You find
Speaker 1: affiliated humor which sort of makes people a group of
Speaker 1: people feel better about themselves, or it's a way of
Speaker 1: coping maybe in a difficult situation. You find self enhancing humor,
Speaker 1: which is very difficult, you know, but does exist when
Speaker 1: you can you're not with a group of people, you're
Speaker 1: you're undergoing some stressful situation, but somehow you can see
Speaker 1: it in a comic way and therefore you can cope
Speaker 1: with it, so you can enhance. And the other part
Speaker 1: is sort of self denigrating humor, which is different than
Speaker 1: self deprecatory humor. It's humor which you make yourself the
Speaker 1: fool or whatever. And supposedly, or to some extent, evidentially
Speaker 1: that the more healthy humors are affiliative, but there's always
Speaker 1: a mix because a lot of affiliated humor within your
Speaker 1: group is actually aggressive to an outgroup.
Speaker 2: That's right. I was going to say, what if you
Speaker 2: boost yourself by making fun of others?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Right, So that you know, what you find is
Speaker 1: that that people definitely do that, and that's for performance.
Speaker 1: That's fine. In real life, you will find that you
Speaker 1: end up not being liked very much, and it's not
Speaker 1: going to be great for your relationships with other people.
Speaker 1: Although if your power it doesn't matter very much. I mean,
Speaker 1: one of the things that power gives you is the
Speaker 1: ability to do these things rather thanly push back. You know.
Speaker 1: You see how power is related to humor in that
Speaker 1: the boss is funny, right, You're going to laugh at
Speaker 1: the boss's jokes, and anyway, it's a whole interesting area
Speaker 1: because if the boss, even if the jokes aren't funny,
Speaker 1: if the boss is at least if well, as long
Speaker 1: as the joke isn't directed you, if the boss is joking,
Speaker 1: it's probably in a good mood and you're not in danger.
Speaker 2: Right. And then in terms of power, there's also that
Speaker 2: Fasting research showing that self mockery is uh is considered
Speaker 2: very respectable if you're in a position of power, like
Speaker 2: if you're if you deprecate yourself and you're in a
Speaker 2: position of power, that is, people respect you more. But
Speaker 2: if you're but the opposite, if you're a loser, any
Speaker 2: use self deprecation, they confirms to everyone you're a loser.
Speaker 1: Because the self deprecation is understood as kind of inverted
Speaker 1: praiser for yourself.
Speaker 2: That's right, you know.
Speaker 1: It shows how powerful you are that you can make
Speaker 1: fun of yourself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you're in a position of power, if you're a.
Speaker 1: Person of power, you can make fun of Yeah. But
Speaker 1: I do think that really, you know, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a funny definition I'm getting. But I think the deepest
Speaker 1: humor is the humor in which you're actually within your
Speaker 1: own mind, make fun of yourself. You realize your own
Speaker 1: ridiculousness and the you know, the that's a way of
Speaker 1: of of tolerating your own your own fallibility. Uh and uh.
Speaker 1: And actually just a perspective on things, a perspective on things.
Speaker 1: It's only it only exists temporarily before you just go
Speaker 1: back to the usual dread of existence, the the you know,
Speaker 1: the the overwhelmed. I don't know, I can, I can
Speaker 1: get freaked out, but like stuff like, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: listening to the History of English podcasts and they're talking
Speaker 1: about the evolutionary language, the Germanic tribe tribes, the Etruscans,
Speaker 1: you know, the Indo Europeans, and you look at the
Speaker 1: scope of history and then it's you know, the guy
Speaker 1: is saying, then one hundred years later, you know, the
Speaker 1: dramanic and you realize your life is so short, It's
Speaker 1: been so huge. You know, the whole scope of it,
Speaker 1: the whole scope of it, and you're you're you're here
Speaker 1: at like the tip of it for a moment before
Speaker 1: you just get sweeped in with the Etruscans, you know,
Speaker 1: and then it just it just sometimes just gives me
Speaker 1: a shiver in a way, just think how much has gone.
Speaker 1: And the other part of it is the way I
Speaker 1: think about it. You look at how those fucking Etruscans.
Speaker 1: They're so primitive. They they didn't even have an alphabet. Oh,
Speaker 1: they finally get an alphabet. They borrowed from the the
Speaker 1: I forget the Etruscans borrowed from the Greeks now and
Speaker 1: maybe they get it from the Italians or something, and
Speaker 1: you know, and everything finally had the alphabet, and they
Speaker 1: think we're here at this apex of civilization and out
Speaker 1: there in the black universe or whatever ten thousand years hence,
Speaker 1: you know, they were the robots looking back at us
Speaker 1: and thinking, I can't believe it. They were made completely
Speaker 1: a meat. How did they get anything done, and the
Speaker 1: meat was rotting from the beginning at the start. It's
Speaker 1: like they had you know, they'll look at us like
Speaker 1: look at may flies. You know, they're just here for
Speaker 1: a second. Anyway, I don't want to depress or anything
Speaker 1: because you because I know you have a book to
Speaker 1: write and which is going to last throughout all of history,
Speaker 1: and eventually those robots will be reading it and said, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was made of meat, but it was a pretty smart.
Speaker 2: Piece of meat, you know. And I'm sure we will
Speaker 2: have robots trying to get someone else to have a
Speaker 2: business meeting, and the robots says, yeah, how about never.
Speaker 1: Which is yours my cartoon that hasn't been an interview? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that I don't mention it. I don't think that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So my joke there is I'm well enough now now
Speaker 1: that as long as I don't live too long, I'm
Speaker 1: sure i'll have an obituary at times. So that's that's
Speaker 1: an interesting perspective. Also, It's like when you think about, well,
Speaker 1: how important to you is the Times obituary and you
Speaker 1: realize that, you know, there's there's like a sweet spot
Speaker 1: for the best positible obituary, and it's probably a lot,
Speaker 1: not like one hundred and two when everyone's forgotten you.
Speaker 1: So really, for mybituary purposes, it would be good if
Speaker 1: I if I knocked off in a year or two.
Speaker 1: But anyway, in any case, I think I know what's
Speaker 1: going to be in my visuary, which is not true.
Speaker 1: And of course I'm a huge fan of jat GPP
Speaker 1: and I use it all the time, and I don't
Speaker 1: fear it. I just think this is a you know,
Speaker 1: we really are at a transformational moment in the augmentation.
Speaker 1: And I don't think the replacement, but the augmentation of
Speaker 1: human intelligence and the It's very easy to find flaws
Speaker 1: in this, but if you interact with it at all
Speaker 1: in an intelligent way, you will be amazed, simply absolutely
Speaker 1: amazed that these problems which people have said are impossible
Speaker 1: to solve without some deep symbolic knowledge of language, are
Speaker 1: not impossible to solve. It's right there in your face,
Speaker 1: you know, if I you know. So, before I got
Speaker 1: on here, I was interested in stuff like how the
Speaker 1: Internet changed armor and stuff, and I sent that to
Speaker 1: you and the concept and I was unclear because I've
Speaker 1: been read by the concept of affordances in psychology affordances
Speaker 1: like what you know, so I and like so in
Speaker 1: affordance it comes maybe out of ecology biology, like okay,
Speaker 1: what what is the affordance of a stick for a dog? Well?
Speaker 1: Not much? What's the affordance of it for chimpanzee? Quite
Speaker 1: a bit? And so I could go up on chat
Speaker 1: GPT and I could say, how does the concept of
Speaker 1: affordances apply to this image, this image of the New
Speaker 1: York de capturing context? What are the different affordances it
Speaker 1: gives linguistically in terms of its image, in terms of
Speaker 1: it tirony and within ten seconds it's listing the affordances
Speaker 1: that are interesting and correct and then can make me
Speaker 1: think of ideas, and it will also think of ideas.
Speaker 1: The ability to do this is, you know, nothing less
Speaker 1: than astonishing. And to remark that, oh, but you know
Speaker 1: it makes mistakes in math or it makes things up.
Speaker 1: This isn't a big criticism that makes things up. I
Speaker 1: think that shows that it's more like a general human
Speaker 1: intelligence than not. Okay, in that we when we when
Speaker 1: I'm talking about affordances, I can't look it up. I
Speaker 1: have to actually recreate the idea of it, and I'll
Speaker 1: often get things wrong. The fact this is generative language.
Speaker 1: It generates it. It doesn't look it up. It's not
Speaker 1: like it has the whole. It doesn't look it up
Speaker 1: at all. So I find that, you know, we're at
Speaker 1: the beginning of it's not I don't think these things
Speaker 1: sent because they're not. They're made out of the wrong stuff.
Speaker 1: I said that. I think what they are is they
Speaker 1: are sort of cognitive savants sabs okay, and they can
Speaker 1: do things that no human being can possibly do in
Speaker 1: a combinatorial way. So for example, and most people haven't
Speaker 1: experimented as much as I have. So for instance, I
Speaker 1: could say to is that I just did a while
Speaker 1: the guy said, imagine this is a scene from Seinfeld, okay,
Speaker 1: in which Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer are all watching
Speaker 1: Citizen Kane okay on a TV set, and the TV
Speaker 1: set goes out, and they all decide to act out
Speaker 1: the rest of the movie because they know it well,
Speaker 1: Write me that scene, and it instantly writes the scene.
Speaker 1: In other words, it can combine that idea those ideas
Speaker 1: is in a combinatorial way. So these are things that
Speaker 1: people that are almost impossible for people to do it anyway, Okay,
Speaker 1: you know you would need this kind of parody and
Speaker 1: to do it immediately. So I mean, so right now
Speaker 1: when I I you know I, and the way I'm
Speaker 1: using it practically is this. I have a company cartoonstock
Speaker 1: dot com. Cartoonstock dot com. It is half a million cartoons,
Speaker 1: and you can go to a search bar and you
Speaker 1: can say, I want cartoons on psychology, I want cartoons
Speaker 1: on skiing, and you can look at filters, I want
Speaker 1: this cartoonist, I want this publication. That's horrible. That's a horrible,
Speaker 1: unnatural way for you being to interact with anything. So
Speaker 1: I'm using what I want and will I hope that
Speaker 1: by the end of the years you'll go to cartoonstock
Speaker 1: dot com. An avatar is going to pop up and
Speaker 1: say what cartoons would you like for and you'll say,
Speaker 1: I'm really looking for car our tunes about accounting and
Speaker 1: regulatory issues, because this is what I'm interested in, and
Speaker 1: that's what it's going to find for you. And so
Speaker 1: we are because this idea of understanding intent. See right now,
Speaker 1: my database doesn't understand intent. It doesn't understand what you
Speaker 1: can only understand if it's the same word. We've all
Speaker 1: had that experience on the internet. It's got to be
Speaker 1: the right word. So this whole thing is really opening
Speaker 1: up to explore. You know. So now in terms of
Speaker 1: the book you're writing, you could interact with it, not
Speaker 1: to write the book, but to ask it how to
Speaker 1: how do you think this concept relates to another concept?
Speaker 1: How could you build on that and so that we
Speaker 1: see For example, I could go right now and I
Speaker 1: could say, here are these two books, do The Obscure
Speaker 1: and Catch twenty two? Is there any essay? So you
Speaker 1: know it's you know, people I don't want to name names.
Speaker 1: They're saying, oh, yeah, it just writes a b essay.
Speaker 1: We'll write an essay and something. No one could write
Speaker 1: an essay about that that would actually make you think,
Speaker 1: is there any relation at all between Catch twenty two
Speaker 1: and you The Obscure? Well, you know what, it's going
Speaker 1: to give it a try. It's going to give it
Speaker 1: a try. So to me, it opens up sort of
Speaker 1: like the capturing contest is there are worlds of possibilities.
Speaker 1: Now can you go to the next step where you
Speaker 1: go from this kind of extrapolation and combination to real
Speaker 1: you know, ideas in the physical world and physics. I
Speaker 1: think you will. And it doesn't mean that I think
Speaker 1: these are conscious agents. I think we have now we're
Speaker 1: on the cusp of developing a tool like machines that augment,
Speaker 1: you know, exponentially our powers. Now everyone worries will maybe
Speaker 1: replace us completely. I'm I'm going to be replaced completely
Speaker 1: anyway in that ten of fifteen years, So I don't
Speaker 1: give a short.
Speaker 2: Well, do you think that chat GPT will ever be
Speaker 2: good enough that it will win a New Yorker cartoon contest?
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, I'm entering now, it's doing okay,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm entering now now I'm still like tweaking
Speaker 1: it a little bit because it is hard in that way.
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound hard for it to come up ideas
Speaker 1: that are in that are in the in the ballpark,
Speaker 1: but then you usually missize them a little bit. And honestly,
Speaker 1: we're just really at the beginning of this. We really
Speaker 1: are just at the beginning of it. You know, you know,
Speaker 1: if you look at it and naturally, like everything else,
Speaker 1: is become a tribal argument when people who you know
Speaker 1: who think apocalyptically about everything. So this is yet another
Speaker 1: this is yet another way that we're all going to die, you.
Speaker 2: Know, I know, I know people a catastrophe.
Speaker 1: Is talk about this, about the negativism involved, and I
Speaker 1: do think that we're we're you know, I'm sort of
Speaker 1: with Stephen Pinker on this that in general, in general,
Speaker 1: we're better off than we ever were, which doesn't mean
Speaker 1: there are horrible things. It's just we have no conception
Speaker 1: for the most part, how horrible it used to be.
Speaker 2: That's very true. So I asked, I asked chat Gpt
Speaker 2: what's in common between Jude the Obscure and Catcher in
Speaker 2: the Rye And this is what it said. One of
Speaker 2: the common themes between Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Speaker 2: and The Catcher and the Rye by Jendie Solander is
Speaker 2: the disillusionment of the main characters with society and their
Speaker 2: struggle with the expectations placed upon them. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: it's still going on. There's like four paragraphs and oh
Speaker 2: my gosh. Both novels jump to the end. Both novels
Speaker 2: also deal with themes of isolation, weldliness, and the search
Speaker 2: for meaning and purpose in life. Additionally, both works are
Speaker 2: considered to be controversial, and we're met with criticism upon
Speaker 2: their initial publication due to their frank and honest portrayal,
Speaker 2: portrayal society and the human condition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now just say right, this is a poem and
Speaker 1: it will write it as a poem.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I this is this is incredible Juden
Speaker 2: Holden two, All souls Wait, wait, this is amazing Juden
Speaker 2: Holden two All souls in search of truth and seeking goals.
Speaker 2: Their world's so different, yet the same disillusion with society's game.
Speaker 2: Jude dreams of learning, of books and thought, but society's barriers.
Speaker 2: As dreams are fought, the class system, rigid poverty, accursed
Speaker 2: as hopes and aspirations, they do submerge. It goes on
Speaker 2: and on and on.
Speaker 1: So this is the point most people don't experience. So
Speaker 1: you understand it can't have looked that up. Okay, I
Speaker 1: can't look it up. It is generating it creativity, you know,
Speaker 1: by you know, we keep moving to go. But I mean,
Speaker 1: what else would you call that? Yeah, you know, what
Speaker 1: else could you possibly call that? As the But somehow
Speaker 1: at this stage is being compared against the highest achievements
Speaker 1: of combined humanity combined you know, rather than how is
Speaker 1: this in relation to any single human being. It's well,
Speaker 1: it's just sort of astounding, and you know, I guess
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit frightening or but I guess this
Speaker 1: is where my openness to experience comes in. I'm open
Speaker 1: to this experience and I've always been open to this
Speaker 1: kind of experience because I, I guess I'm a futurist.
Speaker 1: I feel that, you know, we this is what we
Speaker 1: are meant to do in some way as event, to
Speaker 1: create and to transform. And you know, for people who
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not with people who think the industrial
Speaker 1: Revolution was a bad idea. I think it was a
Speaker 1: good idea. We wouldn't be here talking about this, so yeah.
Speaker 1: So I encourage people to be open to the open
Speaker 1: to these technologies and to use them. You know, you know,
Speaker 1: there's no choice. I mean, you're now. I do think
Speaker 1: there will be actually there'll be money to be made
Speaker 1: with these and there'll be money to be made against it,
Speaker 1: because there's a whole neo Luddite sort of faction who
Speaker 1: you know, wants to think that we should basically well
Speaker 1: basically Luddites. They think we should give up all of
Speaker 1: this technology, or that this is so dangerous because it
Speaker 1: could create misinformation. It's actually pretty hard to get it
Speaker 1: to say bad things. It's working against that. And if
Speaker 1: you want a world of bad things, just go on
Speaker 1: or nothing. Jack Gpt can't possibly Madge that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's true. So you have mentioned that a
Speaker 2: couple of things are really important to you for your legacy.
Speaker 2: One is that you created the cartoon Bank in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety one, even though it started in ninety seven, and
Speaker 2: that you secondly, you helped bring a new generation of
Speaker 2: cartoonists into the magazine. Who are some of the cartoonists
Speaker 2: you're most proud of bringing into the magazine.
Speaker 1: Well, I brought in Emily Flake, who's brought in some
Speaker 1: you know, women cartoonishly, and I think on the male side,
Speaker 1: I brought in Matt Diffey and Drew Durnovich and Ed
Speaker 1: Steed and Harry Bliss, just slews of cartoonists the But
Speaker 1: I made it hard on them to succeed because I,
Speaker 1: you know, I will say it's different than it is now,
Speaker 1: and that I was looking for people who could consistently
Speaker 1: produce cartoons week after week, and I was not looking
Speaker 1: at either their ethnicity or their sex or gender or
Speaker 1: anything like that. For me, these things are as criteria
Speaker 1: are reasonable in some situations. I didn't think they were
Speaker 1: reasonable here. I didn't think, you know, but you know,
Speaker 1: I'm for I mean, I understand the power of history
Speaker 1: to make the moment different for some people than other people.
Speaker 1: But yet, for me the most everyone could be interested
Speaker 1: in what they're interested in. For me, I'm just interested
Speaker 1: in the cartoons that was That was my job. It
Speaker 1: would be someone else's job for something else, or society's job. Really,
Speaker 1: society's job, if it has one, or the government has one,
Speaker 1: is to create educational systems that can free enough people
Speaker 1: up to do so of things like submit cartoons to
Speaker 1: the New Yorker.
Speaker 2: Right, well, I think that a big part of the
Speaker 2: d I pushes to so that people who look like,
Speaker 2: you know, the person who's achieved, can be inspired in
Speaker 2: some wady. Who are some of your favorite black cartoonists?
Speaker 1: For instance, I don't have favorite black cartoonists. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I have favorite you know, cartoonists, and and
Speaker 1: really there are almost no black cartoonists who uh uh
Speaker 1: uh my favorite cartoonist for the cartoonists appeared in the
Speaker 1: New Yorker, and you know, and so very few black
Speaker 1: cartoonists uh published primarily in the New Yorker. So Rob Armstrong,
Speaker 1: who is a really good cartoonist but a comic script cartoons,
Speaker 1: who had a few cartoons in the in the magazine.
Speaker 1: But you know, my, my, my favorite cartoonists happened to
Speaker 1: be white, although there there are number that happened to
Speaker 1: be white. But I grew up just I know what
Speaker 1: you mean. I know, you know that happened to be white,
Speaker 1: but I never thought of it that way. And I
Speaker 1: don't really have favorite cartoonists. I have favorite cartoons, you know.
Speaker 1: You know, what I'm interested in is actually the output,
Speaker 1: not the person. Really, I'm happy the person did it.
Speaker 1: But in the end, the cartoon cartoons, I did the cartoons,
Speaker 1: ros Shast does the cartoons exists separate from them. That's
Speaker 1: the beauty of art, really, and the beauty of comic
Speaker 1: art anything that what you do is you know, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, I think in the Producers mel Brooks movie,
Speaker 1: maybe there's a joke where he says, you know, Hitler
Speaker 1: was a good dancer. Okay, So if Hitler was a
Speaker 1: good dancer, he was actually a good dancer, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. And if he was a great paker,
Speaker 1: he'd still be a great painter. Okay, and he'd be
Speaker 1: horrible because he was hitler. But okay, and if I was,
Speaker 1: and you know, that's that's our history, really, if we
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not a fan at all of Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: and I didn't vog for him, and I wouldn't vote
Speaker 1: from me. I think he's a pretty bad person. But
Speaker 1: you know, if he invented a cure for cancer, I'd say,
Speaker 1: you know what, let's use it.
Speaker 2: You'd give it to him, you'd give it to give
Speaker 2: it to him.
Speaker 1: But I'm not even give it to him. I would.
Speaker 1: I would say, oh, let's use this cure, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: of course it gets complicated, but you know, in the end,
Speaker 1: you have to make a choice. And my choice was
Speaker 1: to look primarily at the cartoon, almost entirely at the cartoon.
Speaker 2: Today's podcast is sponsored by Unlikely Collaborators. Their mission is
Speaker 2: to untangle the stories that hold us back as individuals, communities, nations,
Speaker 2: and humanity at large, using the perception box lens. They
Speaker 2: do this through storytelling, experiences, impact investments, and scientific research.
Speaker 2: Today's conversation with Bob really illustrates the importance of expanding
Speaker 2: the walls of our perception box. The perception box is
Speaker 2: the invisible mental box that we all live inside, and
Speaker 2: it can seriously hinder our ability to understand one another
Speaker 2: and to understand ourselves. According to Bob's theory of humor,
Speaker 2: humor is related to laughter, and laughter is a kind
Speaker 2: of mechanism that allows us to deal with incongruity and surprise.
Speaker 2: Laughter is often a relief after thinking something is going
Speaker 2: in one direction and then it surprisingly goes in a
Speaker 2: very different direction from our perception box perspective, We can
Speaker 2: use humor to expand the walls of our perception box.
Speaker 2: Humor gets everyone in the room in the same mode
Speaker 2: and then lets us all let go together. This can
Speaker 2: relieve worry and stress and also connect us to each
Speaker 2: other by resolving something we didn't expect. Our assumptions about
Speaker 2: other people can change radically in a way that is
Speaker 2: totally delightful and surprising to find out more about. Unlike
Speaker 2: a collaborators and the perception box go to Unlike a
Speaker 2: collaborators dot com, I want to have a clock on
Speaker 2: my favorite and everyone's favorite cartoon, No Thursday's out? How
Speaker 2: about never? Is never good for you?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 2: I use that line so often. You said you would
Speaker 2: never use that line except when the grim Reaper comes
Speaker 2: for you? Right? How about how that.
Speaker 1: Never is never good for you? I did it in
Speaker 1: my book and saying cute, let's go.
Speaker 2: I know I saw that. I saw that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean that's interesting because among all the thousands of
Speaker 1: cartoons I've done, people think, oh, you must have thought
Speaker 1: that was wonderful right from the start. I think I
Speaker 1: did fifteen cartoons that day that it was going to
Speaker 1: hand into the New York That was the last one.
Speaker 1: And it came about because I was talking with someone
Speaker 1: who was blowing me off and a cartoon's name of
Speaker 1: Dick Klein. It could be difficult, and then you know,
Speaker 1: well why don't we And then I just got like
Speaker 1: pissed it him. I said, hey, how about never is
Speaker 1: good for you? And once I said, I said, oh
Speaker 1: that's good. And then I then I, you know, rearrange
Speaker 1: it so the guy's on the phone doing that. But
Speaker 1: I know, but I but I mean, this is often
Speaker 1: with the case, and that that's like from a pre
Speaker 1: viral era, something sort of going viral that got reprinted
Speaker 1: thousands of times. Put on bumper stickers, put on panties,
Speaker 1: put on usually it's impressed. How about never is never
Speaker 1: good for you? You know, Thursdays out? And now I
Speaker 1: have the trademark for it, and you know, so I
Speaker 1: can put it on panties if I want, and uh
Speaker 1: the uh or and where those panties if I so desire.
Speaker 1: But yeah, who knows. You know, it's not too lately.
Speaker 2: That's in. That's in these days, Bob.
Speaker 1: That's that's cool. Where panties.
Speaker 2: Well, I can, Yeah, it's cool, it's cool. It's woke.
Speaker 2: That'd be woke of you, that would be woke of you.
Speaker 1: Well, let me think about it, let me think about it.
Speaker 1: I did give an idea to a cartoon here in Esquire.
Speaker 1: Ben Schwartz did it where it said tox check Masculinity
Speaker 1: Detoc Center and there was a sign that said woke
Speaker 1: In's welcome.
Speaker 2: That's good. That's good, that's good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that's a I can't I can't fight the
Speaker 1: the market on that. I'm putting my cartoon through the
Speaker 1: reprints through cartoonstock dot Com. That's the company I run. Now, people,
Speaker 1: if you want to get a cartoon, if you want
Speaker 1: to get Thursdays out. So yeah, so it's uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's the cartoon, Like I said, there'll be my obituary.
Speaker 2: That's so good. Well, I mean you've but you've written
Speaker 2: nine hundred and fifty cartoons at The New Yorker throughout
Speaker 2: the years. I've done my research on you. So you know,
Speaker 2: do you have any of I mean, what's your personal favorite?
Speaker 2: Is that one your personal favorite? The Thursday one?
Speaker 1: Well, no, it's I mean I've done, you know, all
Speaker 1: all sorts of cartoons. I've done cartoons. One cartoon that
Speaker 1: got reprinted from eighty one that got reprinted was It's
Speaker 1: three fish. There's the first fish is thinking there's no
Speaker 1: justice in the world, the second fish's eating is thinking
Speaker 1: I'm justice in the world, and the third fisher is
Speaker 1: thinking the world is just. And that cartoon gets So
Speaker 1: that's a cartoon that sort of as deeper meaning for
Speaker 1: me or even a you know, I think, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll often do cartoons where I like to
Speaker 1: look deeply into a topic. You know, when we talk
Speaker 1: about abuse of power. So there's a cartoon in which
Speaker 1: one politician is saying to other they're walking away from
Speaker 1: the capitol, but how do you know if you really
Speaker 1: have power unless you abuse it? And so with these
Speaker 1: cartoons that have a kind of you know, you know
Speaker 1: a kind of deeper insight. And then sometimes I'll just
Speaker 1: the ordinary cartoons about relationship cartoons where the husband is
Speaker 1: saying to the wife in bed, uh, what's your position
Speaker 1: on some sex marriage? So the the the.
Speaker 2: Uh that's funny, that's funny.
Speaker 1: Or then you know, you know, you know when they
Speaker 1: pile up chairs, when they put them away in a
Speaker 1: sort of one top or the other. I did a
Speaker 1: which was called how chairs have set and the so
Speaker 1: I'm open. So there are a lot of cartoons that
Speaker 1: you know, uh, you know come out of personal you know, experience.
Speaker 1: Uh uh you know where a doctor said to me,
Speaker 1: it'll be a routine procedure, and then you know, I said,
Speaker 1: tell me, yeah, it's a routine procedure if you if
Speaker 1: it's you routinely have your stomach cut open and someone
Speaker 1: fiddle around with your insights, okay, And I said yeah,
Speaker 1: And so then I'll change that into a cartoon. You know,
Speaker 1: for him it's a routine procedure because he's he's and
Speaker 1: he's in lunch, and I end up having a tube
Speaker 1: coming out of my dick that I don't find that
Speaker 1: routine that's never happened to me before.
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Speaker 2: So I want to talk about the cartoon contest Roger
Speaker 2: Ebert won at once? Isn't that right?
Speaker 1: He did? After? I think he could get how maybe
Speaker 1: it was one hundred eleven or one hundred and forty
Speaker 1: one times that he submitted.
Speaker 2: And I I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: So often he had said, you know, he has submitted more.
Speaker 1: He has worked for The New Yorker without pay for
Speaker 1: all these years, and then finally he did win it.
Speaker 1: And I'm friends with Lawrence Wood who has won it
Speaker 1: eight times and been a finalist fifteen times, and he's
Speaker 1: writing a book which will be out in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: So Chembical, your caption has been selected, which I've sort
Speaker 1: of been working with him on. It's going to be
Speaker 1: published by Saint Martin's Press for a nice advance, which
Speaker 1: is going to give you the whole history of the contest,
Speaker 1: which starts on a weekly basis in two thousand and
Speaker 1: five and now probably has four or five million entries,
Speaker 1: and we have there's a database online with all these
Speaker 1: entries that you can find out why you lost.
Speaker 2: Wait, but let's find out about why people win. Tell
Speaker 2: me your theory of humor, Bob. I think this is
Speaker 2: a good point for you to actually just just riff
Speaker 2: on this a little bit. What makes why is Lawrence
Speaker 2: Woods so good at this? And is he good at like?
Speaker 2: Would he be good stand up?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Have you talked to him about this?
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think I think it'd be okay
Speaker 1: at it. Michael Jordan was pretty good at baseball, but.
Speaker 2: Probably right good point.
Speaker 1: Not good enough to you know be you know, so
Speaker 1: there's not complete transference. I'd say, you know, I think
Speaker 1: humor is based on in a primitive way. It comes
Speaker 1: obviously it's related to laughter, and laughter is a kind
Speaker 1: of mechanism that lets us deal with incongruity and surprise
Speaker 1: and to relieve tension. The simplest kind of laughter is
Speaker 1: sort of relief laughter, where you where you think something
Speaker 1: bad is going to happen, and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: it doesn't happen, even just dishes rapping in a restaurant.
Speaker 1: So that's the basis of it is all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: a change temporarily seems bad. And that's true of any joke.
Speaker 1: In all the times you laugh at what I said,
Speaker 1: there's a slight delay in your brain where you're actually
Speaker 1: a little bit confused, which is not what your brain
Speaker 1: wants to be before you reincommon.
Speaker 2: State for me, common state, that's a common state for
Speaker 2: my brain.
Speaker 1: We do so you reorient. So a joke, I mean,
Speaker 1: so a joke is more elaborate. It's a script that
Speaker 1: goes one way, in the in the Thursday's outcoretoon the
Speaker 1: script is one of politeness, as a man looking at
Speaker 1: his a dress book. No Thursdays out, how about? And
Speaker 1: what we expect is some sort of date date or
Speaker 1: something going along with politeness. Instead it falls off a
Speaker 1: cliff and becomes completely rude. And so the script changes,
Speaker 1: you know, completely, And the arc of a joke is
Speaker 1: almost from It's always that way, where you know, the
Speaker 1: surprise and the incongruity resolution has to be at the end.
Speaker 1: So if I have a joke as I did in
Speaker 1: a cartoon in with an executive saying to a board,
Speaker 1: he said, gentlemen, the upside potential is tremendous, but the
Speaker 1: downside is jail. Okay, okay, okay, it can't work the
Speaker 1: other way. It can't be in. The downside is jail.
Speaker 1: But the upside potential is tremendous. It's not a joke anymore, okay.
Speaker 1: The And so that tells you a little bit about
Speaker 1: the mechanism and our brains that works that in which
Speaker 1: you get a joke, you don't get dishes falling, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden it seems like there's something bad
Speaker 1: that you don't get it. Oh, I understand it. But
Speaker 1: what happens is, in a joke, we put a little layer,
Speaker 1: a little cognitive layer on it. That's pleasing to us.
Speaker 1: There's a pleasure of understanding it, pleasure of putting it
Speaker 1: all together. And what's interesting is we put it all together,
Speaker 1: but we don't have to spell it all out. We
Speaker 1: don't have to spell it all out. It's actually rather
Speaker 1: hard to explain it, you know. So if there's a
Speaker 1: joke in which the doctor is saying to the patient,
Speaker 1: you'll be awake during the entire operation, and then he says,
Speaker 1: the anesthesiologist is on vacation, well, okay, that's a terrible thing.
Speaker 1: He seems like he was telling him a good thing
Speaker 1: because it seems like it was going to be trivial,
Speaker 1: and he was telling them something horrible which also can't
Speaker 1: be true. And this is what I mean by the
Speaker 1: by stability of our cognition. And we moved to we're
Speaker 1: processing information right in a reasonable way to in a
Speaker 1: more fantastical, whimsical, a paralogical way. We still understand it.
Speaker 1: We understand it makes sense now that he would be
Speaker 1: awake because he'd be in horrible pain, because because he'd
Speaker 1: be cutting it up. But at the same.
Speaker 2: Time, you like that, I could tell, I could tell
Speaker 2: like it.
Speaker 1: Because it's both. And this goes to what's called a
Speaker 1: benign violation theory. There's something very wrong about it, about
Speaker 1: what horrible, and yet it's perfectly okay because it's a joke.
Speaker 1: And I think one of the things that's been lost
Speaker 1: in our present moment.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, I agree, as mel Brooks said, tragedy is
Speaker 2: when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall
Speaker 2: into an open sewer and die.
Speaker 1: And of course that's just a joke because that would
Speaker 1: not actually be comedy. He didn't know. So what's interesting
Speaker 1: about that is our we understand it as a joke.
Speaker 1: That makes a bigger point. We understand it as a joke.
Speaker 1: This is what I'm not as a real statement, because
Speaker 1: as a real statement, first of all, that it would
Speaker 1: never be funny, right, And and also he's what he's
Speaker 1: done is he's used exaggeration on both sides of it
Speaker 1: to tell you that it can't possibly be true. And
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the whole field of pragmatics right
Speaker 1: where where we're dealing with are we dealing with bona
Speaker 1: fide communication or are we dealing with humorous communication.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, you make a really good point. Well
Speaker 2: that was a good point. But also earlier he made
Speaker 2: a really good point about how you said, what kind
Speaker 2: of society and where we're at today is not so
Speaker 2: accepting of humor that might offend or humor that might
Speaker 2: you know. So what are your thoughts about, you know,
Speaker 2: cancel culture and you know all this this attempts to
Speaker 2: censor comedy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think it's horrible in general. I think
Speaker 1: that everybody it just uses a kind of very very
Speaker 1: broad language, you know, which is uh to condemn people
Speaker 1: for uh for as part of I think a kind
Speaker 1: of you know, a kind of ability to control. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: I mean I think it's a bad thing. I think
Speaker 1: it's everyone could be subject to, I think criticism, But
Speaker 1: it's it's also partly of it's partly of you know,
Speaker 1: what's what's reasonable, what's successive, what's becomes ridiculously insane? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know when uh, let's say this is a Jack
Speaker 1: Leageler who passed away but has done so many great cartoons,
Speaker 1: and one great cartoony did that I love is uh
Speaker 1: it shows the gallows with its steps, but it also
Speaker 1: has a ramp for the handicap And Okay, so that's
Speaker 1: so funny and sort of horrible in a way, and
Speaker 1: was published in The New Yorker, but would never be
Speaker 1: published now because because people write, what they want to
Speaker 1: know is what side are you on? Are you for
Speaker 1: people places being accessible to a handicapped or not? You
Speaker 1: know what I mean? And then what does this say
Speaker 1: about capital punishment as a cartoonist for it or again? Well,
Speaker 1: Jack wasn't for or against anything. He thought this was funny.
Speaker 1: It is funny in its own space, and you don't.
Speaker 1: Making a joke doesn't mean this is anything that you
Speaker 1: believe about anything. This is your ability to be funny
Speaker 1: in this context. So yeah, I would you know. I'm
Speaker 1: sure it looks like cancel culture has had its moment, thankfully,
Speaker 1: and it looks like that moment is passive. I think
Speaker 1: people are, but it's too road in a way to
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm for free you know, I'm for free speech,
Speaker 1: and cancel culture seems or certainly some kind of characterization
Speaker 1: of it is clearly just for free speech.
Speaker 2: To Plinsel, Yeah, that's a good point. Did you know that?
Speaker 2: Did you know? Jack Ziegler, By the way, did you
Speaker 2: know very.
Speaker 1: Well, very good friend, very good friend for many many years.
Speaker 1: And uh a fantastic cartoonist, that wonderful person too. And
Speaker 1: he was a good example of someone whose cartoons were
Speaker 1: very very wacky and wild, and he personally was not.
Speaker 1: So this is once again separating that the you know
Speaker 1: the person from from you know, from what they produce.
Speaker 2: I love I love the one with the boat and
Speaker 2: he writes my first boat upside down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, somebody and oh on cartoon stock.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Sorry. I kind of want to ask you, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, one of my last questions here for you,
Speaker 2: if not the last question, what else in your legacy?
Speaker 2: I mean I mentioned two things, but I'm giving you
Speaker 2: a chance to free just free associate here just you know,
Speaker 2: what else do you want in your legacy?
Speaker 1: What do I want in my legacy?
Speaker 2: What do you want to leave?
Speaker 1: Well? Well, well I do, I do. I do? You know.
Speaker 1: My personal legacy is my daughter, my right. Of course
Speaker 1: I want everything worth that for them, But the I
Speaker 1: think my leg I do want to be able to
Speaker 1: use these new tools of artificial intelligence to augment human creativity,
Speaker 1: especially in humor. I want to create, you know, I
Speaker 1: want to I want to It's been a white whale
Speaker 1: I've been after for a long time, and now they're
Speaker 1: there to actually have uh, these collaborators to create humor
Speaker 1: that wouldn't have been created before more interesting, And I
Speaker 1: do still think there is I think we're collaborators in this.
Speaker 1: So guess what I said before. When it turns out
Speaker 1: for that particular script is not really good, the fact
Speaker 1: that it could do it at all, that could create
Speaker 1: the Citizen Kane script and everything at all, say gee, well,
Speaker 1: maybe this is a way to create things that never
Speaker 1: could be created before. That neither the computer could create
Speaker 1: AI could create before human beings, but some sort of
Speaker 1: synthesis could. So I want that to be part, yeah,
Speaker 1: part of my legacy.
Speaker 2: Also beautiful. Well, I want to end here today with
Speaker 2: a poem I would like to read for you, and
Speaker 2: please just let me get through it. Bob Mankoff, Oh
Speaker 2: how great he is when with wit and humor he
Speaker 2: never misses. He's the man behind the New Yorker's cartoons
Speaker 2: and his talent for laughter. Everyone swoons. He's a master
Speaker 2: of the one liner, a comic genius, a true designer.
Speaker 2: His cartoon, simple but witty, always leave us laugh and
Speaker 2: feeling pretty Did that come from? He's been at it
Speaker 2: for this is chat GBT. He's been at it for
Speaker 2: over forty years, bringing joy and humor to all his peers.
Speaker 2: He's won rewards, he's been recognized, his humor timeless and
Speaker 2: never compromised. Bob Mankoff a legend in his own right,
Speaker 2: a true no notice, it didn't just say a legend.
Speaker 2: It's had a legend in his own right, A true inspread,
Speaker 2: a true inspiration, a shining light, for he shows us
Speaker 2: that laughter is key and a sense of humor can
Speaker 2: set us free. So let us raise a glass to Bob,
Speaker 2: a true comic hero, a master of his job. May
Speaker 2: his humor continue to brand in our days and his
Speaker 2: legacy forever stay. Thank you Bob for being on the
Speaker 2: Psychology podcast.
Speaker 1: Now have Alan Ginsburg do that. But they'll see. We'll
Speaker 1: give it a shot or ee comments. It'll be quite interesting.
Speaker 1: Oh I see my Maybe I have to go down
Speaker 1: because I see the dog. I think these dolphin and
Speaker 1: the dogs are going to.
Speaker 2: Far good place to end here. Thank you so much
Speaker 2: for being on my podcast, Bob, And I hope you
Speaker 2: like that poem.
Speaker 1: I did. I love it? Maybe not to my obituary.
Speaker 2: Though, Yeah, fair enough. Thank you so much, Bob, thanks
Speaker 2: for being on the show. Thanks for listening to this
Speaker 2: episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react
Speaker 2: in some way to something you heard, I encourage you
Speaker 2: to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com.
Speaker 2: We're on our YouTube page, the Psychology Podcast. We also
Speaker 2: put up some videos of some episodes on our YouTube
Speaker 2: page as well, so you'll want to check that out.
Speaker 2: Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show,
Speaker 2: and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 2: and creativity.