shokwave comments on Rationality Quotes: January 2011 - Less Wrong

2 Post author: wedrifid 03 January 2011 05:24AM

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Comment author: shokwave 04 January 2011 04:12:25AM 12 points [-]

Jokes about "I think, therefore I am" are always amusing to students of logic, because people twist themselves in knots trying to make it seem weird, when the only thing you can do with "I think -> I am" is "I am not -> I think not", and "Rene Descartes died, therefore he stopped thinking" isn't funny.

Comment author: Broggly 04 January 2011 03:14:09PM 8 points [-]

An eight year old Rene Descartes had been spending hours at study, trying to work out a particularly tricky geometry problem. His Jesuit teacher says "I think it's time for a break. You're clearly exhausted." "I am not!" the boy insists, as he falls unconscious.

Comment author: simplyeric comment score below threshold [+] (13 children)

Comment author: shokwave 07 January 2011 02:24:52AM 1 point [-]

Isn't it somewhat irrational to analyze why a joke isn't funny?

Nope. Our best guess on humour is that it is unexpected pattern-breaking. This is a function of our extremely complex pattern-matching muscle, the brain. My rational analysis of what happened in Costanza's post is that he attempted to break the pattern of "cogito ergo sum is an axiom / truism or important / obvious / wise statement" by presenting a situation where the statement's conclusion is absurd.

My post pointed out that the joke was funny to students of logic because it breaks the pattern of "logic".

I am not sure how this is like demonstrating that you should or should not like the sound of birds. That equivocates "is" and "should" - a joke is funny or a joke isn't funny, and you can analyse why this is so quite rationally, whereas "a joke should be funny" is definitionally true. Your statement is further scuttled by talking about what a person should do, instead of a concept like 'joke' or 'bird'. There's no agreed-upon shouldness for people.

The joke was definitely not "Descartes died thus stopped thinking"; nobody would make a joke about that, because that's not funny. (This is a filter on jokes about Descartes' cogito: all correct interpretations are not funny. Jokes are - at least an attempt at - funny. Therefore all jokes about the cogito are not correct interpretations.)

Comment author: Will_Sawin 08 January 2011 02:23:59AM 1 point [-]

Critical to a joke is that it fits some other pattern, which is what I think you're getting at.

Here is a not-funny joke:

"1, 2, 3, 4, bananas!"

It seems like you're expecting it to follow a logical-consequences pattern. It's really following a more pun-like pattern. I found it amusing.

Comment author: Broggly 23 February 2011 01:42:52PM 2 points [-]

Yeah, it should be "1, 2, 3, Kumquat!"

Comment author: ata 08 January 2011 03:26:18AM * 1 point [-]

Here is a not-funny joke:

"1, 2, 3, 4, bananas!"

I laughed.

Comment author: MichaelHoward 08 January 2011 03:40:11AM 0 points [-]

Maybe you were thinking of this.

Comment author: ata 08 January 2011 05:32:02AM * 0 points [-]

Never saw that before. I may have been thinking of this somewhat.

Comment author: shokwave 08 January 2011 05:29:43AM 0 points [-]

Here is a not-funny joke:

"1, 2, 3, 4, bananas!"

This is basically the entire absurdist humour approach, in one joke.

Comment author: ata 08 January 2011 05:36:14AM 0 points [-]

Only if the "Here is a not-funny joke:" is considered to be part of the joke. It wouldn't have been as funny without that preface (and it would actually have been unfunny if it had said "Here is an absurdist joke:").

Comment author: simplyeric 07 January 2011 01:36:07PM 0 points [-]

"Nope"

Isn't it not entirely rational to declare something so unequivocally, based on:

"Our best guess..."?

A. I'm not sure I agree that humor is simply unexpected pattern breaking. I'm sure there's a link that elaborates that theory? There are many aspects of humor, and I think breaking it down to such a blanket statement is probably too simplistic. (I do agree that's certainly part of it).

B. Even if your statement is correct, you are then also implying that it is purely objective what it funny, and thus purely objective what the patterns are and how they are to be broken. Patterns to you might not be patterns to me. Or we might see the same pattern, and you might not find breaking it funny, but I do. Or I might find breaking the pattern offensive while you find it neutral. Or you might expect it and I might not. Or you might understand it while I don't.

Because of A and B, I think that "funny" is subjective. People can rationally discuss why they think something is funny...but I don't think they can discuss it in the context of "that is ojectively unfunny". You are implying that you know all the patterns, and can comment on whether the pattern was successfully borken in that instance.

Or rather: you can rationally analyze why that joke wasn't funny TO YOU, but you can't rationally analyze why it WAS NOT funny.

If I rephrase my bird issue: it's like rationally analyzing that bird sounds are or are not pleasing. (you're right that I phrased it sloppily).

As for

"The joke was definitely not "Descartes died thus stopped thinking"

I might misunderstand, but I thought that's what you said:

"Rene Descartes died, therefore he stopped thinking" isn't funny.

(although I'm not sure this aspect of it is important to the bigger issue of "funny")

Comment author: Desrtopa 07 January 2011 06:51:22PM 0 points [-]

"Rene Descartes died, therefore he stopped thinking" isn't funny.

In the right context, I find it to be. It's so obvious and uninsightful that it causes an unexpected pattern break if you expect any sort of twist or clever input.

Comment author: simplyeric 07 January 2011 07:24:49PM 0 points [-]

And there is why it seems not entirely rational to discuss what is and isn't funny...Shokwave believes that he has rationally shown that "Rene Descartes died, therefore he stopped thinking" isn't funny. You have used his same logic to demonstrate that it IS funny.

I personally don't think it's funny, as delivered. But, with the right delivery, it could be hilarious, I suppose.

I'm fascinated by the rational discussion of "the nature of funny", by the way. I was opining on the discussion of "the objective funniness of a particular joke".

Comment author: shokwave 07 January 2011 03:09:14PM 0 points [-]

Isn't it not entirely rational to declare something so unequivocally, based on: "Our best guess..."?

Nope. That we can only guess means we don't understand; what we don't understand, we ought to analyse, rationally if at all possible.

"Rene Descartes died, therefore he stopped thinking" isn't funny.

This section in quotes is the only conclusion you can draw from Descartes' "I think, therefore I am". Humans are familiar with the concept that death stops brain function, so the section outside the quotes is invariant over all subjective viewpoints. Therefore, someone trying to make a joke about Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" is almost certainly going to commit some form of logical fallacy, because the only non-fallacious route isn't a joke. That is, "joke" strongly implies "fallacy", because "correct" strongly implies "not funny" (implicit assumption that "funny" is a necessary condition for "joke").

Comment author: simplyeric 07 January 2011 05:13:40PM 0 points [-]

"What we don't understand, we ought to rationally analyze...."

Absolutely. And what "our best guess" imples to me is that we don't fully understand "funny" or "joke" or "comedy" So we ought to rationally analyze that issue. What I feel you did there was you took your interpretation of "our best guess" as good enough and moved forward with unequivocated confidence to apply it to a joke that someone wrote. I feel like there is a procedural lapse there. You were anayzing The Joke At Hand, while admitting that we do not really understand "jokes in the abstract".

Thus: we don't understand what makes certain bird sounds pleasing to people, but I am going to make an unequivocated statement that this bird sound is objectively not pleasing, based on our best guess.

anyway...

"Rene Descartes died, therefore he stopped thinking" ... is the only conclusion you can draw from Descartes' "I think, therefore I am".

You are assuming a causality that the "being" creates the "thinking". One could also assume that the thinking creates the being, which is where the joke forms.

I personally think it's neither: "thinking" is evidence of "being", the causality being ambiguous.

shokwave comments on Rationality Quotes: January 2011 - Less Wrong

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