Stripping away a lot of your point here, I just want to point out how many
"jokes" are memorized fragments.
Several theorists have pointed out that laughter is predominately a
"surprise" reaction when your brain has started off down one path and then
suddenly been shown that it's "going the wrong way".
A large part of what is going on here is using a large database.
I don't know whether I would call it a database or a concept-store. I make
the distinction because I think that your "limit<ed> amount of originality
that anyone shows in common discourse" is because it is very difficult (or
rather, not difficult but *VERY* time-consuming) to exchange whole concepts
rather than just labels for pre-existing concepts (common culture).
I would also disgree with your statement that "human speech is very largely
reproductions of chunks that have been previously encountered, where the
size of the chunk is usually larger than a single word, or even pair of
words." Human speech spends a lot of time referring to and modifying
concepts but it virtually never attempts to reproduce them (unless one is
attempting to teach them to someone who doesn't know them).
----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles D Hixson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 3:44 PM
Subject: Re: [agi] HOW ADAPTIVE ARE YOU [NOVAMENTE] BEN?
Stripping away a lot of your point here, I just want to point out how many
"jokes" are memorized fragments. A large part of what is going on here is
using a large database. I'm not disparaging your point about pattern
matching being necessary, but one normally pattern matches and returns a
"pre-computed" result rather than constructing a new result from scratch.
This works well for two complimentary reasons:
1) The results that you've stored will already have been filtered to meet
some minimal quality standard (and you will have had time to assess their
quality off-line)
2) The results that are "part of the common culture" are more easily
recognized and processed by the others with whom you interact.
These two reasons act together to limit the amount of originality that
anyone shows in common discourse. (Humorists spend a lot of time
polishing their jokes before they present them to a wide audience.)
I would assert that this same process operates in all areas of metaphor.
I.e., that human speech is very largely reproductions of chunks that have
been previously encountered, where the size of the chunk is usually larger
than a single word, or even pair of words.
Mike Tintner wrote:
Mike,
There is something fascinating going on here - if you could suspend your
desire for precision, you might see that you are at least
half-consciously offering contributions as well as objections. (Tune in
to your constructive side).
I remember thinking that you were probably undercutting yourself with the
example of the elephant and the chair. Here you certainly are.
What you offered was a fine example of human adaptivity. Your wife took a
fairly straightforward sentence "How would you feel about fencing in our
yard?" and found a new kind of meaning for it - a new and surprising
kind of way of achieving the goal of understanding it - switched from the
obvious meaning of fencing to the fighting meaning. That's classic
adaptivity.
Jokes do this all the time - see Arthur Koestler's The Ghost in the
Machine. They are another form of adaptivity/ creativity.
[Another comparable example would be the Airport-type joke:
A: You can't mean: go to the hospital, surely?
B; Yes I do. And don't call me Shirley.]
...
----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Dougherty" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 2:44 AM
Subject: Re: [agi] HOW ADAPTIVE ARE YOU [NOVAMENTE] BEN?
On 4/29/07, Richard Loosemore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
The idea that human beings should constrain themselves to a simplified,
...
....?
ok, I know t... enough)
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