EGarrett

Karma: 268

EGarrett Aug 21, 2014, 8:49 AM
2 points
in reply to: Azathoth123’s comment on: Why Are Individual IQ Differences OK?
Hi Azathoth,

If you google “Does Race Exist” you’ll get a number of results from Nova, Scientific American and other sources that describe this with much more detail than I could in my available time.

EGarrett Aug 20, 2014, 3:24 PM
−1 points
on: Why Are Individual IQ Differences OK?
The problem with racism is the confusion of correlation and causation. To state that “blacks score lower in IQ” is to imply that being in the Venn Diagram circle “black” automatically lines you up with a “lower IQ circle.” But, besides the sheer difficulty of defining racial categories in the first place, this ignores that there are other factors in which you can group people which will cause those circles to line-up far more accurately. Particularly ones based on environmental pressure of a person’s ancestors. If a group is put into a position with forced manual labor without self-determination or decision-making, the genes that make you more physically capable will tend to cause longer survival and thus more reproduction and spreading of those genes in comparison to ones that aid mental calculation.

The same is true on the other side of the spectrum if you are are forced into a situation where mental calculation is emphasized, such as rice farming or financial work.

To group these characteristics by “race” is to imply an incorrect source. Decisions made based on these incorrect assumptions cause very bad things to happen.
What links here?
- Azathoth123's comment on Calibrating your probability estimates of world events: Russia vs Ukraine, 6 months later. by Shmi (Aug 30, 2014, 3:05 AM; -1 points)

EGarrett Aug 20, 2014, 1:18 PM
0 points
in reply to: Luke_A_Somers’s comment on: A “Holy Grail” Humor Theory in One Page.
Okay, what we can do is compare the predictions of the two theories in relation to these. If they both have similar results (since they both mention pattern-breaking/misplacement), I think we can look instead for places where they might differ, or look for examples that might apply to one and not the other.

Should we start with one? The first joke is unclear because “QALY” isn’t explained, but I think I can fill it in well enough. We’ll use a Hippie, Gandhi, and Justin Bieber for the butt of the joke. (apologies if you’re a Beiber fan).

Plane breaks, pilot runs out, says there’s only three parachutes and grabs one. Beiber then says “I have 10,000,000 twitter followers! And grabs another parachute and jumps.” Gandhi then tells the Hippie, “you are young, so you can create more happiness,” and tries to give him the last parachute. And the Hippie simply shows him two more parachutes and says “It’s okay dude, Beiber took my backpack.”

According to the theory I’ve posted, this is a layered joke with multiple detectable errors (quality gaps)...in both Beiber turning out to be fatally wrong, and in the listener expecting the Hippy to give an argument back to Gandhi.

The reference to the listener having to jump through the hoops is probably nearly the same as saying that the listener has to have the expectation that Beiber didn’t make a mistake and that the joke was going elsewhere.

In this theory (my theory, the posted theory, whatever), I may be able to say that we get additional information about what makes the joke work. Since it states also that the listener must, for example, not be worried about Beiber (or the butt of the joke) dying. So if you used for example, the listener’s child as the butt, they’re a lot less likely to laugh.

Okay. This seems to be a distinction between the two theories where one could potentially give more accurate information about what makes the joke funny/unfunny then the other. What does this alternate theory say about this particular part? How causing anxiety (in this case using someone who the listener would worry about dying), would screw up the humor?

EGarrett Aug 20, 2014, 12:35 PM
0 points
in reply to: sediment’s comment on: A “Holy Grail” Humor Theory in One Page.
Well unfortunately we can’t reach into each other’s brains and experiment on the situations. I’ve dissected my own humorous laughter relentlessly to find these things, so I have to make some assumptions or estimations when discussing what makes other people laugh...especially given anecotes that naturally have limited information.

Does the Youtube video help demonstrate the general principle I’m referencing though? That the commentator laughs after the dunk, but does so as he says “Excuse me, I’m sorry!” as a clear reference to he himself turning out to be wrong...?

EGarrett Aug 20, 2014, 10:57 AM
1 point
in reply to: HalMorris’s comment on: Rationality Quotes July 2014
Well, I feel like politics tends to create bad feelings when it’s argued...we’d probably have to have some kind of quarantined thread or pre-agreement to be extra polite if we talked about those topics.

But I do like this quote by Alinsky because it’s a good habit for everyone on both sides.

EGarrett Aug 20, 2014, 9:07 AM
1 point
in reply to: SisterY’s comment on: A “Holy Grail” Humor Theory in One Page.
This appears to be the same claim as the “misplacement” part of the above theory (errors in patterns vs. errors in “abstractions” which in the link that was provided is referred to as “patterns”).

The key difference which stands out now, though (before I see it applied to various forms of evidence and humor) is that this version appears to be less elegant, less clear, and has less connection with our common experiences and understanding of humor, so it doesn’t fit any of my own criteria for what would make it better as a hypothesis. I also notice this a lot when it comes to Dennett.

EGarrett Aug 20, 2014, 8:57 AM
0 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: A “Holy Grail” Humor Theory in One Page.
From this article I see them referencing that there is joy in creating and recognizing new patterns, which I agree with and makes some logical sense. But “abstractions” by itself is very different, which can be just a representation of one thing in another medium, and which doesn’t logically generate pleasure.

The words “abstraction” or “abstract,” also, according to my search function, don’t appear on that page. Given that these can be unclear topics, we sometimes have to take care with our words.

EGarrett Aug 19, 2014, 10:59 PM
0 points
in reply to: sediment’s comment on: A “Holy Grail” Humor Theory in One Page.
This is actually pretty easy to demonstrate though. You can laugh at your own expectations failing when you’re alone, as per the phone example. So we KNOW this can happen.

Now, let’s change the expectation, and we can see clearly that the laughter will change or disappear. For example, when I look at Da Vinci’s notebook, who I obviously think of as an amazing artist, I don’t laugh the least bit at the quality of the drawings contained within, and no one that I know of looks at Da Vinci’s notebooks and the amazing quality of his thought as a source of comedy. The different aspect that creates the humor in the case is your own expectations turning out to be wrong.

We know this can cause humor by itself, and we know it’s here in this case, so the theory addresses it quite clearly and it seems very well defined as laughter at the self.

Here’s one more piece of information that strongly indicates this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww2d_o0N62w

Here, Michael Jordan, in his mid-30′s, dunks on a center, and it makes the commentator laugh. Notice what he says...”Excuse me! I’m sorry!” In other words, apologizing for his own statement or belief that Jordan was no longer capable of that. He’s laughing at how wrong he himself just turned out to be.

(having said that, there is a separate emotional reaction that’s triggered when someone’s ability surpasses expectations, which I have as a solution to another classic “mystery” of human behavior, but that’s for another topic)

EGarrett Aug 19, 2014, 11:12 AM
0 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: A “Holy Grail” Humor Theory in One Page.
Yes I believe the dogs do, but I haven’t spent a lot of time dissecting this or being able to study it (maybe I can figure out something the next time I’m dogsitting for my cousin).

Here’s the link… http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/200911/do-dogs-laugh

Regarding the second idea, that would probably be something good to do. Look at animals (other than humans) with breath control and consistent physical similarity, who thus have similar social situations as early man where they needed to organize themselves without knowing already who was the worker or the leader, and thus predict that they’d have a form of laughter.

I haven’t gone into the animal side of it too much yet, but I’ll keep that in mind.

EGarrett Aug 19, 2014, 11:08 AM
0 points
in reply to: Azathoth123’s comment on: A “Holy Grail” Humor Theory in One Page.
That’s likely too. In scenarios where we’re supposed to have a high expectation, we tend to laugh harder at anything humorous. The show “Silent Library” from Japan is an example I use, where people give each other harmless but painful punishments in a library while others struggle to conceal their laughter. The expectation of silence and scholarship in the library heightens the humor, and the show is very very successful and has spawned multiple spin-offs.

Being drilled that the customer must be respected and is always right would probably create a similar situation when they reveal themselves to have done totally idiotic things.

EGarrett Aug 19, 2014, 10:41 AM
0 points
in reply to: Dagon’s comment on: A “Holy Grail” Humor Theory in One Page.
Well, we can take situations where the “equation” is clearly minimized, like if you just found out your Mother died tragically and are crying (meaning extreme anxiety), and see that basically no one is going to laugh at that time. Or that something happens that you simply never even know happened (so noticeability is 0), and obviously you won’t laugh at that. If you have no quality-expectation related to something (like if, for some reason, you’re trying to talk to a rock, unless you’re somehow insane you won’t laugh at the rock when it doesn’t answer, you would only laugh at yourself if you could picture yourself being so exhausted that you’d expect the rock to answer in the first place), so we can see immediately that the theory can class those situations as “definitely not funny.”

From there, when we start pushing those variables up from 0, we can see how things would thus enter into the funny zone. For example, a few days or weeks AFTER your Mom dies, if your anxiety starts to go down, and someone reminds you of something funny she did, THEN you would probably start to laugh. This is why, according to this theory, we say “too soon” when someone jokes after a tragedy. The anxiety level hasn’t gone down enough yet.

Likewise, when you start being able to see the funny thing that previously was out of your vision, then you start getting to the point where you can laugh at it. Or when you start talking to something that you might have a reasonable expectation would react, like your dog ignoring you calling his name, that is where laughter could begin to come in.

I tried to present examples that were “far-end” and isolated with the various variables in the equation, to hopefully demonstrate in a clear way how this can function to predict what will or won’t be funny. There are of course examples that involve multiple variables or where it’s more subtle and depends on our own individual opinions and things and moods that we could also do.

On page 15 of the second paper, under “bad jokes,” I tried to do exactly this...taking a joke that won a “bad joke” contest, analyzing it within the theory, and adjusting multiple things about it, including improving the pun, to the point that it gave me some urge to laugh at it.

Oh, lastly, in regards to surprisingly funny, something that violates a very deeply held expectation (with the other variables being within an acceptable range) would be an example of something that’s surprisingly funny, like if your boss who you’ve known for years suddenly has an epic fail. I have this on page 19 of the second paper under “I didn’t see that coming.”

Hopefully this decently addresses the concern.

EGarrett Aug 19, 2014, 10:23 AM
2 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: A “Holy Grail” Humor Theory in One Page.
Yeah, both other apes and dogs have been found to have their own forms of laughter. It’s discussed in the last entry in the second paper with links to two studies.

Apes’ since of humor seems to be based entirely on physical fails, which makes a lot of sense since their use of tools and organization is limited (so I don’t think they’d develop the misplacement humor instinct). Dogs is based on their own forms of play, like mock hunting and chasing and those other activities, so I think it’s linked to what they see about your fitness in those matters.

Both other apes and dogs are social animals with breath control and, at the very least, an “ABC” level of intellect, so within what I’m claiming, it would make sense for them to develop laughter. Obviously this is something that can be investigated far further though.

EGarrett Aug 19, 2014, 10:17 AM
0 points
in reply to: HalMorris’s comment on: A “Holy Grail” Humor Theory in One Page.
Hi Hal, I never quite laughed at Monty Python, and in the course of writing the theory, I came across the idea that British people probably have expectations associated with people of different regional English accents (from what I understand there’s a lot of issues associated with that there), so they can laugh at people who have those accents or perhaps the associated mannerisms doing foolish things (like the “Ministry of Silly Walks” bureaucrat), whereas I don’t have that “Quality Expectation.”

There may be other reasons of course, as I know American people who love Monty Python, but that one jumped out to me and felt like it explained some of my own feeling about it.

EGarrett Aug 19, 2014, 10:13 AM
0 points
in reply to: Stefan_Schubert’s comment on: A “Holy Grail” Humor Theory in One Page.
In that case it probably felt inappropriate so you laughed at either me or your own expectations being wrong. The quality expected was in how you thought the subject would be treated, the low quality is in either what you saw from the original post or what you found out about your own expectations. Obviously I really meant to say it also, so it was valid, and you can see it fine so it’s noticeable, and there’s no threat here...especially since we’re online and detached from each other, so I think there was no cause for anxiety.

The joke in this case that you were telling is likely of the “imagine how wrong or inappropriate it would be if I actually said or felt this,” since I think it would be ironic for me to have proposed a humor theory that was laughably bad. I wasn’t sure how you or others would take the post, and I also didn’t have much “quality expectation” for how people would reply that could be violated by one that was of a certain type. (and of course some anxiety because I certainly wouldn’t want this thread to turn out poorly).

Thanks for the reply! I just like to analyze things within the theory as a form of exercise, and it helps me understand it of course.

EGarrett Aug 18, 2014, 11:10 PM
0 points
in reply to: 9eB1’s comment on: A “Holy Grail” Humor Theory in One Page.
Hi 9e,

The first example is first-person laughter, where you laugh at yourself for your own expectations turning out to be so wrong, similar to looking for your phone then realizing you’re on the phone already. I would hope this doesn’t seem like a forced explanation (apologies if it does). We have standards about what we ourselves are capable of, and oftentimes we find out that we were way off-base. I like the example of finding out that you already had your phone because there’s no one else involved and it hopefully thus isolates the issue and demonstrates clearly that you can laugh purely as a result of realizing your own errors.

The second example is a good one, and that’s something that I had to think about a lot. I eventually noticed that those incidents result from a misplacement, which almost always comes from something that has something in common with their surroundings but are noticeably out of place. I think that most often these are combined with some other source of humor, like the misplacement being combined with someone else’s mess-up, or a reminder of a mess-up, or laughing at someone’s bad pun.

I wrote a bit more on this in the papers, right now I’m trying to do several different things so sorry if my explanation of that is jumbled (especially because that’s one of the most important and least straightforward aspects).

In regards to bullies laughing at the target, I think it involves them not feeling anxiety at the target’s misfortune, and usually their laughter (I say usually because I’m not in their brains so I can’t totally dissect or make concrete statements), seems to come from pushing the victim to new lows, like making them carry their bags or embarrassing them in new ways. This would put them below whatever quality-expectation the bully has of them. (apologies here, an expectation of very little quality is still a “quality expectation,” sorry if the word “quality” sounds like it always means something above average. I know the word is sometimes used that way.)

EGarrett Aug 18, 2014, 9:20 PM
0 points
in reply to: Luke_A_Somers’s comment on: A “Holy Grail” Humor Theory in One Page.
Hi Luke,

That explanation doesn’t have much meaning to me. For example, I don’t know what is meant by “a rush that is normally created by abstractions”), does this mean the rush of finding a new idea? We can certainly get a rush from learning something new, but I wouldn’t always laugh in those circumstances.

One of my criteria when working on this was that I wanted something that was simple and logical. This of course, doesn’t mean that it’s automatically correct (or that a complex answer is wrong), but I always felt like things that were that common and widespread probably are the result of some widespread and common evolutionary pressure that we could recognize.

I also felt that the likely answer would have something in common with all the sayings and common understandings that we have about humor. Like that we “laugh AT” people, that sometimes people are offended by it, and so on. I thought there was valuable information there about how it functions and the roles it plays, and a “right answer” would probably jibe with those.

But I’m not entirely clear on how the Larson concept works and would probably have to see a lot more clear examples of demonstrations of how it works to be able to get a grasp for it.

EGarrett Aug 18, 2014, 8:57 PM
0 points
in reply to: Dagon’s comment on: A “Holy Grail” Humor Theory in One Page.
Hi Dagon,

The equation represents the ratios and how to increase or decrease the humor of a situation, and does so in a compact form, so there’s no quantitative definition, however a “unit analysis” is probably reflected in the first paper (under “so if we don’t find something funny, it’s because). It’s also applied repeatedly in many ways in the second paper. Beyond that, I would probably need more information to know what doesn’t come across.

The best definition of the problem in the current papers is probably the cover quote, a theory that can consistently differentiate between things that are funny and not funny, and also reflect the degree to which something will be found funny.

A third paper with more formal and specific definitions of each may be a good idea.

In regards to “just so” stories, I understand the problem with hasty conclusions, meaning jumping to an explanation that fits a single specific observation without bothering to see if it reflects other evidence, but I don’t see how the term “just so story” would refer to a problem apart from that. An explanation that fits multiple observations while also being simple and logically consistent with a likely evolutionary pressure is probably just a decent hypothesis that’s worthy of investigation.

Lastly, I think the concept here is a simple one that expresses itself in complex ways, similar to how evolution has the mechanisms of variation and selection, which are simple to explain, but which express themselves in thousands of complex ways.

EGarrett 18 Aug 2014 20:44 UTC
1 point
in reply to: roland’s comment on: A “Holy Grail” Humor Theory in One Page.
This situation can be very similar to one of the ones with the relative being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s above. You’re concerned about how the person in question views the situation, which makes you feel anxiety. When they joke, it reveals that they have low anxiety or are in a non-threatening mood, which greatly deflates the tension for you. In that case, I’d say that the joke (without knowing much about it) greatly lowered your anxiety and thus elevated your laughter.

It may also be, of course, that there’s a secondary evolutionary adaptation to laugh in scenarios where you want to demonstrate social closeness that the theory doesn’t reflect. I do think that the current parameters of it can explain it though.

EGarrett 18 Aug 2014 20:17 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Cyan’s comment on: A “Holy Grail” Humor Theory in One Page.
Sure, from page 22 of the 2nd paper:

″… Now, the reason for this, and what makes it especially interesting, is in what it reveals about the origins of our humor instinct, which is that it clearly evolved not only before language, but also before we had higher brain functions that allowed hypothetical scenarios or sophisticated deception.”

Our humor instinct comes from a part of our brain that was evolutionarily programmed in a time where our intellect expressed itself in terms of “A,” then “B”, and get “C.” Put the animal in the fire, wait until it smells good, then eat it. Grab the stick, hit the branch, and the fruit will fall.”

This study was announced a few days ago in Harvard magazine (http://harvardmagazine.com/2014/09/was-the-human-brain-unleashed), discussing the basic parts of the brain compared to the more “advanced” ones in humans.

″...the neurons in the sensory and motor areas seem to be playing a game of telephone, in which information follows serial paths, the cells in the association areas use a communications strategy more like the Internet—with lots of simultaneous connections and pathways.

Buckner and Krienen looked for a simple way to explain this phenomenon. Association areas not only evolved later in humans, they also form later in an individual’s development.”

The functioning of our “misplacement” instinct, as I found it in my studying of humor, seemed to indicate precisely that our early form of intelligence, and the laughter that came from, functioned only in terms of A-B-C and recognizing errors in those types of sequences, and our advanced functions that allowed more abstract and hypothetical thinking must have occurred later. The study seems to have used different methods to have arrived at the same conclusion.

EGarrett 18 Aug 2014 18:58 UTC
1 point
in reply to: kilobug’s comment on: A “Holy Grail” Humor Theory in One Page.
Hi kilobug, skepticism makes for the best investigation and good discussion.
1. In this case, any old error doesn’t cause laughter, but it has to be one that violates your assumptions of what you or someone else is capable of. The example is of course anecdotal so I don’t have a ton of information, but I would suggest that most of us, especially people trained in computers, don’t expect the a person, or don’t find it acceptable, for them to not be able to plug in a cord, or not to check, so that would definitely be the type of thing that would illicit laughter from us...though the more it happens, we likely would laugh less and less and start to just become annoyed. It can also be a matter of “I know you screwed up in some absurd way, but I’ll be surprised by finding out what exactly you did this time.”
2. Something would have to violate what you were taking for granted or already assuming to find it funny. This is similar to the “Accounting Errors” example from page 13 of the second paper. For an example, you may not have expected the cake to be totally perfect, to where some missed seasoning or so on wouldn’t be outside of your assumptions. But you probably did, in fact, expect the person to know the basics of what would taste good. Let’s say that you bit into the cake, it tasted bizarre, then you found out that the person had tried to bake it with pickles. THAT’S the kind of error that would violate your expectations and cause you to laugh. Especially if they were right there and they genuinely looked like they thought it was a good idea.
3. This is probably a great example of “first person” laughter, where we’re actually laughing at our own expectations being sharply wrong. Like how we might laugh if we’re looking for our hat and find out it was on our head. The quality-gap in this case is in YOUR ability to estimate what was going on...laughing at yourself and not the person who exceeded expectations, since you didn’t expect that your friend could or would do that. As you can see the difference between first-person (at the self), second-person (such as at someone telling you a bad joke), and a known or unknown third person (the usual targets of jokes and humor) create a lot of the confusion.
4. Anxiety makes us less likely to laugh, but a good enough joke can overcome some anxiety, and the pleasure we feel from laughing certainly can make us feel better. Another cool thing about it is that laughter triggers from recognition in the brain of the person laughing, so a good joke can be stronger than simply telling someone that their problem is no big deal. I have a lot of this under the explanation for the saying “laughter is the best medicine” on page 18 of paper 2.
Humor certainly expresses itself in many complicated ways, but I think the underlying mechanism is pretty simple. It’s similar to how evolution expresses itself in thousands of ways in how it creates life and programs our instincts, but the underlying mechanism of variation and selection is fairly easy to understand and can be explained in a short form.

I hope some of these explanations for the examples help to demonstrate that. Regardless, friendly skepticism and disagreement is invaluable.