Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Funniness

Epistemic Status: exploratory, plausible, uncertain
Tagged in: amateur sociology, memes,

i.

The typical explanation for the funniness of jokes is surprise; a joke is funny because it is unexpected, because it challenges expectations. This jives well with experience; you typically don't laugh as hard when you've heard the same chestnut twenty time: it becomes predictable.

As parsimonious as this explanation is, and it's pretty good (see Hurley et al. for a deeper treatment), I want to explore a kind of extension, that models some aspects of the phenomena well.

There is a certain class of statements, such as "We have them surrounded in their tanks!", that are seemingly intrinsically funny; you can hear it again and again and you at least crack a smile each time. This contradicts the surprise model, since not only is it not meaningfully violating object-level expectations, it doesn't seem to get less funny with time, indeed if the author plays his hand right he can even make it more funny because you've heard it before.

Contrast this with what I'll call extrinsically funny statements. This are the jokes with old, time-tested formula for execution: knock-knock jokes, 'whadaya call x' jokes, 'these dudes walk into a bar' jokes, etc. They are plainly funny because they violate object-level expectations at the surface level. This can be done in two ways. First when a word means something different than what you thought it meant but everything makes sense when you substitute the new meaning (puns) and ones where the words mean their usual things, but the solution is unexpected and fits (though this heavily overlaps with wonder in Sarah Perry's theory of puzzles)

Moral Efficacy, Cosmic Cheesecake, and the Epistemic Vacuum

Epistemic Status: exploratory, uncertain
Tagged in: philosophy, meaningness,

i.

Somewhere in the environs of the blogosphere (if I recall correctly, it was in a Luke Muehlhauser piece), I have encountered the notion that if the universe is indeed infinite, then there is corollary that our actions cannot have a significant impact on the moral status of the universe. It would be the equivalent of emptying the ocean with thimbles. The author's claim was that in this case, we should just adjust our utility calculus so as the give more weight to people closer to us and less to people (say) light years from us.

I didn't like this conclusion. It was not parsimonious. It was inelegant. My objection, however, was filed away into the depths of my mental attic. Long enough to collect dust, long enough, as I mentioned, I actually don't know where I encountered the notion.

I'm going to tackle it anyway.

Where Two-Valued Logic Fears to Tread

Epistemic Status: Uncertain
Errata:
(16/4/14) I added some quotes in the second section, to make when reference to mtraven's articles clearer, and split it into two sections, delineated by the end of the quotes.
(16/4/24) changed epistemic status from 'Likely' to 'Uncertain'.

This post was originally called "Propositional Uncertainty as a Epistemically Useful Type of Logical Uncertainty", but this I realized how much that sounded like snarXiv-esque word salad, with a decision theoretic bent. I'm better than that, I hope.

i.

In the Friendly AI literature, there's this concept known as an 'ontological crisis'. Simply put, it's a situation where your model of reality blows up in your face, and since your value system is probably intricately hooked into your model (you aren't a wirehead, are you?) things don't look pretty. You're faced with the task of reconstructing a utility function now that your old has been thrown out with the bathwater.

The canonical example of this is the loss of faith accompanied by realizing God doesn't exist.

What people don't know, is that ontological micro-crisises (ontological stress?) are far more ubiquitous than than the flashy loss of faith many educated people eventually face. I think we can build a far more interesting model by investigating some phenomena superficially distinct (but deeply related) to the ontological crisis.

And inward we go.

A Meditation on Writing

[Epistemic Status: Uncertain]

i.

Suppose you're consuming some fiction. It's prose is readable, it's ideas coherent. The plot isn't mind-blowing, but it's compelling. Say it's some maybe-supernatural mystery/thriller or something. In it, the story is set off by some local detectives receiving a tip from a Joe Everyman about some weird stuff happening in town. And lo behold, upon investigation, a frighteningly competent local neighborhood conspiracy is brought to light.

That's all well and good, nothing to write home about, maybe, but all good and well. But you're grabbing a drink from the fridge, as it goes, and you have a thought.

If this conspiracy is so competent, how did Joe Everyman even notice enough to give a tip?

It gets worse.

Suppose this Joe actually helps out the investigation. Maybe he contributes valuable input, some insight, a deduction or two, to this team of otherwise competent investigators. He even pulls a few tricks from his sleeve, gets them out of some sticky situations. Seems a bit Sue-ish, perhaps?

It gets worse.

Suppose this fiction wasn't just any fiction, but fanfiction.

You'd drop this poorly-thought-out, self-inserted crap right?

I probably would.

But. What if it turns out Joe isn't just an Everyman, but (say) a agent of a much larger, greater conspiracy, that maybe the local villains were rogue elements and he was just here to take them out, perhaps, and recruited the investigators to avoid getting his hands dirty.

Eliezer has aid some good stuff about noticing confusion. Those details weren't supposed to add up. It was a clue.

But no one kept reading that far.

You are a Pattern-Matching Agent

Or, "My (crude) model of human thought"

Epistemic Status: Plausible, but uncertain.

I.

I sorta want to learn how to draw. Until recently, my feelings about drawing were (statistically speaking) probably similar to yours: it'd be cool to do, but it the type of thing other people are good at, not me. Naturally, my thoughts weren't so blunt, e.g. "I don't know how to draw because it wouldn't be useful to me". Right.

Then, I read Dennet's Consciousness Explained. I haven't finished it, of course, but that might be fixed in a few months (I'm a busy dude). It's not a drawing book, in case you're wondering, but something I read in it made me think that perusing basic competence in sketching stuffs would be something I'd like doing.

In the section I recently finished reading, Dennet argues against the idea of 'pictures in the mind' in a particularly persuasive way (to me, anyway): if we really did have 'pictures' in our heads, then everyone would know how to draw; it'd be as simple as transferring the internal pictures to an external medium, the only barrier to everyone being professional-quality (photorealistic) artists would be hand-eye coordination (which tends to be fairly good in humans).

But that isn't the case, which was to be demonstrated, thus completing the reductio ad absurdum.

The persuasive-ness likely doesn't carry-over in my blunt-force summary, but you just need the gist of it. This argument resonated with me when I first read it, partially because I had a superficially similar pet theory of my own. I'll try to explain it, though I'll stress the mental environment and train of thought which gave birth to this idea have long since dissolved, so I can't faithfully re-construct my exact thoughts anymore than you can.

Personally, I have no idea how other people mentally see their act of mentally seeing, but for me, it's always been a very los-res affair. Seeing a dog and visualizing a dog are utterly distinct things to me. One was 'high definition', with minuscule details and structural stability. The other was, in word, not. Which isn't to say that I lacked imagination, just lacked a vivid imagination, if such a thing exists (I doubt it does).

Now, my original hypothesis about "how visualizing works" is that we don't actually visualize.

Really.