Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Comedy Theory (2022)

rpgadventures.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 182 posts

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#141

Post by smokedetector1 »

082349872349872 wrote: post #136
smokedetector1 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this explain away the mystery of consciousness?

Consciousness is just the result of a search for "a more or less linear story that makes sense of the way I act and react" We're good at predicting states of minds of others (helpful when trying to exploit limited resources, and very helpful for either predator or prey), and we can cheaply gather a lot of data on ourselves, so why should the capability for inferring states of mind not, as a side effect, also provide…

This is a theory that would work, except for the fact that I know I exist. Why does materialism so desperately want to ignore that knowledge? Is that really simpler than the idea that we have a soul that interacts with the body and brain, but which also has its own nature that is separate from biology and evolution? Do we have to go 100% and say things that start with "consciousness is just"?

I'm passionate about this because I know -- from personal experience -- that this type of philosophy can really go along with denying ones own existence in a deep way. It feels great to know you're a soul that exists. I don't know why it's supposed to be "rational" to convince yourself against a simple truth that we all know intuitively. And I say that as someone who used to feel that way.

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#142

Post by duderific »

nxobject wrote: post #112
visarga wrote: post #96

I have a theory that everything is search. Protein folding? Search for minimal energy. DNA evolution - search for ecological niche fit. Cognition? attention is search, memory is search, imagination is also search, problem solving - of course is search. Scientific progress? It is (re)search. Optimizing an AI model? Search for optimal parameters to fit the data. Reinforcement learning? Search for optimal behavior to ma…

I think another way to put that really good idea is simply to say that humans are innately wired to explore and discover!

Not surprising I guess, since our survival literally depended on that capability for tens of thousands of years (and still does, to a lesser extent)

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#143

Post by psunavy03 »

wanda wrote: post #133
airstrike wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if the contrary was true and humour was infinite. Then everything could be funny. I don't think that necessarily follows. Some infinities are greater than others. (Even though I happen to think anything could be funny with sufficient effort. Even tragedy)

Schadenfreude to the extent of humour. That is a difficulty isn't it, the audience can find whatever it wants funny if that's how it's wired. Perhaps you're right.

It's definitely contextual. As an example, military or veterans, first responders, doctors, lawyers, and others like that will usually have a much greater appreciation for dark humor than people who haven't had to deal with tragic circumstances in their day jobs.

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#144

Post by duderific »

yungporko wrote: post #31
everdrive wrote: post #7

I've yet to see a theory of comedy which actually addresses that there are multiple kinds of comedy: - Bullying, where the joke is not particularly funny, but instead relies on attacking someone's status in front of a crowd. The crowd laughs in recognition of the successful attack, not because the joke is clever. - Epiphany humor -- the joke relies on some new thought, connection, or idea, and the "joke" is the leap…

to be fair, i've seen plenty of examples of the "bullying" one be genuinely hilarious too.

In a formal setting, I think this is called a "roast", when a famous person is the target of the bullying.

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#145

Post by 082349872349872 »

smokedetector1 wrote: post #141
082349872349872 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consciousness is just the result of a search for "a more or less linear story that makes sense of the way I act and react" We're good at predicting states of minds of others (helpful when trying to exploit limited resources, and very helpful for either predator or prey), and we can cheaply gather a lot of data on ourselves, so why should the capability for inferring states of mind not, as a side effect, also provide…

This is a theory that would work, except for the fact that I know I exist. Why does materialism so desperately want to ignore that knowledge? Is that really simpler than the idea that we have a soul that interacts with the body and brain, but which also has its own nature that is separate from biology and evolution? Do we have to go 100% and say things that start with "consciousness is just "? I'm passionate about th…

The quality of consciousness and the existence of a non-body non-brain soul seem to me like two completely orthogonal issues (I can easily imagine creatures without conscious awareness but with a soul; I can certainly imagine creatures with brain-driven consciousness but without a soul; a rock has neither; in your model people have both) so it seems unlikely that answering your two questions would move the conversation forward.

For what it's worth, I know I exist as well; can we agree that we both exist, but we have differing models for what the necessary constituents of that existence are?

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#146

Post by smokedetector1 »

082349872349872 wrote: post #145
smokedetector1 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a theory that would work, except for the fact that I know I exist. Why does materialism so desperately want to ignore that knowledge? Is that really simpler than the idea that we have a soul that interacts with the body and brain, but which also has its own nature that is separate from biology and evolution? Do we have to go 100% and say things that start with "consciousness is just "? I'm passionate about th…

The quality of consciousness and the existence of a non-body non-brain soul seem to me like two completely orthogonal issues (I can easily imagine creatures without conscious awareness but with a soul; I can certainly imagine creatures with brain-driven consciousness but without a soul; a rock has neither; in your model people have both) so it seems unlikely that answering your two questions would move the conversati…

> Can we agree that we both exist, but we have differing models for what the necessary constituents of that existence are?

Of course, yes.

> I can certainly imagine creatures with brain-driven consciousness but without a soul

This would probably be the heart of the disagreement. I don't believe this is possible. Such a creature would not have qualia.

And, as a species, I don't think we're any closer to resolving this question "objectively" than we ever were. fMRIs say where blood is flowing in the brain, but that's hardly enough to explain the phenomenon of subjective experience.

By the nature of the question, we won't be able to attack it from the outside, and I don't think I could generally convince another person that they have a soul that exists, if they're inclined to explain themselves using materialism, which at this point has become flexible enough to be unfalsifiable, with the everlasting faith that someday science will fill in all the gaps.

That's why my approach now is just to poke holes in the seemingly impenetrable confidence that materialism is the only "rational" way to think.

(By the way, I'm not saying you hold that position.)

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#147

Post by 082349872349872 »

smokedetector1 wrote: post #146
082349872349872 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quality of consciousness and the existence of a non-body non-brain soul seem to me like two completely orthogonal issues (I can easily imagine creatures without conscious awareness but with a soul; I can certainly imagine creatures with brain-driven consciousness but without a soul; a rock has neither; in your model people have both) so it seems unlikely that answering your two questions would move the conversati…

> Can we agree that we both exist, but we have differing models for what the necessary constituents of that existence are? Of course, yes. > I can certainly imagine creatures with brain-driven consciousness but without a soul This would probably be the heart of the disagreement. I don't believe this is possible. Such a creature would not have qualia. And, as a species, I don't think we're any closer to resolving this…

> This would probably be the heart of the disagreement

OK, sounds like we're agreed there.

If souls are required for consciousness, then I guess we could try to decide which creatures are conscious by first deciding which have souls? Would that question be any easier to answer that way around?

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#148

Post by fracus »

smokedetector1 wrote: post #84

It's really annoying and deadening, not to mention foolish, when people try to reduce every activity of the soul to a mechanical, comprehensible process.

How deadening would it be to imagine that our consciousness and agency is just an illusion created by firing synapses and hormones and that everything we think and do has been predetermined.

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#149

Post by visarga »

smokedetector1 wrote: post #117
visarga wrote: post #96

I have a theory that everything is search. Protein folding? Search for minimal energy. DNA evolution - search for ecological niche fit. Cognition? attention is search, memory is search, imagination is also search, problem solving - of course is search. Scientific progress? It is (re)search. Optimizing an AI model? Search for optimal parameters to fit the data. Reinforcement learning? Search for optimal behavior to ma…

How does this explain away the mystery of consciousness?

We have a dual search loop - outside, we act using our experience to gain new data. Inside, we compress this data and update our experience. We search for experience and search for understanding. Acting is search for new insights, learning is search for error minimization.

I think the way we encode our experiences is relationally, like neural networks. We relate new experiences against past experiences, this creates a semantic space that is highly dimensional. Any concept is a point or a region in this space. It has consistent semantics, which leads to the unified experience. We can relate anything to anything in this space without having a central understander. Encoding your own experiences creates a first person perspective from 3rd person data, which was always a "hard" problem to explain in philosophy.

The serial action bottleneck adds to the illusion of centralization. But it's still a distributed process, no neuron is conscious or understands by itself. And even in society, no human can recreate even a 1% of human culture individually. We are not that smart on our own. We should always look for the larger context where we develop, not just the brain.

Search has the virtue of not hiding the environment, it is social and distributed, unlike more personal concepts like consciousness, intelligence and understanding. But as I said above, even inside the brain there is nothing but distributed processing, no homunculus.

I think the core of my argument is "there is no centralized consciousness, understanding or intelligence, they are distributed processes, they act across neurons in the brain and across people in society". It seems like a hard pill to swallow, if that is true then there is also no centralized understanding or truth.

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#150

Post by nickpeterson »

petesergeant wrote: post #106
clucas wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the article mistakes punchlines for comedy. Watch some of Norm MacDonald's stuff on Conan (troubled moth, Jacques de Gatineaux, drunk dart thrower, Andy the Swedish-German)... sure, the punchlines fit the model in the article, but the real humor comes from his delivery and the weird worlds he creates leading up to the punchlines.

> troubled moth This is worth googling for anybody who’s not urgently meant to be doing something for the next ten minutes. Also on Conan, for anyone looking for an amazing example of humour without a punchline is “conan nathan fielder susan”

I’m a big fan of his dirty Johnny joke on stern, https://youtu.be/4gshCmZVAV8
Post reply on HN