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From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Congratulations! You passed the Turing test
Summary: humor citations
Keywords: Empathy
Message-ID: <8881@venera.isi.edu>
Date: 10 Jul 89 16:30:21 GMT
References: <3567@lindy.Stanford.EDU> <58049@linus.UUCP> <381@berlioz.nsc.com>
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Reply-To: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu.UUCP (Stephen Smoliar)
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In article <381@berlioz.nsc.com> andrew@berlioz (Lord Snooty @ The Giant
Poisoned Electric Head ) writes:
>Some day or other, we'll have to come to terms with humour as part of
>the ai object. I have my own ideas about it, but perhaps this is worth
>the odd thread. IMHO, it's what's generated when one rubs together two
>(or more) disparate contexts, paradigms or ideas.

This is an approach which I believe I first saw in the beginning of Arthur
Koestler's THE ACT OF CREATION.  Also, Marvin Minsky wrote an essay entitled,
"The Funny Thing About Thinking," which appeared in the May 1984 issue of
CHEMTECH (pages 270-278).

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"For every human problem, there is a neat, plain solution--and it is always
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