Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!uflorida!ukma!rutgers!soleil!peru
From: peru@soleil.UUCP (Dave Peru)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Artificial intelligence and laughter
Keywords: laughter
Message-ID: <448@soleil.UUCP>
Date: 27 Oct 88 17:59:04 GMT
Organization: GE Solid State, Somerville, NJ
Lines: 26

I am serious.  Many people say to me "you must be joking".  I believe
humor is the brain's way of unknotting itself.  There are some thoughts
that will cause your brain to go into an "infinite loop".  For example,
"have you ever thought about what the brain is doing between thoughts"
will almost in all cases cause a person to laugh.  The harder you try
to think about it, the tighter the knot.  At some point, your brain
implodes, and you burst out laughing.

For 6 years I've been trying to write a program that executes the "how"
of how we think.  Rather than concentrate on neural networks, thought
data bases, parallel architecture, self modifying code, or heuristics
about heuristics, I decided to concentrate on the meaning of meaning.

I believe all thoughts come from experience.  And somehow, meaning comes
from an infinite recursion, where at some point the brain says "aha".
Then, the brain somehow creates thoughts from this deep dark place in our
mind, and then these thoughts get translated into speech.  Or words being
typed into a computer terminal like the ones you are now reading.  At this
point, I don't believe consciousness can be simulated on a computer because of
this infinite recursion concept.  Also, I believe if it was not for real
experience, we would not be able to communicate at all.  So even if you
did have consciousness in a machine, how would we be able to communicate?

However, if I'm wrong, any program that executes the "how" of how we think
must have the ability to laugh.

Infinity is a big concept.