Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!hplabs!otter!ijd
From: ijd@otter.hple.hp.com (Ian Dickinson)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Understanding Jokes
Message-ID: <2070022@otter.hple.hp.com>
Date: 1 Nov 88 11:18:18 GMT
References: <3244@sdsu.UUCP>
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK.
Lines: 49


    +----------------------------------------------------------------+
    |  "Does anyone know of any work or program that takes a joke as |
    |  input and outputs some number, say between 0 to 10, based on  |
    |  the funniness of the joke?"                                   |
    +----------------------------------------------------------------+
                                    |
                                    V

         +--------------------------------------------------+
         |  Some  work or program for understanding jokes   |
         +--------------------------------------------------+
                                    |
                                    V

                                   8.3

But seriously folks...  Mapping any complex human response like emotion
or humour onto the domain of integers is out of the question.  There is
no such thing as the "funniness" of a joke, or for that matter, the degree
to which I am feeling sad at the moment.  What you will find is that a
joke is more or less amusing according to the environment, your mood,
your knowledge about the subject of the joke, etc etc.  Moreover, you
will find different jokes funny for different reasons,  and so they can't
really be compared.  Add to that the observation that my sense of humour
is almost certainly very different from yours (or anybody else's), and it
looks like you are on a no-hoper.

You might find an interesting diversion in trying to define various categories
of funny stories, and attempting to capture the essence of the category.
It _might_ then be possible to take your favourite natural language system
and attempt to spot when a story fits that category.  Puns suggest themselves
as a rich but initially tractable domain (for simple versions anyway).

Food for thought:  There is a joke about monks in a monastery who know each
other so well, and all the funny stories that they tell, that all the stories
are assigned a number.  To tell a story, the monk simple calls out the number.
There is more, but this is not rec.humor.   One reason why this joke is
amusing is that the idea of reducing stories to that level is so absurd
that it's funny.  I am inclined to believe that *any* reductionist approach
to understanding phenomena like humour or emotion is missing the point
entirely.

Ian.


| Ian Dickinson,  HP Labs, Information Systems Centre,    Bristol, England  |
| net: ijd%otter@hplabs.hp.com        |                                     |
|  or:       ijd@hplb.uucp            |  ?-  mind(X),  body(X),  spirit(X). |
| These opinions are all my own work. |                                     |