Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Understanding Jokes
Message-ID: <673@quintus.UUCP>
Date: 14 Nov 88 09:04:07 GMT
References: <3244@sdsu.UUCP> <333@igor.Rational.COM> <777@wsccs.UUCP> <258@gargoyle.uchicago.edu>
Sender: news@quintus.UUCP
Reply-To: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Inc.
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>>>>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?

This assumes that there is such a thing as THE funniness of a joke.
I'm not a USAn, and when a joke is told at this company I often am
left wondering what was supposed to be funny when the others are
laughing their heads off.  Conversely, some of my best jokes are
met with tactful smiles.  There is a _lot_ of cultural background
behind jokes; even a shared language is not enough.  Even when two
people have essentially the same cultural background, they are not
likely to react the same to all jokes.

Even after allowing for differences between hearers, there is still
an assumption that there is a _single_ "funniness" metric for a given
hearer, and it is not at all clear to me that this is the case.  I've
not put a great deal of thought into it, but it feels to me that there
are at least three different kinds of humour-reaction, and that
different jokes excite them in different proportions.  Not all jokes
are primarily bisociative, for examples.