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Assorted links
1. Be skeptical of medians.
2. The pattern recognition theory of humor, via GeekPress.com.
3. AmateurEconomist, a new on-line magazine.
4. Victor Niederhoffer on worry; see the comments for a partial summary of my talk.
5. A superb post on charity, from Freakonomics blog.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on July 8, 2008 at 09:32 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
How do you order pieces of text in first place to get the median??
Unless it's a joke, of course.
Posted by: Venu at Jul 8, 2008 10:02:25 AM
The humor theory book looks interesting, but I would be surprised if it completely suplanted Henri Bergson's essay on the meaning of the comic, which also investigates root causes of humor and how they are tied to a contradiction between a comic item and that item's natural state. Really, it is not a stretch to see a pattern as evidence of a natural state, so Alastaire Clarke's "theory" seems likely to be a simple extension of Bergson's.
Posted by: kujo76 at Jul 8, 2008 10:14:48 AM
The "superb post on charity" is some kind of rambling first-person narrative. I'd have to read it again to really figure out what he's going on and on about, and I'm not sure that's worth the investment of time. Something about "throwing money at a problem doesn't necessarily solve it", yes?
Posted by: at Jul 8, 2008 10:15:59 AM
I think that human intelligence is based entirely on pattern recognition, and humor just happens to be a good example of one of the manifestations of this phenomenon.
Posted by: Axel Molotov at Jul 8, 2008 12:20:07 PM
I misread that as "be skeptical of mediums."
Posted by: Michael Tinkler at Jul 8, 2008 12:31:42 PM
The humor article isn't very impressive. It seems to dodge fundamental questions and use poor methodology,
which I'll explain below. Recently, I had come up with my own amateur theory of what makes us find things funny,
and it seems superior in all ways to the proposed one. The theory is that humor arises from when a situation
is reframed (Keep in mind that all human cognition works in terms of frames: information is all absorbed
within a certain context.) such that the reframing forms a coherent parallel, possibly in which some factor is more obvious.
This theory accounts for the ubiquity of puns: a term is reframed such that its new reading *also* has
meaning to the situation. It accounts for the phenomenon of how scientific discoveries are made with the
observation "that's *funny*" -- placing the new observations in a new frame made a phenomenon more understandable.
It accounts for how so many jokes involve a person encountering a situation with a different *expectation*
(surrounding context) which thereby gives everything a different meaning. It explains why it would arise
in intelligent beings: reframing is a vital part of abstract thought.
So how does the theory in the link compare: "Effectively it explains that humor occurs when the brain recognizes a pattern that surprises it, " -- but *what* is it about the surprising? Later on, it tries to show the relevance of a
pattern, but it is a *two-term pattern* -- how would you recognize a pattern from two terms? He does the same
thing in the next exercise.
Posted by: Person at Jul 8, 2008 1:03:36 PM
There's a little book called "Jokes" by philosopher Ted Cohen, which neatly explains the phenomena of humor. Cohen argues that jokes are a transaction between teller and prospective laugher. The pattern recognition theory is consistent with the transactional theory because some focal point is required for voluntary exchanges to take place. When the joke elicits laughter, the teller and laugher now know that they share a common focal point.
Now why not just talk about the focal point? Because usually, the focal point is a dangerous one to express publicly without knowing more about the listeners. Jokes, in effect, are a socially acceptable way to figure out something about the usually very private worldviews of your listener.
Posted by: Michael F. Martin at Jul 8, 2008 1:26:48 PM
Observing patterns is really only part of it-- comedy is about questioning or perpetuating accepted patterns. For example, in ironic examples of comedy, the audience laughs because it recognizes that a pattern is false.
Posted by: RaJ at Jul 8, 2008 3:08:54 PM
"Be skepitcal of medians"
And the linked post reads: "and arrived at this average:"
Ummmmm.
Posted by: Donald A. Coffin at Jul 8, 2008 3:37:26 PM
It also seems to me that the "humor as pattern recognition" piece is poorly argued
Pattern recognition is part of human cognition activity. I'm rather more impresed by the theory that explains origin of humor as "false alarm" signal (I think I read about it in Economist). The bottom line is that humor (and apparently similar behavior in chimps) initially signalled "false alarm" that end ambiguous sitiation (potential danger).
Posted by: Ned at Jul 8, 2008 5:33:28 PM
Re: AmateurEconomist. Amateur, indeed. One of the articles suggested a barter system for medical care. Won't visit that link again.
Posted by: dave smith at Jul 8, 2008 10:22:00 PM
I read about halfway through the article on charity and lost interest.
I think the level of charitable giving discussed there -- millions of dollars -- and the related level of expectation are so far out of the norm as to make them more or less irrelevant to a discussion of more typical charitable giving.
Speaking purely from an anecdotal point of view, by which I mean what I observe with my own eyes and ears, most folks give to charities because they have enough to give something away, and they think their gift might be useful. Full stop.
I don't think most folks expect to make really dramatic changes in other people's behavior. That's good, because they probably won't. They just want to help out a little bit.
Not sure how that affects whatever point the author was making, it's just another data point.
Thanks -
Posted by: russell at Jul 9, 2008 12:33:57 AM
I read about halfway through the article on charity and lost interest.
I think the level of charitable giving discussed there -- millions of dollars -- and the related level of expectation are so far out of the norm as to make them more or less irrelevant to a discussion of more typical charitable giving.
Speaking purely from an anecdotal point of view, by which I mean what I observe with my own eyes and ears, most folks give to charities because they have enough to give something away, and they think their gift might be useful. Full stop.
I don't think most folks expect to make really dramatic changes in other people's behavior. That's good, because they probably won't. They just want to help out a little bit.
Not sure how that affects whatever point the author was making, it's just another data point.
Thanks -
Posted by: russell at Jul 9, 2008 12:36:04 AM
I have to agree with at and russell: there was nothing "superb" about that charity post. It didn't advance or test any hypothesis, even at an annecdotal level. Mostly it seemed to be about some carefully arranged, complicated, and ultimately pointless interactions the poster had with a few very wealthy people.
Posted by: David Wright at Jul 9, 2008 6:35:06 AM
Ned beat me to it. The humor study as summarized by that blog post sounds awful. First, how can one discuss or formulate a theory of humor in humans without reviewing the literature on why other primates laugh? Second, how can one miss the effect heirarchical relationships have on one's response to humor. I suspect laughing originated to signal submissiveness, and smiling originated to signal lack of submissevness (slack jaw vs. bared teeth) in primates. I think it explains well our human aesthetics surrounding stand up comedy and the projection of confidence.
Posted by: Hopefully Anonymous at Jul 10, 2008 4:54:40 AM
