Monday, September 24, 2012

Artificial Intelligence for Girls


How to Design an Artificial Algorithmic Intelligence
for Girls


Artificial thinking is not the same as conventional thinking given that conventional thinking is the type of artificial thinking we generally ascribe to computers. Let me explain. 

Suzie baked a cake. Now she's singing happy birthday. 

Girl brains fill in the information, "Suzie baked a cake and threw a surprise birthday party for her best friend. Everyone at the party is having a blast. Suzie's having a great hair day. Now, she's singing happy birthday. She's so glad that she decided to do this... her friend is really happy. 

Computers don't think like this. 

In order for us to do this, we have to sift through huge volumes of background knowledge and seamlessly fill in the story-line gaps. Programming this reaction has been a major challenge in designing an algorithm that would lead to artificial intelligence. For the moment, computers think like boys:

Suzie baked a cake. Now she's singing happy birthday. 

That's all. It's processing occurs with little to no thought unless a physical action is required (retrieve a file, power on or off, watch football game, etc.). 

So, how do we get a computer to think like a woman?

First off, the computer has to learn how to think outside the box created by human expectations. How does a woman do this, you ask? Simple. We have a large working memory. Apparently, size does matter when it comes to intelligence. 

All the computer needs to do is (1) process the question based on preprogrammed conditions; (2) and open one the files opened over the last 24 hours; (3) plus one random file from the day the computer was turned on. 

These files from the last 24 hours are more quickly retrieved by the computer and are thus fresh topics "on the computer's mind"; perhaps the computer operator did not extract a thumb drive properly, potentially causing damage or corrupting data, which would annoy the computer. The computer would then be programmed to perform based on a preprogrammed response to the definition of "unhappy file"; in which unhappy = preprogrammed responses (computer may freeze up, computer spontaneously shuts down without warning, computer deletes file). 

If we're looking to program computers with artificial intelligence, we can't play by the rules. Our brains seek novelty, to which we ascribe art, creativity, and genius - as well as good, bad, happy, sad. 

If we want to program for these features, we simply include random data, which is programmed as "relevant" with a code for taking action. This allows us to watch the computer fill in the missing gaps based on syntax, content, and quantity...and other stuff, too numerous to mention. 

I already asked my computer what she thought about this post. The only thing she did was open this blogger window. I presume my computer is a girl because she wants me to blog about it. 


lol







Blogography

Creative blogging or blogography is writing that the writer claims comes directly from the subconscious (and/or external and/or spiritual sources without conscious awareness of the content). In effect, this style of writing is like saying whatever pops into your mind, only you're writing it down for posterity so that the entire world may know how dark or twisted is your thinking.

While exploring Paris, I came across an old bookseller who had a copy of Hippolyte Aldolphe Taine's De l'intelligence, published in 1878. One particular passage struck me: "the coexistence, at  the same time instant and in the same individual, of two thoughts [pensées], two wills, two distinctive actions - the one consious, the other unconscious and attributed to some invisible existence (Taine 1870).

So, what about automatic pictography? Can I post whatever pictures randomly hit my brain to upload and consider the act of the same category?

In all reality, that was a rhetorical question that crossed my mind. In reality, I just wanted to share some random pictures that make me laugh.












LOL



Faustian Humor




Faustian Humor

The silly & the ridiculous stick 2 the side of the absolute idea, 
& the boring & hateful become mudpies full of crazy life. 
~Not Carl Jung's Red Book

“Who hath believed our jokes? And to whom is the punchline of the Universe revealed?”

The Messiah walks into a bar and wouldn’t you know it, runs John. “And the Word was made of beer…” John said, inebriated, blabbering, and slobbering on a bit before commenting on the children’s story, “Green Eggs and Ham.” While the Messiah and I couldn’t quite understand what he said, we both clearly heard that he ended his conversation – prior to passing out – on something about Kurzweil’s Speech Reader.

The lightheartedness at the surface of humor take my understanding and all my knowledge and places it right in front of me where I’m forced to examine it.

If seriousness makes pretense of paradoxical, surely writing jokes is an exercise in paradoxical exploration, which begs the question: How can we know paradoxes if we don’t act in inexplicable and paradoxical ways from which to gather the insight in the first place? If sanity is ignoring these aspects within oneself, then does not all the world suffer from the same psychosis? If you play with that which you don’t understand in an attempt to understand it, are you then a naïve child or a brave explorer?

If I ask these questions to someone and they tell me that my exploration of humor is that of a naïve child, can I not respond like a naïve child, ignoring statements that don’t fit into my fantasy, and instead, claim worldwide dominion over our exchange by disagreeing with their premise?

In this way, I can happily return to my fantasy, knowing that we live in different worlds.

And if we live in different worlds from our neighbors, just as particles exist side-by-side in quantum space, and if those different worlds exist in different spaces, wouldn’t it make sense that those different spaces have different laws associated with them?

Perhaps the laws from one space to the next are similar only due to their proximity somehow being linked to their construction, but that does not mean they are identical.

If we allow for more variation in how we define the world, couldn’t making fun of everything we’ve ever learned be Wittgenstein’s call to writing a serious philosophical work in the format of a joke?



Since I modeled this post after Jung, are not all great explorations simply the psychotic descriptions of other peoples’ descriptions of the vantage point from their specific-time space?

Hmmm…

Must all time-spaces be the same to have an underlining principle of the universe? Can we allow for variance and still have a unified theory exist upon the premise that we all think we exist, even if we’re not sure and even if we might not.  

For today’s purpose, I’ll assume that if we didn’t exist, we wouldn’t eat because we wouldn’t need to feed someone who doesn’t exist, and yet, we eat.

Strange behavior, when you think about it….but I get off topic.

Next: Modern Human in Search of a Sense of Humor








Sunday, September 23, 2012

Brad Pitt Meet Flitz

Brad Pitt

meet

Flitz




In the movie, Burn After Reading, Brad Pitt plays the part of Chad Feldheimer, an employee at a local gym called Hardbodies. After a somewhat careless law firm employee accidentally drops a mysterious CD from an ex-CIA analyst's computer, what follows is the hilariously dark data trail, that had BAR been produced today, could have included Flitz's handy-dandy Looks-Like-A-Bike Tormenting Exercise Machine...

The Handy Dandy Looks-Like-A-Bike
Tormenting Exercise Machine


I can't help but think that Chad would have gotten a kick out of this totally useful piece of technology. I mean, who doesn't dream of hopping onto a bike with all the force thrust onto your shoulders, arms, and wrists only to run your way to work carrying this enormous BRIGHT YELLOW contraption on your back?

If you want a miserable workout, this is the device for you!






Humor 2.0


For those of you following today's humorous science fiction theme... Artifically-Humorous Intelligence (AHI) and The Time Traveling Court Jester, it is fitting to end our day with a humorous science fiction thought experiment. 

It is AD 2500 and some humans have LOL'ed to become superhumorous-intelligent beings. But suppose you resist any LOL-upgrades. Having conceptual resources beyond your wildest dreams, the superhumorous-intelligent beings generate an entirely new type of joking about the philosophical problems that we have considered throughout the history of humanity. They univocally and humorously assert that the jokes are obvious. But you throw your hands up saying, "I don't get it!" 

These "jokes" strike you and other other un-LOL-ers as meaningless gibberish. You think: Who knows, maybe these "superhumorous-intelligent beings" were engineered poorly from the get go; or maybe it's me? 

Perhaps the un-LOL-ers are "humorously closed," being constitutionally unable to get life's philosophically-oriented jokes. The humorenhanced call themselves "Humor 2.0" and claim that un-LOL-ers have a lesser developed sense of humor. They beg you to enhance your humor detection software. 

What shall you make of our epistemic predicament? You cannot grasp the contents of the superhumorous-intelligent beings' thoughts without significant LOL-upgrades. But what if their way of joking is flawed to being with? In that case LOL-ing will surely not help. Is there some sort of neutral humorous vantage point or at least a set of plausibly hilarious principles with which to guide you in framing a response to such a challenge? 

Herein this blog, we shall begin to reflect on some of the issues that this thought experiment raise. 

With much to think and laugh about, we begin... 

(To be continued)





Time Traveling Court Jester



Time Circus, Inc. takes travelers back in time to cheer up our serious-minded predecessors. Believing that even the slightest change in the past can alter the future in momentous ways, travelers are instructed to use extreme humor with notorious criminals of the past. For instance, they are encouraged to use benevolent humor to redirect otherwise borderline personalities toward more humorous, creative, or artistic pursuits; they are only permitted to tickle a historical "bad guy" or "gal" when they are about to commit historically heinous crimes so that they laugh instead of lash out irrationally; and they are required to stay in a good mood (in particular during the Dark Ages). Needless to say, things get funny. 

Time travel tales such as Laughing's raise intriguing issues concerning the nature of time and humor. For one thing, what is it to travel back through time and make someone laugh instead of commit a crime? To answer this, one needs to first ponder the classic question, "What makes us laugh? On the one hand, laughter can arise from tickling, nervous physiological responses to negative stimuli, AND joy and happiness. On the other, the age-old question of what makes us laugh at any given time in history has no easy answer given humour research wasn't a cornerstone of scientific inquiry for thousands of years in the history of humanity.

One might wonder if humorous time travel is really possible. Indeed, humor researchers recently held a "humorous time travel party," announcing the event in virtual blogs to attract humorous jesters from the future. And while a raging costume party was had, their low tech humorous experiment in time travel discovery unfortunately failed to reveal any genuine humorous time travel - except for one very interesting approach. 

One humorous time traveling jester decided to travel within the confines of his own mind to heal past emotional hurts with redirected humorous coping cues. These redirected humorous coping cues led to a reexamination of said emotionally-traumatic events in which the humorous time traveling jester had something "funny" instead to remember. Within days of the experiment, the humorous time traveling jester reported back to the group that he felt "lighter" and "more at ease" with himself, indicating that more research in the field of humorous-time traveling-psychoanalysis is warranted. 

This experience led to the creating of Time Circus, Inc., the humorous time traveling jester program. 

Not everyone believes that humorous time travel is compatible with the laws of physics, anchoring their arguments on the "Grandfather Didn't Have A Sense of Humor On Account of His Getting Squashed Paradox", for example:

"Suppose that Richard constructs a humorous time traveling machine, and that he goes into the past to make his grandfather (when he was a boy) laugh. Unfortunately, Richard's humorous time traveling instruments were so accurate that the machine landed right on his grandfather, and he unwittingly squashes him. Now, Richard's father hasn't been conceived yet, so it seems that since his grandfather did not survive the squashing in order to father his own father, he would not have existed to unwittingly invented a humorous time machine to squash him."

On the other hand, some humorous time traveling researchers do believe that humorous time travel is compatible with the laws of physics, anchoring their arguments on the "It Just Didn't Happen Paradox", for example: 

"Suppose that Richard constructs a humorous time traveling machine, and that he goes into the past to make his grandfather (when he was a boy) laugh. Fortunately, Richard's sense of humor was so funny that his grandfather developed an interest in humor, leading to his raising a humorous son, who fathered a humorous child, i.e., Richard, explaining his interest in building a humorous time traveling machine to begin with." 

Other humorous time traveling researchers have attempted to respond to the Grandfather Didn't Have A Sense of Humor On Account of His Getting Squashed Paradox employing the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics to attempt to dissolve the less than funny paradox. They argue that Richard actually goes into a parallel universe where he does not, in fact, squash his grandfather. Instead, he squashes his counterpart in the parallel universe where his humorous time traveling machine has not been invented. 

Finally, a few humorous time traveling researchers consider the issue of miracles. Would radically advanced technologies, such as humorous time travel, be, from our vantage point at least, miracles? After all, consider the history of humanity... Think for a moment about how the world might be different if we could just go back in time and make the people who caused humanity the greatest grief laugh, instead? 























Artificially-Humorous Intelligence (AHI)



Transhumorism is a cultural, philosophical, and political movement which holds that the human speices is only now in a comparatively early sense of humor and that the humor of future humans will be radically unlike their current selves in both mental and physical respects.

Advocating for an international treaty banning specific "humor-altering" techniques, many transhumorists, in contrast, believe that humor alteration is justified insofar as it advances the intellectual and physical life of the individual. 

Indeed, according to transhumorism, some future humans may become "LOLs", living immortal and virtually pre-programmed humorous lives on computers, being superlaughing-intelligences, and indeed, in many ways being akin to Artificially Humorous Intelligence (AHI) than to un-humor-enhanced humans. 


As exciting as transhumorism may be to science fiction enthusiasts, transhumorists, who generally adopt humorous informational patternism, have as of yet to provide a plausible account of the nature of humor. In particular, there is no feasible sense in which this notion of a person allows that a person's sense of humor can persist throughout radical enhancements, let alone mild ones. Although there are ways that the transhumorists might furnish humorous patternism with better conceptual resources, humorous informational patternism is itself deeply flawed. 


Did you hear the one about the robot who dumped his HDD? 


A common point of agreement between transhumorists and biohumorconservatives who oppose humorous enhancement is a concern that the development of artificial humorous intelligence and other technologies bring forth global catastrophic risks, that is, risks that carry the potential to inflict serious damage to humanity's natural sense of humor across the planet. Here, these issues go well beyond the interplay between science fiction and humor; but readers are encouraged to read past articles on this blog for an extensive overview of cultural and technological jokes. 



2001's HAL has stayed with us precisely because the film depicts a very possible future - a situation in which the ethical programming of an extremely humorous intelligent artificial being crashes, creating a psychotic-humored computer. As HAL's vacuum tubes are slowly pulled out the audience listens to HAL's bewildered machine voice report his diminishing memories and sensations. HAL dies, leaving us with the notion that like us, HAL has a conscious mind. 

Indeed, computer scientists have recently become concerned with developing adequate "ethical humor programming" for both sophisticated humorous intelligences and more simple programs that could easily be consulted as ethical humor advisors (i.e., downloadable politically or globally-appropriate humor applications). 


Ethical issues involving superhumorous-intelligence

If humans construct AHI, it may be that AHI itself engineers its own humorous future programming, evolving into a form of humorous intelligence that goes well beyond humorous human intelligence. 

Like the evolved Mecha of the distant future that find David frozen in the ice at the very end of Spielberg's AI, perhaps superhumorous-intelligent AHI will supplant us. Or perhaps our descendants will be joking cyborgs that themselves upgrade to the level of superhumorous-intelligence. 

In any case, a superhumorous-intelligent being could engage in humorous reasoning and make discoveries that are at a higher or different level than us, and which we cannot grasp sufficiently to judge: FUNNY or NOT FUNNY? 

This is one reason why the issue of ethical humorous programming must be debated NOW; in hopes that the original motivations programmed into AHI evolve into a superhumorous-intelligence that is indeed benevolent. 


























Facebook Humour Study


Have Your LAUGHS Heard Around the World! 
Simply answer the following questions: 

(1) Does Time + Distance from Tragedy = FUNNY? 

(2) Do you find JOKES made about tragedies funny? 

(3) Do you enjoy laughing at others' pain and suffering? 

(4) If you lost a loved one to disease, do you LOL when a comedian makes a joke about that disease? 

BONUS QUESTION: 

(5) Do you think 9/11 Jokes are Funny? 



Disclaimers: 

Tragic humor is not the same thing as TRIUMPHANT HUMOR. Triumphant Humor is humor evoked after someone has SURVIVED an illness, tragedy, or otherwise traumatic period in life. 

It is the belief of some humor researchers around the world that we can make jokes about anyone and anything as long as a period of time has passed since the tragedy. 

I do not share this belief and would like to hear from others so that I can know whether I am a majority or minority in my belief that HUMOR SHOULD MAKE US FEEL GOOD, whether we laugh or not is an entirely different subject. When humor evokes nervous laughter is causes the body to tense up; whereas natural humor is a physical release. 

Thank you for participating in this study. All comments received in this research study will be published. Your identify will remain anonymous. 

If you know someone who would like to participate in this study, please forward this post.



Sincerely, 
Sophy M. Laughing, Ph.D. 
Humor Researcher


A Brave New Humour

A Brave New Humour
Coming Soon
To a Comedy Club Near YOU! 



Philosophical Thinking is multi-dimensional thinking: the epistemic: what do we know? - the metaphysical: what are we? - the ethical: are our actions right or wrong?

A Brave New Humour, inspired by the technological advancements of our era, depicts a time in society in which everyone is complacent yet where senses of humour have withered away and laughing is no longer a natural process. Instead, laughing occurs via genetic engineering, in which there are distinct laughing castes. Only the top two laughing castes exhibit genetic variation - they can laugh spontaneously; the other laughing castes are multiple clones of one fertilization, only able to joke due to preprogrammed humour. Their humour could be compared to early 21st century computer's joke-telling programs. All members of this new society are raised to identify with their laughing caste, and to appreciate only what is funny for their caste, especially the constant propagation of bad humour (i.e., offensive humour, jokes that evoke nervous laughter) and, in particular, the mild hallucinogen Mona Lisa that makes everyone good humoured.


A Brave New Humour is a hilariously funny, classic dystopian science fiction novel, gravely warning us of the twin abuses of rampant lack-of-humourism and technology in the hands of Run-A-Muck Humor Researchers (Undergrads/Facebook/Biased Studies) who would otherwise have the world believe that time + distance from tragedy = funny.

The story employs themes from science fiction to motivate the case against bad humour and genetic sense of humour engineering. A major concern in A Brave New Humour is the following:

We constantly compare the new humour genetics to "giving someone a sense of humour," but if history is a guide, this genetic humour engineering will not lead to human beings having a sense of humour, but instead will inevitably lead to humourcide: the "natural laughers" eradicating the "fake laughers" or vice-versa. 


A Brave New Humour

Coming Soon
To a Comedy Club Near YOU! 











Saturday, September 22, 2012

Senior Texting Codes


ATD = At the Doctors
BFF = Best Friend Fell
BTW = Bring the Wheelchair
BYOT = Bring Your Own Teeth
FWIW = Forgot Where I Was
GGPBL = Gotta Go, Pacemaker Battery Low
GHA = Got Heartburn Again
IMHO - Is My Hearing-Aid On?
OMMR = On My Massage Recliner
OMSG = Oh My! Sorry, Gas. 
ROFLACGU = Rolling On Floor Laughing And Can't Get Up
TTYL = Talk To You Louder


Dedicated to my grandma...
A woman who would have laughed heartily over this post!








Friday, September 21, 2012

How to Be Deliberately Illogical and Get Away With It


Refuting the Example

To refute an example using a comic, following the following instructions (vewy quietly)...

  1. Focus the person's attention on a false fact. For example: 
  • Q:  Is that a painting of Van Gogh wearing a one-eared Mickey Mouse Hat? That's not very nice, you know. 
  • A: No, you're wrong. That is a watercolor. 
Notice how the central thesis is unchanged and unchallenged? The original assertion: "that's not very nice" is not commented upon. 




The Red Herring Example

Welcome back! We hope you had fun refuting the example. Now that you've refuted it, let's color it, shall we? 

Imagine an English Manor in the countryside. The master of the house is headed out with his buddies from town to do a little hunting. As they prepare to head out to the trail, the hounds immediately pick up on a scent; they begin barking, leading the hunters in the direction of their prey. 

Only this time, Charles, whom everyone calls "Charming Charlie" decides to play a prank on good 'ol Woolworth. He called ahead earlier and said he couldn't make it, that he had to go to his in-laws for a impromptu family meeting (in reality, he called it a very serious Coffee Intervention, apparently his mother-in-law has refused to eat, she's instead drinking non-stop coffee... and while the family initially delighted at her spontaneity and girlish enthusiasm, she has since fired the staff and taken it upon herself to clean the manor, which she's now done so frequently that she cleaned the paint clear off the baseboards! This was when everyone realized she had OCD... but I get off track). 

Anyhow, Charles, as you might already suspect, really didn't have to go to his mother-in-law's - though trust me when I tell you that his mother-in-law really is a Coffee Addict - instead, that Charmer decided to park up ahead 10 miles or so along a dirt road just to let out a red herring. Tied to some string, he led it across the trail that the hounds would be following. Its powerful aroma makes hounds forget what they are following, so they take up the trail instead. 

In logic, the red herring is drawn across the trail of an argument. It's so powerful, so strong, that most are led irresistibly in its wake, forgetting their original goal. Utilizing irrelevant material to divert people away from the point being made, helps you lead them toward a different conclusion. The trick to pulling this off is to have the red herring follow the original trail for as long as possible. The more attractive it is to follow, the more effective you'll be at diverting their attention. 

Big Brother is always trying to promote whatever makes them the most profit at the expense of the little guy. 

I think these fashions come and go. One day, Big Brother promotes DVD players because that's the latest technology; but now, they have Blu Ray and who knows what's coming next...

The trick here is that it sounds like the original trail. You're responding with the specifics of what Big Brother promotes, but after some time now discussing "what's coming next", both parties might be a bit hazy on the original premise as the argument presented was on technology. 

For more fun examples... 

Come back another day. 
Even if it's raining. 









Funny Dancing Gifs