Satire exposes the vices, follies, and abuses of corporations, government, or society by holding them up to ridicule, with the intent of shaming individuals and organizations into improvement.
Titiana McGrath and Dilbert are both fine examples of humorous satire being used to illuminate sticky subjects.
It’s been 30 years since the first computer model of a sense of humor was proposed. I predict in the near future robot-aided human satire will be used to illuminate reality and save science, law, and humanity.
30% of us have no sense of humor and 25% seem to be just stupid and wrong. An innumeracy crisis in America is making people susceptible to hoaxes, groupthink, and hysteria.
Americans have become bad at comparing things and deciding what to be outraged about. Our media industry is designed specifically to exploit this reality.
We’re siloed and shown a world custom-designed to piss us off at images on our phones that look uncannily like people.
Contempt has become the conspicuous feature of our age.
Social media has enabled the organization of groups who can ostracize or ruin lives and careers. Armies spread hysteria, claiming to represent marginalized or vulnerable people.
This hysteria and fear of ostracization for wrongthink is corrupting our society’s institutions as ideologies spread in echo chambers and people become afraid to tell taboo truths.
A type of Computational Hysteria has spread through social media platforms like a digital social disease. Users pick fights with 2D avatars of people that don’t exist. Assigning them beliefs, arguing with them for beliefs we don’t have, and getting mad at them for believing the thing we imagine they believe.
In Aug. 2017, I predicted “White Nationalists” and “Sex Trafficking” would become moral panics. These two topics were bouncing in the Twin Cities Echochamber of Commerce.
I knew they would explode through the human network.
All of these indicate status.
Further, no one wants to be seen as supporting racism, pedophilia, or rape – especially when group emotions reach fever pitch.
Online echo chambers amplify outlandish claims on social media platforms, ostracization fear spills into social value exchanges (universities, legal systems, governments, disciplines) where reputation imbues credibility and group esteem generates power.
This “Anti Social Media Feedback Loop” has carry over effects on these Groupthink Tanks.
Fear of being smeared as deviant from group norms for wrongthink and/or ostracized from the group keeps necessary, yet taboo topics from being discussed.
It also keeps luxury beliefs in circulation because signaling them increases group esteem.
Women, BIPOC, and Children are of course most affected by this social pressure and hysteria, as well as the social epidemics they are based on.
Groupthink Tanks will continue to be corrupted as postmodernism, Computational Hysteria, and social bias spread.
A social exchange or a society unaware of Confirmation Bias, victim sanctity taboos, ASCH Conformity, and Groupthink, will tear itself apart.
Sadly, as the replication crisis in the social sciences has shown us, even groups who should know better, don’t.
This is where Computational humor comes in.
Humor can be persuasive and enlightening as it can slice through the membrane of our favorite narrative and allow us to be persuaded.
This may be why humor has evolved to be such a highly selective trait. Facts, figures, and evidence can be counter-persuasive, whereas ridicule can change minds. This is power.
I’d like to suggest that Algorithmic Satirical Computational Humor (ASCH) may be the only way to break through the groupthink social value exchange.
ASCH may be applied to interrupt groupthink. Computers may be used to illuminate and bring attention to any number of false beliefs.
Scott Adams is a professional humorist, persuasion expert and trained hypnotist also known for his comic strips, Dilbert and Robots Read News.
Adams pretty much single handedly destroyed the corporate consultant quick-fix industry in the 90’s. He also has a formula for jokes.
He claims that a combination of any two of these attributes are necessary for a joke to be funny:
- Naughty
- Clever
- Bizarre
- Mean
- Cute
- Recognizable
Though it should be noted, something can not be too mean or too bizarre, or else it fails.
It seems as if it also needs to have some degree of recognizability/truth.
Humor, particularly satire, may serve as a type of truth divination. It would explain why it’s such a highly valued selection trait. Yet 30% of men have no sense of humor.
It will not take long before this and other joke formulas and algorithms can be automated.
Computers do not care about your group’s taboos.
I believe the Lake Wobegon Group Affective Disorder/MN Nice is responsible for Minnesota’s due process problems, social psychology’s replication crisis, and our failure to realistically address educational and income disparities.
An environment that socially enforces beliefs that “all women are strong, all men are good looking and all children are above average” may be a nice, polite environment, but it creates taboos that distort reality and prevent discernment of truth.
Sometimes stereotypes can be accurate. This is funny, but taboo.
Computers have already been used to produce jokes, puns, test taboo violations, identify double entendres, and even help computers pass a Turing test. A Joke Analysis and Production Engine (JAPE) has been tested as well as System To Augment Non-speakers’ Dialog Using Puns (STANDUP).
Computers may be used to assist humans in identifying jokes as well, because according to Adams, roughly 30% of humans can not tell how jokes work.
Practical computer models based on incongruity and catastrophe theory of humor have already been created. Computers modeling a sense of humor can be more successful at passing a Turing Test.
Can they be used to illuminate taboos, biases, and groupthink and make us smarter by poking fun at the areas where we’re dumb?
I predict they soon will.
For examples of ASCHITI Model of Humor, see: MN OrwellLexicon and Little House on the Prairie Home Companion.
Coming up next… A letter to Chris Martin.
