The Battle of Pythagorean Numbers

A goofy story of numbers ...

The morning fog hung low over the battlefield as Commander Square 190 rolled to the front lines, his perfectly square armor gleaming in the early light. Above them all, the giant scoreboard flickered:

"Harmony and goodness: 42 | Chaos and Evil: 64."

Odd squares and equilateral triangles and circles surround the square, listening intently.

"Listen up, Odds! We're behind the Evens!" the Commander Square bellowed, his compass-point helmet spinning nervously. "The evil Evens, the forces of Chaos, have pushed us back with their non-Euclidean tactics!"

Circle Scout darted forward, hyperventilating. "Commander! Eight evil Even enemies approach from the east! Let us all pray for the power of perfect numbers, 6, 28, 496 —" he shouted to the heavens.

"Calm yourself, Scout," Commander Square said, his voice as steady as Euler’s constant. "Remember your training. Breathe to the count of the first five Fibonacci numbers."

Triangle Warrior stomped forward, his blocky shoulders squared perfectly at 60-degree angles. He thumped his Laplacian chestplate. "Let me at 'em, Commander! My 4×4 matrix hammer is ready to seriously smash some decimal points!"

From across the battlefield, a menacing Even General Pyramid with far too many sides and components shrieked. "Your pathetic numerical harmony is doomed! Chaos reigns!"

Commander Square narrowed his radius. "Triangle, take your division battalion and flank them from the right with fluxions. Circle, your fractional forces will create a distraction with those numerator number catapults."

Triangle saluted with his angular arm. "And you, sir?"

"I'll lead the arithmetical assault with our triangular number troop,” Square said. “Those of us who are sums of square numbers will show them the meaning of true mathematical harmony!"

Circle Scout bounced nervously on his diameter. "But Commander, what if they deploy their... unsolvable equations?" He whispered the last words with terror.

Commander Square's circumference stiffened. "Then we'll do what mathematicians have always done—simplify, reduce, and solve step-by-step."

As they moved into position, Circle caught a glimpse of the banner fluttering in the algebraic wind:

"Rithmomachia: Where Math Is Always Right!"

Triangle Warrior hefted his multiplication hammer. "For Pythagoras!" he bellowed.

They charged across the field, geometric shapes of all kinds clashing in a spectacular array of mathematical operations. Square bashed a chaotic trapezoid with a mighty matrix hammer, shouting, "That's 4x4 damage—calculate that!"

Circle Scout leapt over enemies, dropping division symbols like land mines. "Can't step on these without solving them first!" he cackled.

Commander Square rolled through the fray, his geometric ratio shield deflecting diabolical denominators. He engaged the many-sided General Pyramid of Chaos, their weapons clashing in a shower of mathematical symbols.

"Your random numbers can't defeat the power of mathematical harmony!" said Square parrying a fractional number thrust.

The Even General Pyramid cackled. "Fool! There will always be chaos in mathematics! What about imaginary numbers? What about infinity?"

Square smiled. "That's the beauty of it. Even those fit into the patterns. Everything in mathematics connects—you just need to learn the rules!" With a powerful thrust of his compass sword, Commander Square solved the evil General Pyramid's equation.

The chaotic Pyramid's angles collapsed in on themselves as he shouted, "Impossible! My calculations were perfect!"

"No," replied Commander Square. "They were just incomplete."

Above them, the scoreboard flickered and changed:

"Harmony and goodness: 81 | Chaos and evil: 64"

As the remaining chaotic shapes retreated, Circle and Triangle joined their commander.

Circle thumped a round chest plate. "Victory through radial vectors!"

Triangle couldn't stand still. "Did you see me? I was adding and subtracting so fast they couldn't keep up with my calculations!"

Commander Square surveyed the battlefield, where defeated shapes were being tutored in proper mathematical principles by the victors. "Remember, Odds —- in Rithmomachia, we don't just defeat our enemies."

"We teach them," Square nodded solemnly.

"And we learn from them," Triangle added, examining a fascinating fractal pattern left behind by a fleeing chaotic shape.

Circle smiled as new recruits began to gather around them, eager to learn the ways of mathematical harmony.

"That's right," Square said. "Because the real victory in Rithmomachia isn't just winning..."

Triangle and Circle smile and nod.

"...it's understanding!" Square declares proudly.

The End

Awesome Sauce

Awesome Sauce is a novelette in a story world I call the Avatar Academy universe.

Logline: When their planet faces an energy crisis, a team of flamboyant Venusians use avatar technology to infiltrate Earth and steal our trash, leading to hilarious encounters with Baltimore mobsters and a surprising family reunion.

This image was generated by Gemini (google's AI).

Summary: The Venusians, a secretive underground alien race with a love for spandex, face an energy crisis that threatens their luxurious lifestyle. Their solution? Earth's abundant plastic trash. They launch the audacious "Venusian Environmental Avatar Teleportation Trash 2.0" (VEATT 2.0) plan, using avatar technology to infiltrate Earth and steal plastic. Bevers Sonnof, a hapless but enthusiastic Venusian, takes control of the fearsome El Toro, an enforcer for Victor the Vicious, a Baltimore mob boss. As Bevers searches for plastic and his long-lost father, chaos ensues, involving wood-chippers, surprise parties, and a healthy dose of "awesome sauce." Meanwhile, a team of Venusian trainees uncovers a massive plastic-tracking network called P.L.A.S.T.I.C., leading to a daring heist with interplanetary implications.

Here's an image of what the underground Observation Facility on Venus might look:

I managed to get it onto amazon using publishdrive, so it's now available at amazon as a kindle ebook. (But you can also buy it as a large print novelette as well.)

Here's the book cover:

The process for writing this was different. I had already written a feature length screenplay version of this, one that had been out for reader's notes and had been revised many times. Now I want a prose version (a detailed "screenplay treatment" as the terminology goes). I should point out that I've done this process many times for many other screenplays I've written. I find it hlpes me "see" the overall plot better than a detailed outline.

This time, I tried something different. This time, to convert to the story form, I used chatGPT, Gemini, and claude to help "translate" the screenplay one scene at a time into prose. (This topic has been discussed before on the internet and this process seems to be best at the current state of AI models.) Building a good prompt for this is a whole blog post in itself, but in each case I told the AI to not change any of the dialogue used in the screenplay. Not surprisingly, the response from these AI models was "off" in many cases (that it, the story line was modified somehow, even if the dialogue did stay the same). This required a lot of proofreading and rewriting on my part, probably more work than simply "translating" the screenplay into prose by myself. More work, true, but I enjoyed the interactive process. These AI models are very polite, even when they aren't doing exactly what you want them to! I also enjoyed the fresh perspective and often the terminology it used was better than my own. It's hard for me to regard this as a collaboration, as opposed to asking a very smart screenwriting expert a large number of questions about my screenplay and then compiling and using the "notes" in my next version. That's the story of how Awesome sauce arose!

I have other screenplays in the VEATT universe and so hopefully there will be more stories like this soon.

Scene-by-scene breakdown of "The Ladykillers" (1955)

This film was written (story and screenplay) by William Rose and directed by Alexander Mackendrick (who also directed The Sweet Smell of Success, a film written by Ernest Lehman, also covered in this blog).

Scene-by-scene breakdown

1. Widow Mrs Wilberforce exits from her home on the edge of town. Her backyard looks over train tracks leading to a nearby train station. Walking through town, she greets townspeople, such as a beggar selling paintings and a street sweeper. She then goes to the police station to report a spaceship landing in her neighbor's yard. The Police Superintendent politely thanks her but, secretly, they think she is crazy. She leaves but forgets her umbrella. When a kind (fat) policeman reminds her, she says it’s old and she doesn’t like it but takes it with her.
2.  She returns home, where she lives alone with her parrots. She's followed home by a man who seems to be a mysterious stranger he rings the doorbell and asks about her room to rent this is Professor Marcus he asked to move in and to practice music with his friends in his room she is delighted he then leaves
3.  Marcus's friends arrive, four in total, all carrying musical instrument cases. They go upstairs to Marcus's room. They shut the door, put on a record of classical music and pretend to practice. Instead, they plot an armed robbery. They plan to have Mrs Wilberforce unwittingly help them get the money out of town.
4.  Mrs Wilberforce knocks and the Gang comically gets set up to appear as though they have been practicing. They stop the record and answer the door. Mrs Wilberforce offers tea. When she leaves they argue about leaving her out of their plans after all. They take a vote. It turns out that one of them, the “muscular dumb” Lawson, indicates he likes Mrs Wilberforce. That swings the vote back to their original plan.
5.  At the train station, Marcus spies on the movement of the money on the trains
6.  Back at Mrs Wilberforce’s house, she knocks on Marcus's door and offers tea to his four remaining friends. Then she asked for help giving her bird it’s medicine. Mr Robinson (played by Peter Sellers) volunteers to help her with her bird. In a comical scene, he is bitten by the bird and the bird flies away. Mr Lawson agrees to help with the bird but he only makes things worse. It's a scene of slapstick comedy.
7. This is the robbery scene. Using a coordination of cars and trucks, the gang (1) blocks policeman from the armored truck, (2) take over the armored truck using guns, (3) knock out the two drivers of the truck, (4) pry open the back of the truck, (5) transfer the money into a large shipping crate (a 4 ft tall trunk). This trunk is taken away in their car
8.  The getaway car with the trunk goes to the train station where Mr Robinson is disguised as a shipping clerk. He puts the trunk in with the other incoming crates and luggage.
9.  The police actively search all over town for the robbery suspects.
10.  Mrs Wilberforce unwittingly helps Marcus by collecting his trunk from the train station. He gave her the excuse that these are his books from Cambridge, but he will be unable to collect them. She leaves with the trunk but then returns to the train station because she forgot her umbrella. Again, she comments that she forgets it because it’s old and she doesn’t like it. She leaves again from the train station but stops in the street to help a horse being tormented by a man selling apples from his cart. A slapstick comedy scene involving policemen ensues. She then gets back in her car and the police help her deliver the trunk to her house
11.  The Gang reunites at the house of Mrs Wilberforce and carry the trunk upstairs. The police do not suspect Mrs Wilberforce or Marcus's friends of putting the money in the trunk. As Marcus and his friends prepare to leave, on the way out Lawson gets his cello case stuck in the front door. As he yanks hard to free it, the case spills open and cash falls out. Mrs Wilburforce sees this and becomes suspicious.
12. The Gang rushes back inside and tries to convince Mrs Wilberforce that the money she saw was obtained legally. She doesn't believe their story. The doorbell rings and four of Mrs Wilberforce's friends arrive for a pre-scheduled tea party. These are all elderly women and are delighted to see Marcus and his friends there to join them in their tea party. Now Marcus and his friends don't know what to do – they can't kidnap all these women. One of the ladies invited over for tea has brought a newspaper. The newspaper informs them of all of the robbery and the amount of money stolen. Mrs Wilberforce now knows what Marcus and his friends have done. Without telling her tea party friends, she ushers the ladies all into the sitting room with the parrots. She then returns to the hallway to confront Marcus and his friends.
13. At this point Mrs Wilberforce, treats Marcus and his friends as though they are young children even though in fact they are older men. She tells Marcus and his friends that she is shocked and appalled at their behavior. They pretend to be ashamed and embarrassed at being caught. It is clear from her attitude she knows what they did but the robbery is never discussed explicitly. She explains to them that they must act like gentlemen and have tea with her friends. Lawson is especially impressed with her charm and grace.
14. Marcus and his friends enter the sitting room and have tea with the ladies and listen to one of the ladies sing a song.
15. The tea party over, the ladies have left, and Mrs Wilberforce confronts the Gang, again treating them again as little children. Marcus pretends to be ashamed and explains the money was insured and the bank doesn't want the money back. He explains the insurance company will simply distribute the cost of its loss throughout all of its customers, amounting to merely a farthing each. They tell Mrs Wilberforce a sad story of an invalid that the money is needed for. Mrs Wilberforce does not believe the story or at least says it doesn’t matter - it’s still wrong.
16.  Before Lewis, the most violent of the friends of Marcus, can do anything the doorbell rings. The same (fat) policeman who returned Mrs Wilberforce’s forgotten umbrella at the station is at the door. (It is now night outside.) Before she answers the door, Marcus and his friends convince Mrs Wilberforce that the police will think she is involved with the robbery. She believes them and is worried what the police will think (as though they were her friends) will think of her. Marcus says to tell the policeman nothing and convince him to go away. She accepts this and so she answers the door in an unfriendly manner. The policeman just says that he wants to check in on her. She tells him to go away. The policeman is surprised at her gruff attitude but then leaves.
17.  Again, she addresses Marcus and his friends and she insists that the money they stole be returned. They all get upset, but act ashamed. She says they should go to the police station and turn themselves in. She says if they don't she will go by herself and turn herself in.
18. Upstairs in Marcus's room with the door closed, the Gang discusses killing her. Mrs Wilberforce knocks and interrupts them saying they should go now to the police station. They say it's still raining outside and they will go when it stops raining. She agrees and leaves. Once Mrs Wilberforce is gone, Marcus and his friends draw straws for who should kill her (this is at approximately minute 63 of the 90 minute movie).
19. The Major, the kindest of Marcus' friends, draws the short straw but begs off the job of killing Mrs Wilberforce. Lewis, the most violent of them, threatens the major with a knife. So the Major is forced to go downstairs. He returns upstairs and tells them to tell Mrs Wilberforce that he wants to talk with her upstairs in their room. They all leave and Mrs Wilberforce comes upstairs. The Major tells her that he will go to the police and escapes out the upstairs window taking the money with him
20.  The others discover that he is on the roof and chase after the Major. They catch him and recover the money but Mrs Wilberforce takes the money and locks it away in a storage trunk. Lewis kills the major without Mrs Wilberforce seeing that he's done this. Mrs Wilburforce goes to her sitting room and tells Marcus she's exhausted and will nap until the rain stops and the police arrive. She still thinks that the Major has gone to the police.
21.  Marcus and the remaining Gang draw straws again to decide who will kill Mrs Wilberforce. However, Lawson refuses to comply and insists that no one hurt Mrs Wilberforce. Marcus tricks Lawson, who's not very bright, and tells him to go put the Major in a wheelbarrow so they can dispose of his body. Once Lawson leaves, the others draw straws and Mr Robinson gets the short straw.
22.  Marcus and Lawson dispose of the Major by dumping his body into a passing empty train container as the trains pass through a tunnel going underneath Mrs Wilberforce's backyard.
23. Mr Robinson enters the sitting room where Mrs Wilberforce is sleeping. Instead of killing her, he sees the key to the trunk that she locked the money in. He takes the key, opens the trunk, steals the money, and escapes out the door.
24. Lawson returns and sees Mrs Wilberforce asleep but he thinks that she is dead. He's enraged that someone has killed Mrs Wilberforce. Afraid for his life, Lewis points to Mr Robinson who is running away outside. Lawson chases Mr Robinson down and kills him. The case with the money is left outside.
25. Lawson then runs inside to kill Marcus and Lewis but the noise awakens Mrs Wilberforce. Lawson, stunned that she is alive, stops attacking Marcus and Lewis. She asks where the cello case went. Lawson tells her that it is outside. He goes and gets the cello case with the money and gives it back to her. She puts it back in the sitting room.
26. Mrs Wilberforce is very disappointed with Marcus, again treating them as children. She returns to the sitting room to guard the cello case with all the money while she waits for the police.
27. Marcus, out in the hallway, privately whispers to Lawson to put Mr Robinson's body in the wheelbarrow to dispose of it, just as they disposed of the Major. Lawson refuses, saying he will stay with Mrs Wilberforce to protect her.
28. Mrs Wilburforce in the sitting room tells Lawson the story of her husband, who passed away many years ago at sea. She tells him that the parents that she keeps were his parrots. They remind her of her dead husband, who was a decent man. She wonders why the police are taking so long to arrive but then falls asleep for another nap.
29. Out in the hallway, Marcus and Lewis go out back to dispose of Mr Robinson in the wheelbarrow. While they are dumping Mr Robinson's body into an empty train container, they plot to kill Lawson and Mrs Wilberforce together. However, Lawson appears behind them and tells them he heard their entire conversation. He points to the gun that he holds in his hand and says “who looks stupid now?” then pulls the trigger to kill them. Nothing happens. The gun won’t fire.
30. Marcus and Lewis have killed Lawson and are disposing of his body. Lewis examines Lawson's gun and tells Marcus “he left his safety catch on” as they dump Lawson into an empty train container. The steam from the steam train engulfs them and Marcus escapes (knowing that Lewis wants to kill him to keep all the money for himself).
31. Lewis hunts for Marcus outside around the train station but Marcus has hidden behind some bushes. In this scene, they chase each other in the dark but eventually Marcus kills Lewis. A moment later a train signal falls on Marcus's head and he too dies.
32.  Mrs Wilberforce awakes the next morning and goes to the police. She tells the police about the money and the robbery. They don't believe her. She asks what she should do with the money they say to keep it.
33. She walks through town. S gives the begger selling paintings a bill of money. It's so much he calls after her thinking she's made a mistake. She ignores him. She's very happy because now she has enough money to buy a new umbrella.

Favorite rom coms

I'm not an expert on this genre, but I've watched my share of them and here are my favorite rom coms, in no particular order.

• Perhaps my favorite movie of all time: His Girl Friday. This is in the public domain and can be found in several places, including youtube. I've raved about it lots of times on this blog, for example, here.
• Almost any Preston Sturges movie (where he's the writer/director). I'm going to put one of the most obscure ones, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock. I think it's in the public domain (in the US) because of some copyright law error, so might be available free on youtube. See also this review for more details on which this is such a wonderful movie.
  
• Not because it's super-romantic, but because it's such a great movie: Groundhog Day!
• Among several possible Billy Wilder movies, I'll pick two: Sabrina (co-written by Ernest Lehman, who's appeared elsewhere on this blog, for example here) and The Apartment
• IMHO, this is a no-brainer: The Big Sick. So funny, so very touching. Reminds me of the touching bromance Funny People.
• Hitchcock did only one movie that is purely rom com (Mr and Mrs Smith, 1941), but the thriller masterpiece North by Northwest has enough rom com elements, that I'm including it on this list.

If you haven't seen these, check them out!

Aristotelean comedy according to Cooper, 1

I am fascinated with the academic side of comedy, as this previous post hopefully demonstrated. So this post (or series of them) won't be funny or humorous, but more about how philosophers think about comedy linguistically. I'm just an interested spectator, not a researcher myself but, hopefully this motivates you the reader to explore this interesting topic yourself! 

We start with Aristotle's Poetics, which is a philosophical discussion of drama (especially tragedy) as it relates to epic poetry and stage play dramas. Several academics have conjectured that Aristotle also wrote a second volume concerning comedy (remember the Aristotelean dichotomy drama is either tragedy or comedy). My source shall be Lane Cooper's 1922 book, An Aristotelian Theory of Comedy with an adaptation of the Poetics and a translation of the Tractatus Coislinianus. To quote from its preface:

As the Poetics of Aristotle helps one to understand Greek tragedy and the epic poem, and, if employed with care, modern tragedy and the serious novel, so, it is hoped, the present volume will help college students and others to understand comedies ... have indeed included everything I could find in Aristotle, in his teacher Plato, or in his successors, that might aid us in reconstructing his views on comedy.

In the section "A lost Aristotelian discussion of comedy", Lane says:

It is generally believed that Aristotle included in his writings or lectures a systematic treatment of comedy ... evidence in the Poetics, references in his other works, evidence in other writers who refer to him, and general probability, favor the view that he discussed the subject in more than passing fashion in a written record. ... It is generally agreed that the loss of any discussion of comedy by Aristotle is a very serious one to students of literature.

The question is: if there really was a "lost" Aristotelean treatment of comedy, can we deduce from other sources what it might have said? A significant source of information for Lane Cooper's book is, as mentioned, the Tractatus Coislinianus. According to wikipedia, this is an ancient Greek manuscript outlining a theory of comedy in the tradition of Aristotle's Poetics. Some scholars believe it is the work of a commentator on Aristotle's theory of comedy, some that it's notes or sketches (written by Aristotle or a student of his) of the lost second section of the Poetics, and some believe that it's a later work, perhaps by Theophrastus (the successor to Aristotle in the Peripatetic school). While the Tractatus Coislinianus is significant, it is not primary for Cooper's analysis. The primary source is Aristotle's Poetics.  

 I quote from Cooper's section "Fundamental demands of Aristotle":

According to Aristotle, in every drama there arc six constitutive elements, to each of which the poet must give due attention. These are

1. plot;
2. ethos or moral bent (shown in the kind of choices made by the personages of the drama);
3. dianoia or "intellect" (the way in which the personages think and reason, their generalizations and maxims, their processes in going from the particular to the general or from the general to the par- ticular, and their efforts to magnify or to belittle the importance of things);
4. the diction, the medium in which the entire story is worked out by the poet through the utterance of the personages;
5. melody or the musical element in the drama (including the chants of the chorus, individual songs, and the instrumental accompani- ment);
6. "spectacle" (all that appertains to costume, stage-setting, scenery, and the like).

The composing dramatist obviously does have to attend to these six elements, and the list, as Aristotle correctly observes, is exhaustive. It would be the same for a comic as for a tragic poet.

That's all for now. More in a later post. 

trailer for Russell's Paradox

I made a short "Russell's Paradox" with some friends based on a script I wrote. It was a lot of fun.

Description/Logline: Russell, a contractor, and his wife Bertie, a mathematician, are enjoying a quiet night at home when Russell gets a call from his boss giving him a new job description. Bertie points out a problem with that paradox that Russell didn't predict.

Here's a trailer:




Cast:

Russell - Nick Beschen
Bertie - Alicia Sweeney
Tamika - Carolyn Chun
Director/Editor/Lights - James Angiola
Writer/Editor/Camera - David Joyner
Script supervisor - Susan Snyder
Producer - Annapolis Filmmaking Group

It's been selected as a finalist in the Raw Science Film Festival! Here's a poster, created by James Angiola:

Linguistic theories of humor, 3

This series of (unfunny) blog posts will attempt to distill parts of certain articles (see part 1 and part 2) on "humor theory" into something interesting and intelligible to someone like me without a degree in English. No joke, it's harder than you might think to abstractly explain humor from the perspective of a linguist (which I'm definitely not). This part will discuss Victor Raskin's semantic script theory.

We use the references from part 1. Some, such as Krikmann [K06], regard Raskin's theory as a refinement of incongruity theory (discussed in part 2), while others regard it as a separate theory.

Agree or disagree, there is no question in my mind that the most interesting aspect of Raskin's theory is that he claims his theory can characterize what makes a joke funny.

“Ideally, a linguistic theory of humor should determine and formulate the necessary and sufficient linguistic conditions for the text to be funny” - V. Raskin

This is something lacking in the previously proposed theories. We'll try to delve into his theory in more detail below.

But first, who is this Victor Raskin? Is he a failed comedian who got a PhD and escaped into academia? I have no idea. According to wikipedia, Raskin was born in 1944 in the Russian town of Irbit, which lies about 1200 miles (2000 km) due east of Moscow. He got his Ph.D. in "Structural, Computational, and Mathematical Linguistics" from Moscow State University in 1970. About 3 years later he emigrated to Israel, and 10 years after that to the US. He is now a distinguished professor of linguistics at Purdue.

Raskin's theory, the first formal linguistic analysis of humor [R79], is nicely explained in Abdalian [A05] and Krikmann [K06].

Raskin believed that certain cognitive structures are stored in our mind along with some "common sense" associated words/phrases describing this structure. Roughly speaking, this is the context of a conversational topic. For example, if "marriage" is the cognitive structure we associate to it words such as "husband", "wife", "happy couple", "loving couple", "father", "mother", "home", and so on. If "plumber" is the cognitive structure we associate to it words/phrases such as "water leak", "broken toilet", "pipes", "plunger", "man in a workman's uniform", and so on. Raskin calls such a structure, along with their typical narratives, a script.

Following Krikmann [K06], we summarize Ranskin's theory as follows:

A text can be characterized as a joke if both of the following are satisfied:

• The text is compatible, fully or in part, with two different scripts.
  
• The two scripts with which the text is compatible are opposite in some sense.
  

The two scripts with which the text is compatible are said to overlap fully or in part on this text. To my understanding, this is a more precise and rigorous version of Incongruity Theory. This doesn't diminish Raskin's work, just places it in context.

Example 1: I don't know where I heard the following joke which mixes a doctor-patient script with a frog script.

A naked man with a frog on his head stands in an examination room in front of his doctor. The doctor gently touches the frog. It seems to be stuck where it is.
Doctor: What's the problem?
Frog: I need you to get this man off my butt.

Linguistic theories of humor, 2

This series of (unfunny) blog posts will attempt to distill parts of certain articles (see part 1) on "humor theory" into something interesting and intelligible to someone like me without a degree in English. No joke, it's harder than you might think to abstractly explain humor from the perspective of a linguist (which I'm definitely not). This part will discuss incongruity theory.

We use the references from part 1.
*
Roughly speaking, the idea explained in my how-to books on joke writing is you need a setup and a payoff. The payoff should be incongruous relative to the setup. This is the basic idea behind incongruity theory. It is more general than that (eg, it explains the humor of some word puns), as we'll try to explain below.

Historically, the theory seems to have first arisen in the 1700s and 1800s in the writings of various philosophers (Francis Hutchenson, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Kant) and poets (James Beattie).

A precise version of this theory can be given in terms of pragmatics, which is (roughly speaking) the linguistic explanation of the rules of conversation and dialogue). Specifically, we recall Grice's cooperative principle.

Cooperative principle: Make your contribution as required by the accepted purpose of the conversation in which you are engaged.

This is often broken down into 4 components [A05].

• Maxim of quality: Your contribution should be true.
  
  In particular, don't say what you believe is false, and don't make a statement for which you lack adequate evidence.
  
• Maxim of relevance: Only make statements relevant to the conversation.
  
  
• Maxim of manner: Only make concise, clearly expressed and easily understood statements.
  
  In particular, Avoid obscure or ambiguous statements. Be brief and avoid over-explanation and/or repetition.
  
  
• Maxim of quantity: Be as informative as required.
  
  In particular, don't omit necessary details. Conversely, don't give unnecessary details or provide more information than is required.
  
  

In other words, when conversing, we try to be correct, relevant, clear and concise, and informative.

A joke, according to the incongruity theory of humor, is the description of a conversation or situation that violates one of Grice's maxims of cooperation. to paraphrase Krikmann [K06]: A joke is assumed to involves two different planes of content (sometimes called 'frames of reference,' 'isotopies,' 'schemas,' or 'scripts.'). These two contexts are mutually incompatible, but also include a certain common part which makes the shift from one to another possible. When
another interpretation that has so far remained hidden is found, a feeling of surprise and satisfaction arise, causing the reaction of laughter.

Example 1: A joke of Steven Wright fits into this (I'm going on memory here, so the words may not be exact):
"The other day I used spot remover on my dog. He disappeared."
The setup explains the first "plane of content": somehow, something was spilled on his dog's fur and he's trying to clean it off. The payoff
explains the second "plane of content": His dog is named Spot and we heard "spot remover" (a cleaning product) but what he said was "Spot remover." On the other hand, superiority theory would explain we are laughing at the dog owner for not knowing what Spot remover meant.

Neither of these theories (at least, as I've explained them) work to explain humor very well. Just because you violate one or more of Grice's maxims doesn't mean you are funny. While it does provide an observational language in which we can discuss jokes, it fails to define "funniness" in a precise way. In the next post, we look into a theory due to Victor Raskin [V79] which at least attempts to be even more precise.

Linguisitic theories of humor, 1

This series of blog posts will attempt to distill parts of the following articles on humor theory into something interesting and intelligible to someone like me without a degree in English. No joke, it's harder than you might think to abstractly explain humor, from the perspective of a linguist (which I'm not). This part will discuss superiority theory.

Here are the references we'll use:

[A05] A. Abdalian, Why’s that funny? An extension to the semantic theory of humor, Swathmore College, Linguistics Dept thesis, 2005. 32pp.
[H92] C. Holcomb, Nodal humor in comic narrative: a semantic analysis of two stories by Twain and Wodehouse, Humor: International Journal of Humor and Research 5 (1992)233-250.
[K06] A. Krikmann, Contemporary linguistic theories of humour, Folklore 33(2006)27-58.
[C22] L. Cooper, An Aristotelian Theory of Comedy: with an adaptation of the Poetics and a translation of the Tractatus Coislinianus
Harcourt, Brace and Co., New York, 1922.
[R79] V. Raskin, Semantic mechanics of humor, Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1979), pp. 325-335.
(In 1985, Raskin published a book of the same title, which I’ve not read.)


Another good reference for this topic is wikipedia’s Theories of Humor.

At some level, (verbal) humor involves an unusual interpretation of the meaning of a conversational communication. A joke is a non-bona-fide humorous verbal communication, where by bona-fide we mean a communication with usual, information-bearing, serious, sincere meaning. The mental state in which we humans give meaning to something is referred to as propositional attitude. For example, if I claimed "my dog can paint my house," you would know that is false. Not because you are an expert on dogs (and if you are, assume for this example you aren't), nor because you are an expert on painting houses (again, if you are, assume for this example you aren't), but because you have enough of a familiarity with dogs and a familiarity with house painting that you "know" my claim is false. The idea we will take in these posts is that generally get by in our day-to-day lives by using out propositional attitudes towards things, as opposed to insisting on careful scientific, logical reasoning. Careful reasoning takes time and effort, while propositional attitudes are often based on commonly accepted (possibly mistaken) attitudes.

What does John Cleese say?
One of the funniest people ever, John Cleese has given a number of talks on creativity and has emphasized the importance of humor in this regard. He says to be creative you need:

1. Space
   You can't become playful, and therefore creative, if you're under your usual pressures.
   
2. Time
   It's not enough to create space; you have to create your space for a specific period of time.
   
3. More Time
   Giving your mind as long as possible to come up with something original, and learning to tolerate the discomfort of pondering time and indecision.
   
4. Confidence
   Nothing will stop you being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake.
   
5. Humor
   The main evolutionary significance of humor is that it gets us from the closed mode to the open mode quicker than anything else.
   

Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating.

What does Aristotle say?
The known parts of Aristotle’s Poetics discusses a theory of drama, at least of tragedy. (Only tangentially related to the current topic, and worthy of a separate post, is the conjecture that Aristotle wrote a "lost" volume of the Poetics on comedy - see Cooper [C22].) Aristotle introduced the Superiority Theory of humor. Very roughly speaking, the idea is that each joke has a “winner” and a “loser” and we laugh at the loser to feel better about ourselves. This theory of humor explains those (sometimes offensive) jokes pointed against some person or group, typically on political, ethnic or gender grounds [K06].

Example 1:

Woman A: Who was that gentleman I saw you with last night?
Woman B: That was no gentleman, that was my husband.
- old vaudeville routine (with a gender reversal)

In this case, the theory says the husband is the "loser." By laughing at him we experience joy because we feel superior.

Example 2:

Wife: I'd like to go somewhere I've never been before.
Husband: Try the kitchen.
- Henny Youngman

In this case, the wife is the "loser."

Some [A05] believe that Aristotle’s commentary also foreshadowed Incongruity Theory (developed in the 1700s and discussed in a later post) and Release of Tension Theory (developed by Freud in the early 1900s and discussed in section 1.2 of Abdalian [A05]). Related to both Release of Tension Theory and Superiority Theory is Koestler's theory of comedy (for example, Krikmann [K06] discusses this). These three theories can be categorized as "psychological theories". One weakness of the Superiority Theory is that it's too general and vague for predictive purposes [A05]. For example, it doesn’t help to tell us which jokes are funnier than others or why. This is one motivation for exploring other theories of humor.

Sol Saks’ Ten Commandments of comedy writing

The late great Sol Saks (creator of the Bewitched TV series) wrote a terrific book on comedy: Funny Business. Highly recommended. Taken from that, here are his Ten Commandments of Comedy Writing:

1. Thou shalt be brief.
   
2. Thou shalt be simple.
   
3. Thou shalt be clear.
   
4. Thou shalt be bold.
   
5. Thou shalt be relevant.Show ph
6. Thou shalt be recognizable.
   
7. Thou shalt be controversial.
   
8. Thou shalt be unpredictable.
   
9. Thou shalt be original.
   
10. Thou shalt be salable.