Thought 16: Is novelty the heart of comedy?

I've heard this one a couple of times.  It is generally used less to defend a particular piece of comedy and more to attack a particular piece of comedy.  Usually the piece of comedy in question is something relatively formulaic.  The general form of the argument is "If I know how the joke is going to end it isn't funny".

While I understand the sentiment taking the step to "Therefore novelty is the only or most important part of comedy" is just wrong.  Even if you narrow comedy down to "comic performance" I don't think that argument stands up.

But let's start with our first critique.  How many times have you heard a story start with "Remember that time..." and end in hysterical laughter?  You've heard it happen plenty of times.  Humans are social creatures and we crave common experiences.  Some of the worst loneliness comes from a place when you think no one understands you or has similar experiences to you.  While you can have novelty inside a shared space, there needs to at least be some common assumptions and agreed upon rules of interpretation for comedy to take place.

A great example of humor that hasn't evolved much is racist humor (note, this is not racial humor, but racist humor).  Every group of people that holds a negative view of another group has some racist jokes.  These are general not novel.  I have heard many jokes told over and over with the only difference being whether the speaker wants to make fun of blondes, other sexes, other races, or alumni from different schools.  In college my chemistry teacher would stop the class every day to tell a joke about students from our rival college.  These jokes are recycled, yet people still laugh at them.  The laughter is less inspired by the wit of the joke and more by the sense of togetherness engendered by mocking the lesser group, but it is still "comedy" by any realistic definition.

I think I need to make an important point here.  When discussing any kind of art, music, or any other subjectively enjoyable aesthetic based performance we need to make a distinction.  For example if you listen to Jeff Dunham and you don't like his comedy you can say "That isn't funny" (or my preference "I don't think that is funny") but you can't say "That isn't comedy".  You can say it is bad comedy, but you shouldn't refuse to grant it the ability to define itself as comedy.

We also need to draw distinctions between "That is not subjectively funny" and "That is not well crafted humor".  Someone can craft a very well put together rape joke.  I'm not going to think it is funny because of the topic.  I can still appreciate the craft put into it and determine whether or not someone is skillful in creation and delivery.

Basically comedy is much richer of an experience than "I haven't seen that before".  While novelty/shock value should not be underestimated (I can only hear so many airplane food jokes before I stop laughing at them unless you have a new angle) it isn't the only (or even the most important) part of comedy.  The context (racial humor by majority people against minority people is very differen than vice versa), who we listen to the comedy with (in a club vs alone in a car vs in my living room), the content, the delivery (personality, timing, etc...), these all have just as much impact as whether or not I've heard a similar set before.

Thought 15: Does satisfying an arbitrary goal provide happiness?

I beat the game Minecraft yesterday.  There isn't any real narrative arc for the game.  There were times where it felt like the tasks put in front of the player are arbitrary.  Collect wood.  Make wooden tools.  Collect iron.  Make iron tools.  Collect diamonds.  Make diamond tools.  Collect Obsidian.  Make a portal to another world.  Collect Blaze Rods.  Collect Ender Pearls.  Build 12 Eyes of Ender.  Complete the Ender Portal.  Go through the Portal and Kill the Dragon.

But why are we killing the dragon?  Is he threatening us?  No.  We're just killing him to get to the End of the Game.  The ending is pretty interesting.  You can look it up on you tube if you don't want to spend the 40-50 hours necessary to beat the game.

Oddly enough one of the things that drew me to Minecraft was the lack of a plot.  It was just a sandbox.  You could build lots of things.  The only point was to build something cool while simultaneously not dying.  Not dying was pretty easy as the monsters were not difficult.  There wasn't much of an incentive to kill them other than to collect a few items they dropped.

Then the game grew more complex.  If you want to tame a dog then you'll need to go collect skeleton bones.  Want to enchant that diamond sword?  You'll need to kill a lot of monsters to gain the necessary levels to buy enchantments.  Want to build some of the more complicated mechanics?  For those you need slimeballs so go dig deep in the caves to find slimes.

Yet it was always fun.  While there isn't a strict arbitrariness (because logically you would need iron tools to mine diamonds, wooden tools just wouldn't be strong enough!) adding in the hierarchy gives a feeling of progress.

I didn't (it turns out) need a full suit of enchanted diamond armor to be able to beat the Ender Dragon.  In fact it made the final fight pretty easy.  While building up to a bow that fires infinite arrows at double damage is fun going around taking pot shots at creatures isn't as fun.  There needs to be a feeling of progression to continue in a game.

Now that progression might be something like building a cool castle.  It might not be going out to slay a dragon.  It might be the mere act of survival (dwarf fortress).  But once we hit a part of the game where there is no struggle to survive or goal to accomplish we lose interest.

So no, satisfying arbitrary goals doesn't provide happiness.  We need to feel like we're making progress.  Whether it be through a narrative or building a character's stats we need to feel like we're moving forward.  Even new year's resolutions run into this.  If I don't think that I'm actually getting healthier through not eating french fries then why continue?  I need to see or feel some progress.

Thought 14: Why do we celebrate holidays instead of holy days?

Let me start by saying this is not going to be about how holidays now have forgotten about their original meanings or how any holiday is under attack.

My question is a little different.  Has there been a change in reality that reflects the change in language from Holy Day to Holiday.  When we talk about a holiday now we talk about taking time off from work.  While people still observe holy days with religious significance that is a thing that varies among different people.

But we all celebrate holidays.  We all take time off from work.  So my question is, is this something new.  Is this something that started in the last couple of hundred years?  Five hundred years ago was there no cessation from labor?  Was there only a few (or many) days a year when you stopped working long enough for some religious observance and then got right back to work?

I don't think so.  If there is one constant among humanity (and there are in fact quite a few) we like to take time off from work.  Even if you love your job sometimes you want to take a break.  So where people in the olden days just as likely as us to see a holy day as an excuse to party?  Yeah yeah, you make pious noises (or maybe have some genuine religious observance) but you're really looking forward to that time off.

Clearly people with differing levels of energy required to get sustenance will have different levels of holiday priority.  But how often did Cinco-De-Mayo type celebrations happen?  To clarify, how often did a group of people with absolutely no association with a celebration use it as an excuse to party?  How often was the supposed observation completely lost in the opportunity to unwind.

Dionysius' followers may have been rigorously keeping up with the holidays but were they devout (or was devotion to the god of parties even something that is truly possible with our understanding of religious devotion)?

I don't think you even need holy days (at least from my understanding of the Bible there seems to be no mandate for them).  There is a mandate for taking some time off though.  So we can each decide how and when we will celebrate holidays.  Are they a reason to take time off or do we imbue them with religious observances.

I really like symbols.  I will try very hard to communicate to my children (in the future!) the deep meaning of the holy days of my religion.  I won't do it because I think if they don't celebrate the same way as me they are wrong, but because I want to share something that is significant to me.  But not everyone is as symbolically sensitive as I am.  If they just want a holiday I can live with that.  You gotta rest sometime.

Thought 13: What is the point of a superstition?

I am not a supersitious person.  I in fact have gone out of my way to show that I do not believe in superstitions.  As a kid I would spill salt, walk under ladders, walk in front of black cats, etc.  My lack of belief in ghosts/hauntings/etc. combined with a rather boastful nature lead me to prove that I wasn't afraid of bad luck and other associated superstitious maladies.

But if I'm playing D&D and a die keeps rolling bad I'll switch it out.  If a die rolls hot I'll keep rolling it.  Oh, did I find a particular habit that I indulged in before winning 5 games in a row?  Now I'll do it before every game.  I'll do it and feel like I'm maintainig some weird kind of balance of cosmic forces.

Yes, riffle shuffling 7 times will somehow alter chance to let me top deck that card I need at a crucial minute.  The dozens of times I've done that exact same thing and still lost won't keep from doing it again next time.

The more I've studied probability and variance the more often I have found myself thinking more about the uselessness of these habits.  When I was younger I really did think these kinds of things helped.  I had lucky dice.  Now I know it does nothing.  The cards are shuffled and the die rolls according to chance.  Not Lady Luck, or Fortune, or Fate, just plain ol' chance.  Yet I've done all kinds of weird things to try and influence something that I don't really believe exists anymore.

I do think the games are a little less exciting, but more enjoyable.  I can see games as a contest of skill with enough variance thrown in to keep each game fresh.  But as I think about designing a game I kind of want to tap into these habits.  I think some people really do enjoy the game more when they have their little fetishes.

I'm not sure how to implement something like this into a virtual space, but as a method for making a game more enjoyable I think it is a non-trivial idea.  Maybe allowing the user to customize something about the appearance of a character.  They can have a lucky color.  Maybe just allowing them to making non-deterministic branching choices gives them an illusion that they can influence luck and chance.

A few habits still stick around though.  If I roll enough misses in a row with a die I'm probably still going to switch.  I know the die isn't cursed, but maybe, just maybe it really is.

Thought 12: Why am I a competitive person?

Looking back at my childhood and even many of my contemporary friendships a lot of them are and have been centered around competition.

I don't mean in an unhealthy way.  I don't mean that I'm always trying to dominate the people around me or make myself feel superior.  Most of the men I've grown up around have a strong sense of competition.  I played a lot of sports growing up and while having a good time wasn't looked down the main emphasis was on winning.

My parents had a very low level of pushing me to win.  My dad would often give me advice about how to improve in baseball and basketball, but not in a weird way.  He was always sure to give praise with advice.  It wasn't a "live through my son vicariously" thing for him.  He was just willing to share from his experiences things he thought would help.  They did encourage me to do my best, but they didn't put pressure on me to win.

My coaches on the other hand were a very different story.  A few seemed to remember this was a game played by pre-teens (and eventually teenagers) but most didn't.  I've been chewed out for not winning games by a large enough margin.  I've had coaches throw bats and scream at us for getting a drink of water during our multi-mile run during the blazing hot summer.  I saw coaches push their own children, scream at them, scream at refs, and generally act a fool in public over a game that no one would remember a week or two later.

I think some of that sticks with me.  Most of my male friends (other than the ones I've met in the last year or so) and I typically have some kind of competition as a strong part of our friendship.  Playing board games, card games, video games, sports, or whatever other method of competition comes to mind.

As a younger kid (with an older brother who was better than me at most things I enjoyed) I was always interested in cooperative games.  I didn't really like losing when I didn't feel like I had a chance to win.  I wanted to be on a team, preferably playing against some impersonal thing (like say a computer).  As I have aged and gained more confidence I became more and more interested in competition.  Once I was able to beat my brother at things I was even more interested in competing.  My dread at losing largely vanished.

Now I really enjoy playing directly competitive things.  I think that in general I have a pretty good shot at winning.  The biggest shift though has come in the last 5 years.  I don't care if I lose at things anymore.  Competition is a thing of pure joy.  It is only upside.  If I lose that is completely okay.

I understand people who like to compete in a way I didn't as a kid.  To me as a kid competition was just another way for people to dominate or show they were better than me.  Now I understand the drive to compete.

I guess I am a competitive person.  Hopefully my experience as a kid will help temper my competitive spirit and keep it from making me abrasive.

For those of you who don't get it, I doubt I can explain the thrill.  Exhulting in pitting your strength against a worthy opponent who will push you to improve and be the best version of yourself possible is amazing.  Knowing that you've done your best and watching yourself making good plays is satisfying.  Knowing that you've lost in the past, you might lose tomorrow, but today you have conquered is an addiction I can understand.

Thought 11: Is knowing the future important?

People really like to talk about the book of the Revelation.  They like to talk about the many layers of meanings behind each symbol and give incredibly intricate diagrams and flowcharts about the time period described in the book.  Some people even go far enough to predict when all this stuff is going to happen.  I have heard a number of otherwise sane people tell me straight faced that the rapture/tribulation/etc... would all happen in specific years.  It's funny how much time and thought go into interpreting this book when so many other parts of the Bible are rarely if ever talked about.

I think I understand why people are so obsessed with knowing the future.  The future is dark and the dark is scary.  So we come up with elaborate understandings of prophecy in Revelation so we know the future.  That makes it less scary (even though most of the stuff in Revelation described literally is pretty horrifying).

But the better question is, is it important to know the future?  Other than trying to make it less scary for ourselves what importance does it hold?  Why would God go to great lengths to let us know what is going to happen in the future?

I imagine some people think it is so we will know the Bible is true.  If we see these prophecies fulfilled then we'll know the Bible is right and have proof of its authenticity.  The problem with this is that idea if not found in the Bible anywhere.  Our knowledge of God's (and the Bible's) trustworthiness is not based on true predictions.  Every single person who lived through Jesus' life misunderstood most of the major prophecies about him.  They still ended up doing alright.  So we can't say that understanding those prophecies will let us act more correctly.

The gospel according to John is written as a convincing argument that Jesus is who he said he was.  It doesn't reference the future at all, but rather the past.  John's idea of convincing isn't supernatural future telling, but rather a history of the life Jesus lived and the words he spoke.

For us to live correctly we should be much more concerned with knowing the life Jesus lived and the words he spoke rather than whether or not Revelation requires a literal "this is stuff that will happen" interpretation approach or a metaphorical approach.

I'm not saying understanding what this book is about is not important.  Obviously understanding Scripture is important.  God wouldn't give it to us if there was no purpose for reading it.  But being able to correctly guess (and yes guess is the right word) when your particular flavor of Revelation interpretation is going to happen just isn't important.  We don't need dates.  We don't need specific understandings of the future actions that will correspond to each description.

We need a Revelation of who Jesus is.  We need to understand his heart and his thoughts.  We need to understand the one who is the expression of God Himself.

Thought 10: How does variance effect the fun of a game?

I love games.  I've been playing a good bit of magic the gathering lately and it has been interesting to observe the emotional ups and downs linked to variance of the game.  I particularly enjoy drafting.  There are two questions to look at.  The first is whether or not variance effects our enjoyment of the game.

At first this looks like an easy question.  Variance does effect our enjoyment because when we are lucky we win, which makes the game more fun.  Early in my days of playing rarely did I win a game without thinking that I had been the superior player.  As I studied the game more and learned more about the role of and effect of variance in my games it changed the way I think.  Now I ask a second question.  Does knowledge of variance effects our enjoyment of the game?

Now things are different.  There are days I draft a terrible deck and do well.  There are days I draft (what I think) is a great deck and get thrashed.  There are days I draft a good deck and do stunningly awesome.  I was playing in that last scenario the other day.  I had drafted a solid deck (Return to Ravnica is the set, the deck was Azorius tempo) and was absolutely crushing people.  I kept playing one of the two bombs I had in my deck consistently early in the game.  It was the Grove of the Guardian, and I was able to cast other spells that let me copy the giant creature it made.

As I reflected on how often I was drawing the card (almost every game) it dawned on me that perhaps I hadn't done a good job building the deck as I originally thought.  Perhaps I just had a case of the "run goods" (I was drawing the good cards in my deck every game rather than some of the less powerful 'filler' cards).  That thought made me slightly less happy than the giddy "I'm so awesome" feeling I'd had earlier.  So did my knowledge of variance make the game less fulfilling?

In this particular case it did. But it also makes some defeats less crushing.  I can see how I made one mistake (or two) but it was combined with incredibly bad luck.

One thing I have noticed though is as I have learned more about (and observed more) variance I have found happiness and distress less in the results of my games and more in my individual play (and draft choices).

Of course I still feel emotions.  The funny thing is when I have good results but notice lots of loose or bad play on my part it does diminish my happiness.  But not too much.  I still really like winning.


So as I've matured I've learned that variance does not directly impact my enjoyment of the game if I think about things.  If I left myself get caught up in the swings of life then yes I can get down.  Playing well and losing to a lucky play (or unlucky series of draws) still effects.  I can still tilt.  But the more I play and the more I think the less it effects me.

Thought 9: Are people made up of one part, two parts, or three parts?

I was lead to believe (or taught to believe) that people are made up of three parts.  Body, soul, and spirit.  The soul and spirit were all mushed up but clearly kept separate from the body.  Any changes to my body didn't effect my identity.  I am an animating force driving my body around like a vehicle.  When I die I will dispose of my body and get a new one, much like selling an old car and getting a new one.

The problem with this view of reality is that it overlooks certain key facts.  My brain has a very real impact on how I act.  Head injuries can change my personality.  This isn't a debatable topic.  There have been enough studies done on patients with head trauma and enough research done into what each part of the brain does that this is settled science.

So, who am I?  Is my personality controlled entirely by my brain?  If so then that would lead me to think that I am a deterministic machine.  Every choice I make is the consequence of a series of chemical interactions and my brain plotting out how to solve problems.  Perhaps there is a little tiny random number generator in there somewhere when I have to make a choice.

There is evidence that the brain isn't even entirely in control.  If you smile a lot you will feel happier.  If you exert your will (which is what again?) to frown a lot you will feel worse.

Before we go too far down the rabbit hole science still doesn't know what produces self awareness.  We understand a little bit about how the brain works but we don't understand how cognition works.  We can perform a task and watch which part of the brain lights up to see how it is segmented but we don't know why it works the way it does.

So, am I one, two, or three parts?  If I am multiple parts how do they interact?  Does my body act less like a vehicle and more like a filter?  Every stimuli and experience that my soul or spirit or soul/spirit combination would receive has to be brought to it via my body somehow.  How does that lead to a situation where my brain being injured changes my soul/spirit personality?  Is this proof that a person isn't broken up into constituent parts that interact like objects in an OO computer program?

Yet we have parts of the Bible that talk about us having a new body.  Paul talks about leaving this body for a new one like taking off clothes to put on new ones.  The more science digs in the more it looks like who we are as people is tied up in our bodies.  I do believe there is something more to us than just chemical processes, but I think the model view of a soul piloting around a body is wrong as well.

If you cut off my arm it doesn't change who I am in my identity, but it will change my life.

I do think we're at least 2 parts, body and soul.  I imagine an argument could be made for 3 parts, but I have no reason to believe that over  2 parts.  I guess for now I'll just assume we're 2.5 parts.

Thought 8: Why do we have a love hate relationship with rewards? - Also 47 days left in the year...

So, it looks like I may have to chalk this blog up to a horribly failed experiment.

Or not!  If I do a blog post every day for the rest of the year I can do it.  52 blog posts in one year.

Let's do this.

Thought 8

There is a lot of talking and writing about rewards especially in a religious context.  I have heard many times in my life about how many rewards await me in the afterlife (because I'm on the right team TM!).  But I've also been told that I shouldn't work for these rewards.  That having done the work should be sufficient reward.

I have frequently heard people talk about 'bribing' their children to do things they should do.  That has a very negative connotation.  I believe the thought pattern is the kid should be willing to do the right thing because it is right.

I think this is a very attractive idea.  It seems very pure.  We do right because it is right and not because of a promise for something pleasurable.  Doing the "right" thing shouldn't be a chore it should be a pleasure.  We don't want to spoil our children by teaching them to do right only because it profits them.

But God promises us rewards.  We know He isn't a bad example to follow.  So, how do we reconcile these two ideas.  Is one of them wrong?  Do they point to an underlying truth about who we are?  I think that is more likely to be the point than some kind of tension between the two ideas.

We are broken people.  Sometimes our appetites and desires are good.  Sometimes they are not.  Sometimes we want things that are bad for us.  I think that makes rewards a very practical tool for aligning our desires with what they should be.  This leads us to looking at rewards in such a way that we can try to avoid the pitfall of "doing things for the reward rather than because it is good".

Rewards have as a purpose getting us to experience the goodness of God.  Giving to others is good for us on many different levels.  God puts incentives for us to give even before we understand this.  The point of the reward is to get us to go along with the plan so we can experience that doing these things do produce their own rewards.

We don't always look at the long term.  The Bible talks about Jesus enduring things he dreaded (the cross) for the joy of seeing mankind redeemed.  He saw the long term.  Rewards are a way to train us to do the same.  Sometimes we need a reminder that we're doing something with rewards (rewards in heaven!) so we keep doing it until we learn that doing the thing is both good for us and good for others.

Best analogy I can come up with is the reading program in my elementary school.  I love pizza.  My school offered pizza for reading a certain number of books.  So I read a lot of books (I already enjoyed reading, but stay with me here).  Now I continue to read books.  I have outgrown a need for external stimuli to move me towards reading books.  I value reading because I have experienced that reading is good for me.

There are days when it is hard to be nice to jerks.  When I think of the external reward for being nice I can be nice.  Then I see the natural outcome of being nice making my life (and the jerk's life) better.  The more times I do that the deeper the truth that being nice is good for everyone sinks into my bones.

So there is nothing wrong with rewards.  It isn't bad to like thinking about being rewarded for doing good things.  It isn't wrong to reward your child for doing something good (remember you only 'bribe' someone to do something wrong, if it is for doing something right it is a reward).  But I do think that the reward of performing a loving act and seeing the people around us helped and changed is greater than thoughts of silver and gold.

Addendum - Now ultimately life is a lot more complicated than the examples I used above.  They take a more conditioning/humanistic model of things and I don't think that is a robust explanation of how we work.  We are motivated by a lot more than just carrots and sticks.  Seeing God's love for me has changed me a lot more than rewards/punishments ever could.  But in our every day life sometimes they act as practical things that influence our immediate actions.