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Researchers Pinpoint Brain's Sarcasm Sensor
LibertarianWackJob writes "Researchers have found the section of the human brain that is responsible for understanding sarcasm.
" I'm sure the comments on this story will be incredibly insightful.
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Maybe he meant the comments would be incredibly inciteful?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Am I the only one who finds it amusing that so far, not a single comment has been moderated "Insightful"?
Laughter is the best medicine, but in certain situations the Heimlich maneuver may be more appropriate.
While I did enjoy about 20 different versions of what the comic book guy says, I'd like to point out that if we understand how human brain interprets the meaning could have some significant impacts on the way humans communicate with computers.
It seems to me that today's computer is no different then someone who isn't able to understand the hidden meaning, but takes everything literally. If be learn of how exactly the human brain takes in the information and goes that extra step to figure out what was meant as opposed to what was said, it will go a long way towards completely transforming how humans interact with computers. You look at all the Star Trek series and you don't see people telling the computer how to do something, you see people telling the computer what to do. Something that we so far haven't achieved (to that scale at the very least), but it may be worth striving for.
Just my two cents...
That's irony, not sarcasm.
Seriously, though, have you ever made a sarcastic comment to a gullible person?
Have you ever posted on Slashdot, and been moderated OFFTOPIC?
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
There was an interview with Bram Cohen a little while back. It talked a lot about Aspbergers syndrome which is similar to autism.
One of the problems the afflicted have is that they don't understand the sarcams of a sentence such as when the teacher asks "did the dog eat your homework". This was a literal example from that article.
So, I wonder what this discovery will mean for people with autism and Aspbergers?
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
Or maybe his jokes just weren't funny?
no taxation without representation!
Heh I have that problem too. The thing I don't get about the article is the connection of sarcasm to empathy. I mean I'm a very sarcastic person, and sometimes I unknowingly hurt someones feelings with it. If sarcasm required lots of empathy, I should be able to tell when I've crossed the line, right?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Here's a nut even the collective mind of Google has been unable to crack: Machine recognition of sarcasm.
Take a look at the Huh? Corp site, and notice the counterpoint between the devilishly satirical site content and the dead-serious Google ads.
One cannot underestimate the serious menace posed to contextual ad networks by the unregulated use of sarcasm by ad-network partner sites.
As soon as I finish typing up this comment I plan to file for a provisional patent on "An Automated Method of Determining Sarcasm Content by Using a Naive Baysian Classifier Trained on Slashdot Comments."
What we need now is scientists to figure out why it is that so many /. posters post exactly the same thing... and they all get modded up to +5 funny. Although it is really funny to read "A scarcasm detector! Now that's REAL useful!" twenty-three times.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
I was a pretty sarcastic kid until I read that line in "A Separate Peace." It really made me stop and realize that while sarcasm is great for an occasional bit of humor, but it's a sad excuse for saying something worthwhile.
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
Hmm... I live in Japan, and my primary language at home is Japanese. I'm not sure why your friend would have missed this, but the Japanese use both sarcasm and irony in their humour. Could be that in an English class they're speaking a language they're unfamiliar with and less likely to make funny comments. In a classroom environment it might be that students are apt to take their teachers literally far more than their friends.
I suspect most people are also less likely to use sarcasm with someone they're not good friends with, as it's usually intended as a humorous jab at a dumb idea, and people usually tend not to point these kinds of things out to people they aren't good friends with.
Anyway, I suspect if your friend had brought a keg of beer to class and his students relaxed a bit, he'd have seen some sarcasm.