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josephg 3 days ago

> devoid of intelligence, a necessity to make other intelligent beings laugh with novel jokes ;)

I don't think you need to be that smart to make people laugh. Study actual comedy. Keith Johnstone is right. The funniest things are almost never the cleverest things. We have this idea of jokes in the west as being the height of intelligence. But I think the genius of great improvisers and comedians isn't in their cleverness. Its how they're more in tune with their inner "stochastic parrot" than the rest of us.

Billy Connolly used to play banjo on stage before he became a standup comedian. In one show, he'd just come on. He's in a crowded auditorium and he was just about to play his first song. He strums the very first note on his banjo and the string snaped! There's silence in the room. Billy looks down at the banjo. He thinks for a minute. And then he looks up at the audience and says "Well thats just gone and F-ed it, hasn't it?". And the crowd erupted in laughter.

I don't know if it translates in text, but that story gets a laugh even in the retelling. I had a couple people ask if I thought it was planned. (As if!)

Why is that funny?

Its certainly not funny because that was a clever line. Or because he's highly intelligent. He just said the obvious thing! And he said it slowly enough we could watch him think in real time. If you watch basically any comedy, you'll find almost everything that gets a laugh is the same.

I don't think that kind of humour is beyond the grasp of chatgpt. Far from it. With the right training data, I think LLMs could be better comedians than almost anyone. Most people are far too nervous and clever to let ourselves react honestly and obviously. Thats why most people aren't as good as Billy Connolly.