Truman Capote, AI, and Comedy

I recently reread Truman Capote's La Côte Basque from my Great Esquire Fiction book and it prompted my research into this story, which prompted this post on Artificial Intelligence and Comedy.

In researching this story and Capote, google kept popping up things about Capote's IQ. After I finished my research of this story (and how it basically ruined Capote's life and resulted in his slow suicide via drugs and alcohol) I went back to the Capote IQ.

Now the internet isn't exactly the place for unequivocal truth, but let's say that Capote's "internet" IQ of 215 is close to the truth. 

Now we know that AI can now write novels and poetry and there is cause to believe it can be "good" or "decent" writing. 

Because AI is a matter of pattern recognition. Recognize enough patterns and you can create, be it skyscrapers or stories. 

This is a crucial point. 

So I thought of comedy. If AI can recognize the parts/patterns of a joke, (set-up, punch line, etc.), it can in theory, create comedy.

So in time we can expect computers to be comedians?

Naw.

Part of what computers and AI can't access or pattern recognize, is feelings. Humans have feelings. And pain. Certainly what drove part of Richard Pryor's comedy was pain. Part of what drove George Carlin's comedy was anger.

Can computers pattern recognize their way to pain or anger?

In my estimation, no.

Pain and anger, (and I say this in my 51st year on the planet, and in therapy), require a biography, a full narrative to draw from.

Computers and AI don't have a past, replete with feelings and memories.

Can computers and AI pattern recognize their way to feelings and memories?

You can see where this is going. An infinite regress, a homonculus with a homonculus with a...

Kurzweil is probably correct about the future and the singularity may be near. And he's probably correct that we shouldn't fear it or the algorithms.

Probably.

I have always been more afraid of humans than anything else, being a student of history.

I certainly do not fear robots and AI creating anything artistic that will rival what humans can do. 

Capote, IQ of 215 and all, was, per Nietzsche, human, all too human, and imperfect and flawed and capable of sadness and regret and shame, in incredible proportions.

Ah feelings, nothing more than feelings.
Trying to forget my feelings...

AI can't feel or forget.

Our (human) art is safe.

Just not from humans.

Get it?

Stupid copywriting, I didn't want to do it anyway

I recently finished Behave: The Biology of Humans At Our Best and Worst by Robert Sapolsky and was taken aback at how he points out what socioeconomic status and early trauma can do to a person. 

Namely, me.

And here I sit, in a nice house, reading a book for a copywriting class I get to take...for free when a certain passage hits me and I realize just how correct Sapolsky is.

The book for the copywriting class is The Well Fed Writer: Financial Self-Sufficiency as a Commercial Freelancer in Six Months or Less, by Peter Bowerman.

The chapter is Nuts and Bolts and the Passage is The Ebb and Flow of Work, where he writes:

"...in most cases, human nature usually prevails: we market a bunch, get work, stop marketing, only to resume after the job's done. The result? Alternating periods of being swamped and dead in the water. C'est la vie..."

And in 4 sentences I know I can't be a freelance copywriter.

(Disclosure: I was not planning on being a freelance copywriter or a non-freelance copywriter. I'm taking a class to learn some stuff.)

But the thought of not having a job and not having an income, meager it may be, is too anxiety provoking to give this career a second thought. 

Growing up with 8 people in a 2 bedroom home that could have six inches of water in the basement means I have to keep my world small and routine and perhaps the most important part of that routine is money (again meager) coming in.

I can't ebb and flow with money, I can't C'est la vie. I won't make it.

Why?

Socioeconomic status and trauma.

We are thrown into the world, with no choice of where we land or into which hands and homes. 

I have a choice now but it is limited. Free will is limited at best, an illusion at worst. 

Stupid copywriting, I didn't want to do it anyway.

Luv you dad.

Well here we are faithful Heavy Levity blog follower, September 21, 2021 and yours truly is now fifty and one years of age. As the religious say in america, holy shit. 

First the facts: I'm a mess mentally...and have been for a long time. Angry, bitter, incompetent, lazy, not too bright, unintelligent, redundant, with a touch of pedant at best and a slap across the face at worst. But on the bright side, I completed a half-marathon on Saturday morning with a time of 1:46:53. (My last half was in 2017 and I finished in 1:51:17.)

Tis funny because I think platonic dualism is the cause of much suffering but in a Leibnizian fashion, my mental suffering helps my almost best of all possible worlds running.

I kid.

Second the fun: my coworkers presented me with a card and sang a lively happy birthday. When I told them it was reminiscent of how they used to sing it at Chi Chi's...NONE of them even knew of Chi Chi's.

Funny haha and funny old-as-hell. I didn't think it was like I was talking about a printing press or a phonograph machine but I guess I went and dated myself.

Third the love: The fam didn't have time to celebrate over the weekend with all the activities and I was happy my wife gave me the four plus hours to get out in the morning, run, and not get back until around 10 or so, while she took all the tots to gymnastics and baseball. And today doesn't bode well because I am gone from about 8 to 8 and the mornings being absolute chaos trying to get everything and everyone together and out the door on time.

But get this: I'm walking my daughter from the car to the check-in table at daycare and I ask her, "You gonna do a good job today?" And in just the cutest fashion in the world, as only she can say it she says, "Yes." But she hangs on that s for just a little bit and it comes out with an unmistakable yesss. So cute and endearing. But it gets better.

Then, she says, "Luv you Dad." Oh man, I lit up like an xmas tree. Totally unprompted but totally accepted and completely needed. 

And with four words, I tell you, one of the best birthdays ever.

Behave...and Mirrors

 As I begin the hour commute back to work, at the recommendation of one of my colleagues, I am listening to Behave, by Robert Sapolsky.

The subtitle is: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst.

Sapolsky is digging down as far as possible in regard to certain behaviors. 

Listening yesterday, after yet another episode in life where I shut down and found myself bitter and angry, Sapolsky held up a mirror with the following pages:

I can't get the image out of my head of my father, sulking and bitter on my wedding day. I think about the times over the years, way too many, where I have done the same thing: sulked and shut down, despite having the material things I need to survive.

Anhedonia - the inability to feel, anticipate, or pursue pleasure.

Am I there? At 50? Married with three young children?

Regardless, I think a paradigm shift is in order. I don't know how to practically make the shift and per Sapolsky, I think my biology, shaped by my early poverty/trauma, is getting in the way. It's like trying to avoid seeing yourself by looking in a mirror.

Species

I recently returned from a "vacation" from the outer banks in North Carolina. I put "vacation" in scare quotations because, well, I have three, count em, three young kids, so what I more accurately returned from was, a trip. Anyhoo, on said trip, I visited a putt putt golf, with said kids and...it felt...strange. (The Doors: People are strange, when you're a stranger...) Strange because it was insanely packed with vacationers (and perhaps some native outer banksers) put putting and the course itself was, how shall I say this, awful. The theme was dinosaurs, because who doesn't like to putt putt under a t-rex, but the greens were littered with, well, litter, and the dinos were crumbling and needed paiting and the waterfall had filth and muck and goo and slime and worst to mine eyes, a baby pacifier floating in it. And the, have to say it, people, there just seemed like a different species to me. Now I know I am getting old and am going through this mid-life/whole life crisis thingamagig, but I don't know what that has to do with people's fashion choices and vaping and chewing chaw and drinking coca-cola on a decrepid putt putt course. Some people marvel at the number of species on the planet. What plays a role in our vast, yes vast, number of species, has to do with geographic separation. Birds in South America can't produce viable offspring with birds in Norhtern Europe, let's say. Well, how do birds and other creatures get separated? Well, things like hurricanes and tropical storms and other assorted geographic separaters. So, it is roughly 700ish miles from Rhode Island to the outer banks. Is this enough geopraphic separation to make applicable a new species? Of course not. Through the fashion choices and the vaping and the coca-cola and the chaw and the vast differences, we could still produce viable offspring. Still, the experience was jarring and disorienting, like being thrown and tossed by a Nags Head wave.

Fixer-Upper

It was a fixer-upper, for the upper-middle class Needs met, wants a mere jest From bread and milk, to good head and silk The fixer-upper needs remodeled, the kids are coddled Camps and nannies and enhancement opportunities galore Less is not more Not here, have no fear You’ll see, money M-O-N-E-Y, to the sky The fixer-upper kitchen needs redone, hon. Italian marble here, one-of-a-kind backsplash there, money everywhere Spare no expense, a budget is nonsense Times are good and they’re gonna stay good The future isn’t unsure, to be sure, we have the cure For the fixer-upper

In Pursuit of Pursuit

This hit me so hard the other day. https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2014/07/11/billy-mills-olympics Clearly, Billy Mills' pursuit of Olympic Gold and helping others, saved his life. As I continue to battle through my mid-life crisis, I listened to this and thought: What to pursue? I have pursued things and dreams in life and achieved some things and even met some goals...but now, with life half over (I'm a realist) and children to raise and help provide for, what to pursue? What are you pursuing? As Will Hunting asked in Good Will Huniting, "What winds your watch? Because time is ticking.