This post has nothing to do with robots
And I’m not being sarcastic.
BBC News: ‘Sarcasm’ brain areas discovered
‘Sarcasm’ brain areas discovered
The scientists pinpointed three important brain areas Scientists say they have located the parts of the brain that comprehend sarcasm - honestly.
By comparing healthy people and those with damage to different parts of the brain, they found the front of the brain was key to understanding sarcasm.
Damage to any of three different areas could render individuals unable to understand sarcastic comments.
…Dr Shamay-Tsoory said this fitted with what is already known about the anatomy of the brain.
She said language areas on the left hand side of the brain interpret the literal meaning of words and the frontal lobes and the right side of the brain understand the social and emotional context.
An area called the right ventromedial prefrontal cortex then integrates the literal meaning with the social/emotional context, which will reveal any sarcasm.
“A lesion in each region in the network can impair sarcasm, because if someone has a problem understanding a social situation, he or she may fail to understand the literal language,” she said.
Of course, I can turn anything into a discussion of technology. So how’s this:
If sarcasm is simply the ability to read beyond the literal meaning of words, then surely a robot who behaves in this way would have a sense of sarcasm. Would it thereby have a sense of humor? Or is sarcasm something besides a sense of humor?
a robot however doesn’t read beyond the literal meaning of words. the robot interprets the words with how it is programmed. and i’m not an expert on robots but whatever the programmer programmed that word to mean for the robot is the literal meaning of the word. Therefore i don’t think robots have a sense of sarcasm. Also i think sarcasm is something besides a sense of humor. I think it’s more of a mastery of a language. it’s an art in a sense. It’s the ability to manipulate words into meaning other things.