full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Dan Dennett: Cute, sexy, sweet, funny

Unscramble the Blue Letters


Well now, fnlaily what about funny. My answer is, it’s the same story, the same story. This is the hard one, the one that isn’t oivuobs. That’s why I leave it to the end. And I won’t be able to say too much about it. But you have to think evolutionarily, you have to think, what hard job that has to be done — it’s dirty work, somebody’s got to do it — is so important to give us such a powerful, ilniubt reward for it when we succeed. Now, I think we've found the answer — I and a few of my colleagues. It’s a nrauel system that’s wired up to reward the brain for doing a grubby clerical job. Our bumper sticker for this view is that this is the joy of debugging. Now I’m not going to have time to spell it all out, but I’ll just say that only some kinds of debugging get the reward. And what we’re doing is we’re using humor as a sort of neuroscientific pobre by switching humor on and off, by turning the knob on a joke — now it’s not funny ... oh, now it’s funnier ... now we’ll turn a little bit more ... now it’s not fnuny — in this way, we can actually learn something about the architecture of the brain, the fionanutcl architecture of the bairn.

Open Cloze


Well now, _______ what about funny. My answer is, it’s the same story, the same story. This is the hard one, the one that isn’t _______. That’s why I leave it to the end. And I won’t be able to say too much about it. But you have to think evolutionarily, you have to think, what hard job that has to be done — it’s dirty work, somebody’s got to do it — is so important to give us such a powerful, _______ reward for it when we succeed. Now, I think we've found the answer — I and a few of my colleagues. It’s a ______ system that’s wired up to reward the brain for doing a grubby clerical job. Our bumper sticker for this view is that this is the joy of debugging. Now I’m not going to have time to spell it all out, but I’ll just say that only some kinds of debugging get the reward. And what we’re doing is we’re using humor as a sort of neuroscientific _____ by switching humor on and off, by turning the knob on a joke — now it’s not funny ... oh, now it’s funnier ... now we’ll turn a little bit more ... now it’s not _____ — in this way, we can actually learn something about the architecture of the brain, the __________ architecture of the _____.

Solution


  1. obvious
  2. inbuilt
  3. functional
  4. neural
  5. finally
  6. probe
  7. funny
  8. brain

Original Text


Well now, finally what about funny. My answer is, it’s the same story, the same story. This is the hard one, the one that isn’t obvious. That’s why I leave it to the end. And I won’t be able to say too much about it. But you have to think evolutionarily, you have to think, what hard job that has to be done — it’s dirty work, somebody’s got to do it — is so important to give us such a powerful, inbuilt reward for it when we succeed. Now, I think we've found the answer — I and a few of my colleagues. It’s a neural system that’s wired up to reward the brain for doing a grubby clerical job. Our bumper sticker for this view is that this is the joy of debugging. Now I’m not going to have time to spell it all out, but I’ll just say that only some kinds of debugging get the reward. And what we’re doing is we’re using humor as a sort of neuroscientific probe by switching humor on and off, by turning the knob on a joke — now it’s not funny ... oh, now it’s funnier ... now we’ll turn a little bit more ... now it’s not funny — in this way, we can actually learn something about the architecture of the brain, the functional architecture of the brain.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
strange inversion 5
chocolate cake 5
absolute ignorance 2
darwin shows 2
sweet tooth 2
supernormal stimulus 2
supernormal stimuli 2


Important Words


  1. answer
  2. architecture
  3. bit
  4. brain
  5. bumper
  6. clerical
  7. colleagues
  8. debugging
  9. dirty
  10. evolutionarily
  11. finally
  12. functional
  13. funnier
  14. funny
  15. give
  16. grubby
  17. hard
  18. humor
  19. important
  20. inbuilt
  21. job
  22. joke
  23. joy
  24. kinds
  25. knob
  26. learn
  27. leave
  28. neural
  29. neuroscientific
  30. obvious
  31. powerful
  32. probe
  33. reward
  34. sort
  35. spell
  36. sticker
  37. story
  38. succeed
  39. switching
  40. system
  41. time
  42. turn
  43. turning
  44. view
  45. wired
  46. work