KR2020Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and ReasoningProceedings of the 17th International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning

Rhodes, Greece. September 12-18, 2020.

Edited by

ISSN: 2334-1033
ISBN: 978-0-9992411-7-2

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Published by

Copyright © 2020 International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization

Jokes and Belief Revision

  1. Florence Dupin De Saint-Cyr(IRIT-CNRS, Toulouse University)
  2. Henri Prade(IRIT-CNRS)

Keywords

  1. Belief revision and update, belief merging, information fusion-General
  2. Commonsense reasoning-General
  3. Nonmonotonic logics, default logics, conditional logics-General

Abstract

The paper deals with a topic little studied in artificial intelligence: the understanding of humor. In this preliminary study, we try to identify the basic mechanism at work in quips and narrative jokes. It seems that in many cases a belief revision process is operating, leading to an unexpected conclusion, through the punchline of the jest. We propose a formal modeling of jokes based on belief revision. Namely the punchline, which triggers a revision, is both surprising and explains perfectly what was reported in the beginning of the joke. This also suggests a way of ranking jokes in terms of surprise and strength of explanation, using possibilistic logic.