In any case, I made a new version using 21st century tools instead of pen and paper. I don't know if it'll do to your mind what it did to mine, but here it is:
 |
| —— C L I C K T O E N L A R G E —— To the best of my knowledge there is no dog food named “Nice Doggy.” You are invited to copy and share this image as long as you do not change it in any way. Tags: Dog, Doggy, Dog Food, Impute, Nice, Psychology, Theory of Mind |
haha, I like it. Probably it will be real soon enough when supermarket shelves are replaced with computer monitors.
ReplyDeleteI'm not entirely sure you quite “got” the joke, Craig. Perhaps I can illuminate it a bit.
DeleteMy wife seems to have gotten it. She looked at the cartoon and burst out laughing, which may have been only politeness. But then she looked away, looked back, and burst out laughing AGAIN. At that point I began to suspect that maybe she DID find the same funny thing that I found in it. So I asked her a few questions to make sure. Yup, it seems she “got” it.
Maybe it's kind of a Zen thing, or maybe it's simply a question of resonance: you have to have a certain kind of insanity to find it funny in that way.
It seems that the cartoon addresses a nutty tendency to impute awareness where there is none in fact. You mentioned this tendency in your comment in the Consciousness group, and mentioned cartoons as an example of “assembled” things that APPEAR to have awareness.
There was a wonderful TV commercial (by IKEA, I think) where a fellow throws away an old lamp. It's sitting out by the curb, in the rain, while sad music plays. The narrator says, “Do you feel sorry for the lamp?” A pause. “You're crazy!”
I nearly fell off my chair laughing.
Am still laughing about the dog food !
ReplyDelete