Passing the sexual Turing test
May 21, 2011 7:42 AM Subscribe
Filtering out porn algorithmically takes audio into consideration. "Comedy shows with laughter were also sometimes mistaken for pornography, as the loud audience cheers and cries share similar spectral characteristics to sexual sounds."
Well, if you're doing it right, sex is hilarious
posted by Blasdelb at 7:46 AM on May 21, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by Blasdelb at 7:46 AM on May 21, 2011 [1 favorite]
Wait, don't other people get cheers and applause?
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:49 AM on May 21, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:49 AM on May 21, 2011 [2 favorites]
You are a sexy sex person and you make sexy sex noises.
posted by Artw at 7:51 AM on May 21, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by Artw at 7:51 AM on May 21, 2011 [1 favorite]
...the loud audience cheers and cries share similar spectral characteristics to sexual sounds.
lol, but I wonder if this could at least partly explain laughter, which AFAIK doesn't have a satisfactory scientific explanation yet.
posted by DU at 8:09 AM on May 21, 2011 [2 favorites]
lol, but I wonder if this could at least partly explain laughter, which AFAIK doesn't have a satisfactory scientific explanation yet.
posted by DU at 8:09 AM on May 21, 2011 [2 favorites]
Back in the late '90s I had a sort of proto-blog up on one of the Geocities-style free providers, the name of which unfortunately escapes me now. One day when I tried to log into my account I was told it had been deleted because my site contained pornographic content. Turns out they'd done some sort of clumsy search and one of the entries on my site had contained the word "pornography," so that was that. Repeated emails to their customer service reps went unanswered.
The best part was that all of their users who had their accounts deleted were relegated to a "jail" wherein you could peruse a gallery of said users (represented by a generic faceless mugshot) behind bars, with the reason for their banishment listed below.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:30 AM on May 21, 2011
The best part was that all of their users who had their accounts deleted were relegated to a "jail" wherein you could peruse a gallery of said users (represented by a generic faceless mugshot) behind bars, with the reason for their banishment listed below.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:30 AM on May 21, 2011
DU, I just ran across this new theory of humor and laughter (ganked from Andrew Sullivan's blog), which seems plausible to me... Benign violation theory
posted by Schmucko at 9:32 AM on May 21, 2011
posted by Schmucko at 9:32 AM on May 21, 2011
This is funny as fuck!
posted by srboisvert at 10:49 AM on May 21, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by srboisvert at 10:49 AM on May 21, 2011 [1 favorite]
hey, man, whatever works for you
posted by LogicalDash at 11:06 AM on May 21, 2011
posted by LogicalDash at 11:06 AM on May 21, 2011
I think laughter is sort of a social defense mechanism that prevents conflicts from getting out of control between humans and (other apes). When tension rises you're more likely to laugh, so it keeps people from getting too worked up, or signals that the other person is 'just playing' or whatever. I don't think it has anything to do with orgasms, that's just a bug in their software. They're looking for repeating 'high pitched' sounds.
If they took the rate I think they would find laughter doesn't sound all that much like sexual noises. Like when you're laughing you laugh several times a second.
posted by delmoi at 11:14 AM on May 21, 2011
If they took the rate I think they would find laughter doesn't sound all that much like sexual noises. Like when you're laughing you laugh several times a second.
posted by delmoi at 11:14 AM on May 21, 2011
Historically, laughter - especially the passionate burst of laughter - has often been a faux pas. Manuals for conduct, abetted by philosophical treatises and literary and visual texts, warned against it, offering special injunctions to ladies to avoid jollity that was too boisterous. ...In the civilizing process that leads to laughter's "falling into disrepute," as Nietzsche famously put it, we can see the formless, contorted face in laughter being slowly corrected into a calm, social smile. How did the twentieth century laugh? ...through Georges Bataille that the century laughed its most distinct laugh. In Bataille's wake, laughter becomes the passion at the heart of poststructuralism.
Bataille: Seeing laughter, hearing laughter, I participate from within the emotion of the one who laughs. It is this emotion, experienced from within which, communicating itself to me, laughs within me.
posted by stinkycheese at 12:32 PM on May 21, 2011
Bataille: Seeing laughter, hearing laughter, I participate from within the emotion of the one who laughs. It is this emotion, experienced from within which, communicating itself to me, laughs within me.
posted by stinkycheese at 12:32 PM on May 21, 2011
If they took the rate I think they would find laughter doesn't sound all that much like sexual noises. Like when you're laughing you laugh several times a second.
I don't think they're saying that a (single) person laughing makes a sound that shares characteristics with that of sexual activity. They're saying that "comedy shows with laughter were also sometimes mistaken for pornography," which suggests to me that, out of context, the rhythmically rising and falling human noises that make up a laugh track can be confused with the sounds of people having sex. Specifically, I can completely imagine how, say, an extended moan could look a lot like a briefly roaring crowd to a computer struggling to analyze the audio "fingerprints" of those sounds out of context.
posted by Joey Bagels at 1:44 PM on May 21, 2011 [1 favorite]
I don't think they're saying that a (single) person laughing makes a sound that shares characteristics with that of sexual activity. They're saying that "comedy shows with laughter were also sometimes mistaken for pornography," which suggests to me that, out of context, the rhythmically rising and falling human noises that make up a laugh track can be confused with the sounds of people having sex. Specifically, I can completely imagine how, say, an extended moan could look a lot like a briefly roaring crowd to a computer struggling to analyze the audio "fingerprints" of those sounds out of context.
posted by Joey Bagels at 1:44 PM on May 21, 2011 [1 favorite]
Laughter and tears are just another kind of orgasm. Especially when you're single.
posted by Decani at 2:58 PM on May 21, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by Decani at 2:58 PM on May 21, 2011 [1 favorite]
Either they're thinking about this in entirely the wrong way, or I am. I mean, there's porn and then there are the bizarre juxtapositions of phrases that cause me to make the joke, "Well, that's really not my thing, but if you're in to it, I'm sure there's a web page for it."
I can understand why you'd want a porn filter, but what good is a porn filter that blocks naked or semi-naked people having normal to somewhat abnormal sex, but utterly fails to block "once you see it, you can not unsee it" porn?
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 3:20 PM on May 21, 2011
I can understand why you'd want a porn filter, but what good is a porn filter that blocks naked or semi-naked people having normal to somewhat abnormal sex, but utterly fails to block "once you see it, you can not unsee it" porn?
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 3:20 PM on May 21, 2011
Can this be run backward?
posted by cjorgensen at 8:50 PM on May 21, 2011
posted by cjorgensen at 8:50 PM on May 21, 2011
> what good is a porn filter that blocks naked or semi-naked people having normal to somewhat abnormal sex,
> but utterly fails to block "once you see it, you can not unsee it" porn?
So now instead of saying "irresistable force" and "immoveable object" we say "porn filter algorithm" and "rule 34."
posted by jfuller at 5:58 AM on May 22, 2011
> but utterly fails to block "once you see it, you can not unsee it" porn?
So now instead of saying "irresistable force" and "immoveable object" we say "porn filter algorithm" and "rule 34."
posted by jfuller at 5:58 AM on May 22, 2011
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posted by Fizz at 7:44 AM on May 21, 2011 [1 favorite]