Metadifference: Truth

If you tell the truth it’s going to be funny.
Richard Pryor

One of the more subtle aspects of Macroinformation manifests when sameness, the opposite of difference at the data level, registers as difference at meta-levels. Information is significant difference; macroinformation emerges from interactions among different differences, the more so as the different differences are mutually orthogonal.

I’ve long illustrated this point, long before coining the term macroinformation, with reference to the comic effect of character acting. When we see certain characteristics distilled to perfection we respond to the memesis as humor. Richard Nixon being perfectly himself was comic. A skilled actor imitating Richard Nixon being himself was comic. In the first case identity manifests as metadifference; in the second case the metadifference is more apparent. Sir Anthony Hopkins is not Richard Nixon, neither is the nightclub entertainer. But Nixon’s own behavior sparked metadifferences, his behavior being so complex, so conspicuously saturated with anomaly, discrepancy, double-standards, hypocrisy ...

But that’s just one instance. With an actor playing a pickpocket, acting it just right, the perfection stands out: metadifference.

When liars -- read that as all of us -- tell the truth, it’s funny. When a critic has a perception that leaves his normal medicrity in the dust, it’s funny. When an historian with an obvious agenda is momentarily objective, it’s funny. And humor, always, is proof that macroinformation is present.

Richard Pryor had it exactly right: "If you tell the truth it’s going to be funny."

For years now I’ve kept a folder of Examples of Macroinformation, the folder subdivided into sometimes subdivided categories: poetry, movies, painting ... A parallel attempt to organize illustrations of macroinformation by type -- irony, anomaly, timing, double-binds ... never got done well. I try again though with my new folder Meta, which is now beginning to illustrate metadifferences by type.

Of course many an instance of macroinformation embodies several types simultaneously. A play may employ literature, both prose and verse, music, painting, dance ... acting ... A joke may employ timing and discrepancy and irony ... And I don’t pretend that my own awareness of types is yet efficiently streamlined ... But I do intend to clone this and other similar new illustrations into the Meta folder.