Feel­ing irri­ta­ble, feisty, hos­tile, even? Feel like get­ting into an argu­ment? No prob­lem at all! Just hop on the social media plat­form or com­ments sec­tion of your choice, and with­in sec­onds you can be caught in a rag­ing dust­up with a total stranger—or sev­er­al total strangers at once! Isn’t the inter­net fun?!

But how did the argu­men­ta­tive ever get by before Twit­ter wars and oth­er con­tentious online inter­ac­tions? Needling peo­ple in casi­nos, road­hous­es, and cock­tail lounges? Ruin­ing hol­i­days with scream­ing match­es over the cen­ter­piece?

Many a barfight and fam­i­ly feud might have been avert­ed had Mon­ty Python’s bril­liant idea for an argu­ment clin­ic exist­ed in real life. In prin­ci­ple, it seems so civ­i­lized.

But in the sketch itself, as you can see above, vis­it­ing the argu­ment clin­ic turns out to be a lot like vis­it­ing the com­ments section—only with­out the racist and sex­ist slurs and occa­sion­al spam. Mild-man­nered Michael Palin stops in to have an argu­ment. He first stum­bles into the room reserved for “abuse,” where Gra­ham Chap­man yells nasty things at him. How famil­iar. When he reach­es the argu­ment room, 12A, he meets John Cleese, who pro­ceeds to flat­ly con­tra­dict every­thing he says.

Per­haps you’ve had the same expe­ri­ence: Palin patient­ly explains what an argu­ment is sup­posed to be, “a con­nect­ed series of state­ments intend­ed to estab­lish a propo­si­tion.” To which Cleese replies, “no it isn’t!” It’s like argu­ing with a child, an espe­cial­ly child­ish adult, or an inter­net bot with a very lim­it­ed set of respons­es. Or—as you can see at the top in the recre­ation of the sketch by two vin­tage voice synthesizers—like an argu­ment between two rudi­men­ta­ry machines.

One of these machines will sound very familiar—the small, black DECTalk Express has pro­vid­ed the voice of Stephen Hawk­ing for many years. The other—the old­er Intex Talker—is a crud­er instru­ment, and much less intel­li­gi­ble. So it’s right­ly cast in the John Cleese role. Can machines think? We’ve yet to sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly answer that ques­tion. But we know they can argue—if argu­ment means spit­ting out abu­sive phras­es and con­tra­dic­tions. How­ev­er, if we define an argu­ment as Palin/DECTalk Express does—as “an intel­lec­tu­al process”—the machines have like­ly got ways to go. As do most humans.

Sharp­en your own skills with some Intro to Crit­i­cal Think­ing videos, or with anoth­er humor­ous exam­ple of how not to argue.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read An Illus­trat­ed Book of Bad Argu­ments: A Fun Primer on How to Strength­en, Not Weak­en, Your Argu­ments

Daniel Den­nett Presents Sev­en Tools For Crit­i­cal Think­ing

32 Ani­mat­ed Videos by Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy Teach You the Essen­tials of Crit­i­cal Think­ing

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

We know Ellen DeGeneres as the super­star host of her own talk show and the voice of cud­dly, for­get­ful fish Dory. No doubt many of her younger fans have no idea she was a standup com­ic, before The Ellen DeGeneres Show, before even the 90s sit­com Ellen, which most­ly gets men­tioned for the “com­ing out” episode that sup­pos­ed­ly end­ed her career almost two decades ago. But even if all the TV and movie star­dom had nev­er come her way, come­di­ans like Chris Rock might still remem­ber Ellen as one of their favorite standup comics.

Rock adds DeGeneres to his list of “Favorite Standup Spe­cials” for her 2003 HBO per­for­mance Here and Now, which you can see in part above. “Most comics just talk about what they see,” he writes, “This is the first time I heard some­body talk about what they felt.” Ellen works clean, and in that respect she’s in a minor­i­ty on Rock’s list (she’s also the only woman). Even the come­di­an Rock com­pares to Andy Grif­fith— “Blue Col­lar” com­ic Ron White—gets a raunchy aster­isk next to that ref­er­ence. And indeed, he’s both down home and dirty. So what con­nects the come­di­ans on Rock’s list?

Aside from the fact that they’re all big names, not much, it seems. In choos­ing these 13 spe­cials, Rock seems drawn not to a par­tic­u­lar genre or brand of humor, but to the skill­ful, mov­ing per­for­mance of com­e­dy: dirty, clean, polit­i­cal, top­i­cal, observational—it’s all good as long as it’s fun­ny. A good com­ic can make ‘em laugh by riff­ing on the mun­dane annoy­ances of dai­ly life, or by telling uncom­fort­able truths with a smile like Dave Chap­pelle, above, whose spe­cial Killin’ Them Soft­ly also appears on Rock’s list of favorites.

Like Rock, Chap­pelle knows his com­e­dy his­to­ry, and fans of The Chap­pelle Show know too—at least when it comes to the leg­endary Paul Mooney, a comedian’s come­di­an and one­time writer for Richard Pry­or. Mooney’s spe­cial Jesus is Black. So Was Cleopa­tra. Know Your His­to­ry makes the list for “more edge than any­thing you are ever going to see.” And his one­time boss Pry­or gets top billing for the “per­fect” Live in Con­cert 1979—“what every com­ic is striv­ing for,” says Rock, “and we all fall very short.”

Speak­ing of truth-tellers, the great George Car­lin makes the list for his spe­cial Jam­min’ in New York. Car­lin spared no one, and come­di­ans love him for it, even if few peo­ple have the courage or the wit to do what he did. Rock has come close, with rou­tines that make peo­ple laugh as they squirm in their seats. His deliv­ery is all his own, but we can see Car­lin’s bristling social cri­tique in his act as much as Richard Pry­or’s riffs on race and sex.

Oth­er big names on the list include Steve Har­vey, Eddie Mur­phy, the-once-beloved Bill Cos­by, George Lopez (“the Mex­i­can Richard Pry­or and Bill Cos­by at the same time”), and even Andrew Dice Clay for his The Day the Laugh­ter Died, “a com­e­dy album only a come­di­an could love.”

But it isn’t sole­ly about laugh­ter or can­dor for Rock; as he not­ed in his Ellen pick, it’s also about feel­ing, and in the case of one spe­cial, Bil­ly Crystal’s one-man-show 700 Sun­days, the com­e­dy sits side-by-side with pathos. Drawn from a bit­ter­sweet auto­bi­og­ra­phy of the same title, Crystal’s show pre­miered in 2004 and was revived in 2013 and filmed by HBO (trail­er above). “Bril­liant, touch­ing and f*cking fun­ny,” says Rock, “First time in my life I cried at a com­e­dy show.”

Round­ing out the list is Sam Kin­i­son, whose unfor­get­tably unhinged role in Rod­ney Dangerfield’s Back to School brought thou­sands of curi­ous new fans to his clas­sic album Loud­er than Hell. “The last orig­i­nal com­ic,” says Rock. “Most comics are deriv­a­tives of Pry­or, Cos­by, or Sein­feld. Sam remind­ed you of Bil­ly Gra­ham.” I’d say he was more Jim­my Swag­gart, if Jim­my Swag­gart screamed obscen­i­ties at starv­ing chil­dren. See Rock’s full list below.

1. Richard Pry­or Live In Con­cert 1979
2. Paul Mooney: Jesus Is Black. So Was Cleopa­tra
3. Dave Chap­pelle: Killin’ Them Soft­ly
4. Eddie Mur­phy: Deliri­ous
5. Bill Cos­by: Him­self
6. George Car­lin: Jam­min’ in New York
7. George Lopez: Amer­i­ca’s Mex­i­can
8. Steve Har­vey: One Man
9. Bil­ly Crys­tal: 700 Sun­days
10. Andrew Dice Clay: The Day the Laugh­ter Died
11. Ron White: They Call Me Tater Sal­ad
12. Ellen DeGeneres: Here and Now
13. Sam Kin­i­son: Loud­er Than Hell

via Austin Kleon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear 30 of the Great­est Standup Com­e­dy Albums: A Playlist Cho­sen by Open Cul­ture Read­ers

Steve Mar­tin & Robin Williams Riff on Math, Physics, Ein­stein & Picas­so in a Heady Com­e­dy Rou­tine (2002)

Bill Hicks’ 12 Prin­ci­ples of Com­e­dy

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness