Most of these seem reasonably sane, of course with varying levels of cultural and situational slant and specificity (as one would expect from any list like this). One of them, however, strikes me as actively dangerous in a way worth mentioning:
If you want to become funny, try just saying stupid shit until something sticks.
Doing this visibly in more sensitive or conformist social groups can be a disaster. Gaining a reputation for saying erratic things can make you the person that no one can take anywhere because you might ruin the environment at any time, and then you’re in the hole. Depending on your interpersonal goals, it may be that exiting a group like that would be a net benefit for you, but even if that’s true for you, you may want to examine those options first before playing roulette with your status.
Bouncing things off yourself doesn’t have the same problem, but seems like a much weaker way of developing a quality which is fundamentally social; it can work if you have an internal sense of what’s funny but haven’t “found” it for conscious access, but it doesn’t work if you were miscalibrated to start with. Bouncing things off trusted friends can work, but at that point you’re more likely to have already had that option saliently in mind. (Well, if you didn’t and you’re reading this, now you do.)
More specifically, I think people who are socially oblivious and think that humor will improve their standing may be likely to jump at 52, and if they are in the above situation, get hurt, with the hazard having been invisible due to the obliviousness. One might then ask why they would get marginally hurt if they were already likely to make social errors—but I think it’s possible to get by in such cases with (perhaps not consciously noticed) conditioned broad inhibitions instead… until you read something like this as “permission”.
[Epistemic status: experience-based synthesis, likely biased]
Most of these seem reasonably sane, of course with varying levels of cultural and situational slant and specificity (as one would expect from any list like this). One of them, however, strikes me as actively dangerous in a way worth mentioning:
Doing this visibly in more sensitive or conformist social groups can be a disaster. Gaining a reputation for saying erratic things can make you the person that no one can take anywhere because you might ruin the environment at any time, and then you’re in the hole. Depending on your interpersonal goals, it may be that exiting a group like that would be a net benefit for you, but even if that’s true for you, you may want to examine those options first before playing roulette with your status.
Bouncing things off yourself doesn’t have the same problem, but seems like a much weaker way of developing a quality which is fundamentally social; it can work if you have an internal sense of what’s funny but haven’t “found” it for conscious access, but it doesn’t work if you were miscalibrated to start with. Bouncing things off trusted friends can work, but at that point you’re more likely to have already had that option saliently in mind. (Well, if you didn’t and you’re reading this, now you do.)
More specifically, I think people who are socially oblivious and think that humor will improve their standing may be likely to jump at 52, and if they are in the above situation, get hurt, with the hazard having been invisible due to the obliviousness. One might then ask why they would get marginally hurt if they were already likely to make social errors—but I think it’s possible to get by in such cases with (perhaps not consciously noticed) conditioned broad inhibitions instead… until you read something like this as “permission”.
These are useful criticisms! I’ll caveat it later towards trusted friends, which I think cuts off much of the risks.