I don’t know how to measure any of the components, so I’m not sure how to use this to “consistently differentiate between things that are funny and not funny”. It feels a lot like it could be used to rationalize what different people find funny, but not in a way that extends to forward predictions.
Can you give some examples of things that this predicts to be surprisingly funny or not?
Well, we can take situations where the “equation” is clearly minimized, like if you just found out your Mother died tragically and are crying (meaning extreme anxiety), and see that basically no one is going to laugh at that time. Or that something happens that you simply never even know happened (so noticeability is 0), and obviously you won’t laugh at that. If you have no quality-expectation related to something (like if, for some reason, you’re trying to talk to a rock, unless you’re somehow insane you won’t laugh at the rock when it doesn’t answer, you would only laugh at yourself if you could picture yourself being so exhausted that you’d expect the rock to answer in the first place), so we can see immediately that the theory can class those situations as “definitely not funny.”
From there, when we start pushing those variables up from 0, we can see how things would thus enter into the funny zone. For example, a few days or weeks AFTER your Mom dies, if your anxiety starts to go down, and someone reminds you of something funny she did, THEN you would probably start to laugh. This is why, according to this theory, we say “too soon” when someone jokes after a tragedy. The anxiety level hasn’t gone down enough yet.
Likewise, when you start being able to see the funny thing that previously was out of your vision, then you start getting to the point where you can laugh at it. Or when you start talking to something that you might have a reasonable expectation would react, like your dog ignoring you calling his name, that is where laughter could begin to come in.
I tried to present examples that were “far-end” and isolated with the various variables in the equation, to hopefully demonstrate in a clear way how this can function to predict what will or won’t be funny. There are of course examples that involve multiple variables or where it’s more subtle and depends on our own individual opinions and things and moods that we could also do.
On page 15 of the second paper, under “bad jokes,” I tried to do exactly this...taking a joke that won a “bad joke” contest, analyzing it within the theory, and adjusting multiple things about it, including improving the pun, to the point that it gave me some urge to laugh at it.
Oh, lastly, in regards to surprisingly funny, something that violates a very deeply held expectation (with the other variables being within an acceptable range) would be an example of something that’s surprisingly funny, like if your boss who you’ve known for years suddenly has an epic fail. I have this on page 19 of the second paper under “I didn’t see that coming.”
I don’t know how to measure any of the components, so I’m not sure how to use this to “consistently differentiate between things that are funny and not funny”. It feels a lot like it could be used to rationalize what different people find funny, but not in a way that extends to forward predictions.
Can you give some examples of things that this predicts to be surprisingly funny or not?
Well, we can take situations where the “equation” is clearly minimized, like if you just found out your Mother died tragically and are crying (meaning extreme anxiety), and see that basically no one is going to laugh at that time. Or that something happens that you simply never even know happened (so noticeability is 0), and obviously you won’t laugh at that. If you have no quality-expectation related to something (like if, for some reason, you’re trying to talk to a rock, unless you’re somehow insane you won’t laugh at the rock when it doesn’t answer, you would only laugh at yourself if you could picture yourself being so exhausted that you’d expect the rock to answer in the first place), so we can see immediately that the theory can class those situations as “definitely not funny.”
From there, when we start pushing those variables up from 0, we can see how things would thus enter into the funny zone. For example, a few days or weeks AFTER your Mom dies, if your anxiety starts to go down, and someone reminds you of something funny she did, THEN you would probably start to laugh. This is why, according to this theory, we say “too soon” when someone jokes after a tragedy. The anxiety level hasn’t gone down enough yet.
Likewise, when you start being able to see the funny thing that previously was out of your vision, then you start getting to the point where you can laugh at it. Or when you start talking to something that you might have a reasonable expectation would react, like your dog ignoring you calling his name, that is where laughter could begin to come in.
I tried to present examples that were “far-end” and isolated with the various variables in the equation, to hopefully demonstrate in a clear way how this can function to predict what will or won’t be funny. There are of course examples that involve multiple variables or where it’s more subtle and depends on our own individual opinions and things and moods that we could also do.
On page 15 of the second paper, under “bad jokes,” I tried to do exactly this...taking a joke that won a “bad joke” contest, analyzing it within the theory, and adjusting multiple things about it, including improving the pun, to the point that it gave me some urge to laugh at it.
Oh, lastly, in regards to surprisingly funny, something that violates a very deeply held expectation (with the other variables being within an acceptable range) would be an example of something that’s surprisingly funny, like if your boss who you’ve known for years suddenly has an epic fail. I have this on page 19 of the second paper under “I didn’t see that coming.”
Hopefully this decently addresses the concern.