I’ve generally modeled humor the way Larson described it in The Prehistory of the Far Side, working from a model he read in MAD magazine—humor is based on simulating circumstances that create a rush that is normally created by abstractions (and thus more accessible to abstract channels humor is conveyed along than, say, eating or sex). The two main abstract rushes are are Social Dominance (put-downs) and Creativity/Discovery (every other kind of joke I can think of).
Discovery channels abrupt reinterpretation of old information, preferably repeatedly. It’s the same rush as when you discover or notice something surprising (“that’s funny...” as “that doesn’t fit my models” is not a coincidence), but optimized for triggering that rush over and over again (if it’s a bad joke, not very optimized in this fashion). The best jokes are those where the various interpretations have implications that lead you on a chain of reinterpretations, or are really unexpected, yet very consistent.
Remember in the sequences, about creativity being rapidly finding solutions of high fit quality but low in search order? The punch line is something that suddenly changes the environment and lets you find an explanation that feels like this because until a moment ago it was low in search order. Creativity is fun. Humor lets you vicariously experience some creativity latent in the joke.
This covers everything from Shaggy Dog stories to puns to the chicken crossing the road. It also explains why jokes get old (you learn them, so you can’t discover them again), and some degrade more gracefully (either they’re elegant enough that you like just thinking about them, or they feel like a puzzle you could get even more out of).
That explanation doesn’t have much meaning to me. For example, I don’t know what is meant by “a rush that is normally created by abstractions”), does this mean the rush of finding a new idea? We can certainly get a rush from learning something new, but I wouldn’t always laugh in those circumstances.
One of my criteria when working on this was that I wanted something that was simple and logical. This of course, doesn’t mean that it’s automatically correct (or that a complex answer is wrong), but I always felt like things that were that common and widespread probably are the result of some widespread and common evolutionary pressure that we could recognize.
I also felt that the likely answer would have something in common with all the sayings and common understandings that we have about humor. Like that we “laugh AT” people, that sometimes people are offended by it, and so on. I thought there was valuable information there about how it functions and the roles it plays, and a “right answer” would probably jibe with those.
But I’m not entirely clear on how the Larson concept works and would probably have to see a lot more clear examples of demonstrations of how it works to be able to get a grasp for it.
Setup:
So a young hippie, the (Respected Elderly Leader Figure) RELF, and (The Butt of the Joke) TBotJ are on a small airplane when suddenly the engine explodes. Before they can get up, the pilot runs out of the cockpit. He says, “The controls are dead and there are only three parachutes on this plane. Sorry, guys, sort it out yourselves!” Meanwhile, he’s at the rack of parachutes, pulling one on. Then he dives out.
TBotJ runs forward to the rack. He announces, “I’m (insert why he feels he’s so important). The world needs me.” Then he grabs and dives.
RELF tells the hippie, (insert appropriately-styled statement that saving young hippie would result in more QALYs than saving RELF at first order)
OK, now we’re in a pickle. Only one parachute, and the person with high social value is giving up their life to someone with unknown, probably low value. This is characteristically self-sacrificing of them, but we might expect that, inspired by the example, the hippy might make some sort of counterargument.
What we wouldn’t expect is a much better solution:
--- punch line:
“Don’t worry, man. TBotJ just dove out of the plane with my backpack!”
Thus implying there are two parachutes left after all, so everything’s okay. +!
BUT wait a moment. How could TBotJ have not noticed that this was a backpack? Doesn’t make sense. +!
BUT wait a moment. Don’t some hippies have really large backpacks with lots of doodads on them? Not so crazy. OR yeah, TBotJ is really that dumb +!
The quality of the landing of the joke depends on whether the listener jumps through these hoops.
Next example:
---- Setup:
The Mad Hatter asked: Why is a raven like a writing desk?
At this point we recognize it’s a riddle. Maybe we’ve heard the usual answers “Poe wrote on both” or whatever the other one is. Maybe we’re trying to think of a new one. But we get instead...
--- punch line:
Because his standards for similarity were set too low. He was mad.
Yes, that DOES answer the question, but not by drawing any actual similarities, just by pointing out the obvious thing you skipped considering by taking the question seriously.
--- setup:
How do you tell if a feminist physicist is dyslexic?
Now we’re looking for similar terms in feminism and physics. Maybe the listener will find something, but chances are low they’ll find this:
--- punch line:
If she burned her kets
Feminists burning things immediately brings to mind bras.
In physics, there is something called the Dirac ‘bracket’ or ‘bra-ket’ notation. It looks like this ″ with ″ being the ket.
Mix in the dyslexia, and we can get the bra backwards, and it comes out as a ket.
If you are able to figure this out in advance, , then then it clearly wasn’t that low in search order, so it’s not that funny.
If you didn’t, then the punch line will give you two discoveries. One, that this connection exists. Two, it is really stupid. Reasonably funny.
If you are not able to figure this out, it will not be funny at all.
Okay, what we can do is compare the predictions of the two theories in relation to these. If they both have similar results (since they both mention pattern-breaking/misplacement), I think we can look instead for places where they might differ, or look for examples that might apply to one and not the other.
Should we start with one? The first joke is unclear because “QALY” isn’t explained, but I think I can fill it in well enough. We’ll use a Hippie, Gandhi, and Justin Bieber for the butt of the joke. (apologies if you’re a Beiber fan).
Plane breaks, pilot runs out, says there’s only three parachutes and grabs one. Beiber then says “I have 10,000,000 twitter followers! And grabs another parachute and jumps.” Gandhi then tells the Hippie, “you are young, so you can create more happiness,” and tries to give him the last parachute. And the Hippie simply shows him two more parachutes and says “It’s okay dude, Beiber took my backpack.”
According to the theory I’ve posted, this is a layered joke with multiple detectable errors (quality gaps)...in both Beiber turning out to be fatally wrong, and in the listener expecting the Hippy to give an argument back to Gandhi.
The reference to the listener having to jump through the hoops is probably nearly the same as saying that the listener has to have the expectation that Beiber didn’t make a mistake and that the joke was going elsewhere.
In this theory (my theory, the posted theory, whatever), I may be able to say that we get additional information about what makes the joke work. Since it states also that the listener must, for example, not be worried about Beiber (or the butt of the joke) dying. So if you used for example, the listener’s child as the butt, they’re a lot less likely to laugh.
Okay. This seems to be a distinction between the two theories where one could potentially give more accurate information about what makes the joke funny/unfunny then the other. What does this alternate theory say about this particular part? How causing anxiety (in this case using someone who the listener would worry about dying), would screw up the humor?
Oi, maybe I shouldn’t have led with that one. It touches on put-down humor, which is what yours is best at and this is weakest at.
(btw, QALY = quality-adjusted life years, a measure often used for comparing the effectiveness of interventions, especially medical or rescue interventions. Basically, ‘you have more life left to live’)
Try the third one. We know it’s a joke, so the reason is going to be dumb. This is about middle-of-the-road in just how dumb it might be, so there’s no real difference in quality, just content. It went in an unexpected direction—so yes, you have a difference, but since it’s not a better or worse direction, it’s not a quality difference.
How causing anxiety (in this case using someone who the listener would worry about dying), would screw up the humor?
If you’re anxious, your joy-of-discovery would be swamped by fear-of-loss. I think the two come out around the same on that one.
Ah, got it. By the way, I like the “low in search order” concept you mentioned above. This is similar to something I just noticed about this theory, which is that puns that are closer to what we already think (like for example, seeing “ass” in the word Association), are less effective than ones that are further down. I think this has to do with what we label as a joke being “too easy” and thus not as funny. Or I guess a pun being too easy.
Anyway...the third joke.
This “kets” joke is a bit more difficult for me to analyze since, as a non-physicist, I don’t know the terms...so I don’t have access to my own instinct to test the reaction. I can analyze why I DON’T laugh much easier than why I would. However, I think I can say a couple things from what I think would be funny if I did get it.
I think you’re right, first of all, that we KNOW a joke is coming (though I think we agree that in most cases it’s more effective when we don’t know it’s coming). But we know it’s coming and I think for people who know the terms it will still have humor.
In this case, I think that what’s important is that we don’t know WHAT the joke will be, even when we know it’s coming. Like being in the dark and fighting, you may KNOW a punch is coming, but if you don’t know from where, it can still catch you off-guard.
Now, I think this is a “layered effect”, but almost superficially. I mean it takes the form of presenting an imaginable scenario of someone doing something very wrong (burning her ket). But that image doesn’t immediately spring to mind for me. Maybe if I knew the term though, it would. Is a bracket/ket printed on a piece of paper? I think that would make it more imaginable (valid by the topic theory) and funnier.
But beyond that, I think it’s also largely a pun. Just as you COULD potentially picture the girl’s error, the joke-teller is making an error themselves by putting a word where it’s not supposed to be.
This is a minor error of course, so it’s a situation where I’d like to have it be a joke where I myself laugh so I can see just how hard I laugh at it. I would think it would be a small chuckle. In the theory though, there are ways to make puns more and less funny, but I don’t want to swamp you with too much text.
Is that enough of an explanation? Should we look for spots where the theories might disagree? Like applying them to conventional sayings? I feel like that’s one of the strengths of this topic theory.
The thing is, with a pure ‘surprise’ interpretation, it doesn’t matter that you know there’s a joke. There can’t be any preparation—there will be a large deviation from expectations because the possibilities are all over the place. If you focus ‘quality’, then you can get a good estimate in advance and end up with a small difference.
You can have two very different ideas of very similar quality. Your theory predicts that finding one instead of the other can’t be funny. That seems off to me.
OH, okay I think I get it. You’re saying that we might expect to find A, but instead find B in its place, and be may not actually be a bad thing, therefore it’s not necessarily a sign of low-quality and this seems odd given the theory? Since “kets” isn’t necessarily a stupid thing in and of itself?
In that case, the act of misplacement can be an error even if the thing that’s incorrectly there isn’t a foolish thing. Like for example, let’s say someone signs up for a speech by John Edward, thinking it’s the psychic medium, and he wants to investigate. Instead when he gets there, it turns out to be the ex-presidential candidate John Edwards.
In this case, John Edwards, the presidential candidate, is more respectable (IMO) then John Edward, but you still might laugh at the error, simply because it was still you not ending up where you intended to be.
Now, if this is the issue (it may not be, if I misunderstood please clarify), I think the reason is that misplacement, including puns, are often found in “layered humor,” where you can detect other signs of error or foolishness or low-quality by the people involved, along WITH the misplacement. You see this a lot in jokes and humor because it’s extra funny.
For example, someone might mistake one button for another on the elevator in a way that’s funny...and AS A RESULT have the elevator close on their foot while they’re trying to leave and make them fall. This is a layered misplacement joke that leads to further physical failure.
You’ll see that MUCH more often, because misplacement by itself isn’t as funny...BUT a simple misplacement can still be funny. It’s like hamburger patty. You can eat it without the bun and the lettuce and tomato...but you don’t see that happening very often.
If this isn’t the issue you’re bringing up, I apologize and maybe you can clarify for me.
I guess I just see this broad wide open polydimensional space of ideas and humor, and you’re condensing it down into a single line. It just doesn’t seem right.
...a single line that expresses itself in a broad wide open polydimensional space of ideas and humor. In the second paper we listed 40 examples of different “blooms” from this single seed. There are countless more.
I don’t think this is unprecedented at all. Take the Theory of Evolution. It’s amazing to me (and of course what we’re discussing is even just a small slice of its results). The whole of Evolution is also a single line (variation and selection) that expresses itself in thousands and even millions of ways.
From this article I see them referencing that there is joy in creating and recognizing new patterns, which I agree with and makes some logical sense. But “abstractions” by itself is very different, which can be just a representation of one thing in another medium, and which doesn’t logically generate pleasure.
The words “abstraction” or “abstract,” also, according to my search function, don’t appear on that page. Given that these can be unclear topics, we sometimes have to take care with our words.
I’ve generally modeled humor the way Larson described it in The Prehistory of the Far Side, working from a model he read in MAD magazine—humor is based on simulating circumstances that create a rush that is normally created by abstractions (and thus more accessible to abstract channels humor is conveyed along than, say, eating or sex). The two main abstract rushes are are Social Dominance (put-downs) and Creativity/Discovery (every other kind of joke I can think of).
Discovery channels abrupt reinterpretation of old information, preferably repeatedly. It’s the same rush as when you discover or notice something surprising (“that’s funny...” as “that doesn’t fit my models” is not a coincidence), but optimized for triggering that rush over and over again (if it’s a bad joke, not very optimized in this fashion). The best jokes are those where the various interpretations have implications that lead you on a chain of reinterpretations, or are really unexpected, yet very consistent.
Remember in the sequences, about creativity being rapidly finding solutions of high fit quality but low in search order? The punch line is something that suddenly changes the environment and lets you find an explanation that feels like this because until a moment ago it was low in search order. Creativity is fun. Humor lets you vicariously experience some creativity latent in the joke.
This covers everything from Shaggy Dog stories to puns to the chicken crossing the road. It also explains why jokes get old (you learn them, so you can’t discover them again), and some degrade more gracefully (either they’re elegant enough that you like just thinking about them, or they feel like a puzzle you could get even more out of).
Hi Luke,
That explanation doesn’t have much meaning to me. For example, I don’t know what is meant by “a rush that is normally created by abstractions”), does this mean the rush of finding a new idea? We can certainly get a rush from learning something new, but I wouldn’t always laugh in those circumstances.
One of my criteria when working on this was that I wanted something that was simple and logical. This of course, doesn’t mean that it’s automatically correct (or that a complex answer is wrong), but I always felt like things that were that common and widespread probably are the result of some widespread and common evolutionary pressure that we could recognize.
I also felt that the likely answer would have something in common with all the sayings and common understandings that we have about humor. Like that we “laugh AT” people, that sometimes people are offended by it, and so on. I thought there was valuable information there about how it functions and the roles it plays, and a “right answer” would probably jibe with those.
But I’m not entirely clear on how the Larson concept works and would probably have to see a lot more clear examples of demonstrations of how it works to be able to get a grasp for it.
Setup: So a young hippie, the (Respected Elderly Leader Figure) RELF, and (The Butt of the Joke) TBotJ are on a small airplane when suddenly the engine explodes. Before they can get up, the pilot runs out of the cockpit. He says, “The controls are dead and there are only three parachutes on this plane. Sorry, guys, sort it out yourselves!” Meanwhile, he’s at the rack of parachutes, pulling one on. Then he dives out.
TBotJ runs forward to the rack. He announces, “I’m (insert why he feels he’s so important). The world needs me.” Then he grabs and dives.
RELF tells the hippie, (insert appropriately-styled statement that saving young hippie would result in more QALYs than saving RELF at first order)
OK, now we’re in a pickle. Only one parachute, and the person with high social value is giving up their life to someone with unknown, probably low value. This is characteristically self-sacrificing of them, but we might expect that, inspired by the example, the hippy might make some sort of counterargument.
What we wouldn’t expect is a much better solution:
--- punch line:
“Don’t worry, man. TBotJ just dove out of the plane with my backpack!”
Thus implying there are two parachutes left after all, so everything’s okay. +! BUT wait a moment. How could TBotJ have not noticed that this was a backpack? Doesn’t make sense. +! BUT wait a moment. Don’t some hippies have really large backpacks with lots of doodads on them? Not so crazy. OR yeah, TBotJ is really that dumb +!
The quality of the landing of the joke depends on whether the listener jumps through these hoops.
Next example:
---- Setup:
The Mad Hatter asked: Why is a raven like a writing desk?
At this point we recognize it’s a riddle. Maybe we’ve heard the usual answers “Poe wrote on both” or whatever the other one is. Maybe we’re trying to think of a new one. But we get instead...
--- punch line:
Because his standards for similarity were set too low. He was mad.
Yes, that DOES answer the question, but not by drawing any actual similarities, just by pointing out the obvious thing you skipped considering by taking the question seriously.
--- setup:
How do you tell if a feminist physicist is dyslexic?
Now we’re looking for similar terms in feminism and physics. Maybe the listener will find something, but chances are low they’ll find this:
--- punch line:
If she burned her kets
Feminists burning things immediately brings to mind bras.
In physics, there is something called the Dirac ‘bracket’ or ‘bra-ket’ notation. It looks like this ″ with ″ being the ket.
Mix in the dyslexia, and we can get the bra backwards, and it comes out as a ket.
If you are able to figure this out in advance, , then then it clearly wasn’t that low in search order, so it’s not that funny.
If you didn’t, then the punch line will give you two discoveries. One, that this connection exists. Two, it is really stupid. Reasonably funny.
If you are not able to figure this out, it will not be funny at all.
Okay, what we can do is compare the predictions of the two theories in relation to these. If they both have similar results (since they both mention pattern-breaking/misplacement), I think we can look instead for places where they might differ, or look for examples that might apply to one and not the other.
Should we start with one? The first joke is unclear because “QALY” isn’t explained, but I think I can fill it in well enough. We’ll use a Hippie, Gandhi, and Justin Bieber for the butt of the joke. (apologies if you’re a Beiber fan).
Plane breaks, pilot runs out, says there’s only three parachutes and grabs one. Beiber then says “I have 10,000,000 twitter followers! And grabs another parachute and jumps.” Gandhi then tells the Hippie, “you are young, so you can create more happiness,” and tries to give him the last parachute. And the Hippie simply shows him two more parachutes and says “It’s okay dude, Beiber took my backpack.”
According to the theory I’ve posted, this is a layered joke with multiple detectable errors (quality gaps)...in both Beiber turning out to be fatally wrong, and in the listener expecting the Hippy to give an argument back to Gandhi.
The reference to the listener having to jump through the hoops is probably nearly the same as saying that the listener has to have the expectation that Beiber didn’t make a mistake and that the joke was going elsewhere.
In this theory (my theory, the posted theory, whatever), I may be able to say that we get additional information about what makes the joke work. Since it states also that the listener must, for example, not be worried about Beiber (or the butt of the joke) dying. So if you used for example, the listener’s child as the butt, they’re a lot less likely to laugh.
Okay. This seems to be a distinction between the two theories where one could potentially give more accurate information about what makes the joke funny/unfunny then the other. What does this alternate theory say about this particular part? How causing anxiety (in this case using someone who the listener would worry about dying), would screw up the humor?
Oi, maybe I shouldn’t have led with that one. It touches on put-down humor, which is what yours is best at and this is weakest at.
(btw, QALY = quality-adjusted life years, a measure often used for comparing the effectiveness of interventions, especially medical or rescue interventions. Basically, ‘you have more life left to live’)
Try the third one. We know it’s a joke, so the reason is going to be dumb. This is about middle-of-the-road in just how dumb it might be, so there’s no real difference in quality, just content. It went in an unexpected direction—so yes, you have a difference, but since it’s not a better or worse direction, it’s not a quality difference.
If you’re anxious, your joy-of-discovery would be swamped by fear-of-loss. I think the two come out around the same on that one.
Ah, got it. By the way, I like the “low in search order” concept you mentioned above. This is similar to something I just noticed about this theory, which is that puns that are closer to what we already think (like for example, seeing “ass” in the word Association), are less effective than ones that are further down. I think this has to do with what we label as a joke being “too easy” and thus not as funny. Or I guess a pun being too easy.
Anyway...the third joke.
This “kets” joke is a bit more difficult for me to analyze since, as a non-physicist, I don’t know the terms...so I don’t have access to my own instinct to test the reaction. I can analyze why I DON’T laugh much easier than why I would. However, I think I can say a couple things from what I think would be funny if I did get it.
I think you’re right, first of all, that we KNOW a joke is coming (though I think we agree that in most cases it’s more effective when we don’t know it’s coming). But we know it’s coming and I think for people who know the terms it will still have humor.
In this case, I think that what’s important is that we don’t know WHAT the joke will be, even when we know it’s coming. Like being in the dark and fighting, you may KNOW a punch is coming, but if you don’t know from where, it can still catch you off-guard.
Now, I think this is a “layered effect”, but almost superficially. I mean it takes the form of presenting an imaginable scenario of someone doing something very wrong (burning her ket). But that image doesn’t immediately spring to mind for me. Maybe if I knew the term though, it would. Is a bracket/ket printed on a piece of paper? I think that would make it more imaginable (valid by the topic theory) and funnier.
But beyond that, I think it’s also largely a pun. Just as you COULD potentially picture the girl’s error, the joke-teller is making an error themselves by putting a word where it’s not supposed to be.
This is a minor error of course, so it’s a situation where I’d like to have it be a joke where I myself laugh so I can see just how hard I laugh at it. I would think it would be a small chuckle. In the theory though, there are ways to make puns more and less funny, but I don’t want to swamp you with too much text.
Is that enough of an explanation? Should we look for spots where the theories might disagree? Like applying them to conventional sayings? I feel like that’s one of the strengths of this topic theory.
The thing is, with a pure ‘surprise’ interpretation, it doesn’t matter that you know there’s a joke. There can’t be any preparation—there will be a large deviation from expectations because the possibilities are all over the place. If you focus ‘quality’, then you can get a good estimate in advance and end up with a small difference.
I’m pretty sure I agree with what you’re saying, but I don’t know exactly what you’re referring to with this paragraph.
You can have two very different ideas of very similar quality. Your theory predicts that finding one instead of the other can’t be funny. That seems off to me.
OH, okay I think I get it. You’re saying that we might expect to find A, but instead find B in its place, and be may not actually be a bad thing, therefore it’s not necessarily a sign of low-quality and this seems odd given the theory? Since “kets” isn’t necessarily a stupid thing in and of itself?
In that case, the act of misplacement can be an error even if the thing that’s incorrectly there isn’t a foolish thing. Like for example, let’s say someone signs up for a speech by John Edward, thinking it’s the psychic medium, and he wants to investigate. Instead when he gets there, it turns out to be the ex-presidential candidate John Edwards.
In this case, John Edwards, the presidential candidate, is more respectable (IMO) then John Edward, but you still might laugh at the error, simply because it was still you not ending up where you intended to be.
Now, if this is the issue (it may not be, if I misunderstood please clarify), I think the reason is that misplacement, including puns, are often found in “layered humor,” where you can detect other signs of error or foolishness or low-quality by the people involved, along WITH the misplacement. You see this a lot in jokes and humor because it’s extra funny.
For example, someone might mistake one button for another on the elevator in a way that’s funny...and AS A RESULT have the elevator close on their foot while they’re trying to leave and make them fall. This is a layered misplacement joke that leads to further physical failure.
You’ll see that MUCH more often, because misplacement by itself isn’t as funny...BUT a simple misplacement can still be funny. It’s like hamburger patty. You can eat it without the bun and the lettuce and tomato...but you don’t see that happening very often.
If this isn’t the issue you’re bringing up, I apologize and maybe you can clarify for me.
I guess I just see this broad wide open polydimensional space of ideas and humor, and you’re condensing it down into a single line. It just doesn’t seem right.
...a single line that expresses itself in a broad wide open polydimensional space of ideas and humor. In the second paper we listed 40 examples of different “blooms” from this single seed. There are countless more.
I don’t think this is unprecedented at all. Take the Theory of Evolution. It’s amazing to me (and of course what we’re discussing is even just a small slice of its results). The whole of Evolution is also a single line (variation and selection) that expresses itself in thousands and even millions of ways.
I’ll continue thinking about what you’ve said.
.
From this article I see them referencing that there is joy in creating and recognizing new patterns, which I agree with and makes some logical sense. But “abstractions” by itself is very different, which can be just a representation of one thing in another medium, and which doesn’t logically generate pleasure.
The words “abstraction” or “abstract,” also, according to my search function, don’t appear on that page. Given that these can be unclear topics, we sometimes have to take care with our words.