Why are jokes funny?

https://www.microryza.com/projects/crowdsourcing-humor-using-humans-and-computers-together-to-write-jokes

by irollboozers • 13 years ago

58 30 13 years ago

Tycho2• 13 years ago

One theory I read (reported by Ayn Rand but accredited to an acquaintance) is that humour is when somebody's perception of reality is undercut. So for instance, someone walking down the street and slipping on a banana isn't funny, but if the person was walking with great dignity/purpose/ostentation, some sort of VIP, then it's funny. Because their perception of reality and their opinion of themselves is at odds with their swift fall from grace.

I think this might be right. When I make people laugh it's usually by giving the impression that I fundamentally misunderstand some fact of reality (or that I perceive myself differently to others).

When we physically laugh it's like a short circuit of one perception of reality breaking through from another.

beachstartup• 13 years ago

i would say that's one type of humor, out of many.

for example, things that affirm certain views of reality are also funny. think about humor about relationships, race, culture, etc.

ckluis• 13 years ago

psychology would say that things are funny of they have a hint of truth to them.

blonde jokes (I'm blonde) are funny because you know a dumb blonde person or it would be without context

rafcavallaro• 13 years ago

I think we already have a good idea why humor is funny. In our closest primate relatives, chimps and bonobos, who also laugh (i.e., the chimp equivalent of laughter) when tickled, laughter is essentially a call meaning "non threat."

Jokes are funny because they relate a story of the transition of the object of laughter from potential threat, to non-threat. For example, a high status individual is a potential economic and social adversary and therefore a potential threat.

Consider: If someone slips on a banana peel it is only funny if it is a high status or would-be high status individual. If a handicapped child slipped on a banana peel it would only engender sympathy, not laughter. If a pompous or powerful and aggressive person slips on a banana peel it is funny because that person has instantly gone from the status of potential threat - someone to be reckoned with - to the status of non-threat.

Jokes, especially those with punch lines, follow a narrative thread where some person or persons make a sudden transition from high to low status, from threat to non-threat.

hmslydia4• 13 years ago

Do we know why jokes are funny? If so, why don't we have an algorithm that can write jokes?

I think you're right that we have some good descriptive models of humor, but we don't have any generative models of humor.

47uF• 13 years ago

It's not hard to think of counter examples to this. Seeing a rival die isn't that funny. A child walking into a glass wall is pretty funny. The interesting question is how we can understand humor generally and fundamentally.

ComputerGuru• 13 years ago

This is completely off-topic, and I'm not one to usually go off on a complete tangent for the sake of something funny, but seeing as this is an article on funny... the first thing that came to mind when reading the title is "Data's been trying to figure this one out forever" (for those that don't know Data: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Data - for those of you that do, please do me the favor of not acknowledging the emotion chip from Generations as canon!)

edit: Yes, the chip is from TNG series, but in the show Data (thankfully) never actually plugs it in.

mpyne• 13 years ago

Wasn't the emotion chip simply one of Lore's chips from TNG? Besides, Data wouldn't have been nearly as entertaining when trapped by the Borg in the next movie if it weren't for that chip. ;)

JoeAltmaier• 13 years ago

Lor stole it; it was intended for Data.

danso• 13 years ago

I thought Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" had a good attempt at an explanation:

The Martian "Mike" being told what being a human is like:

> ‘And while you are waiting, don’t doubt that you are man. You are. Man born of woman and born to trouble…and some day you will grok its fullness and laugh – because man is the animal that laughs at himself.’

Mike figuring out humor and the human condition:

> “I had thought–I had been told–that a ‘funny’ thing is a thing of goodness. It isn’t. Not ever is it funny to the person it happens to. Like that sheriff without his pants. The goodness is in the laughing. I grok it is a bravery…and a sharing…against pain and sorrow and defeat.”

“But–Mike, it is not a goodness to laugh at people.”

“No. But I was not laughing at the little monkey. I was laughing at us. People. And suddenly I knew I was people and could not stop laughing.” He paused. “This is hard to explain, because you have never lived as a Martian, for all that I’ve told you about it. On Mars there is never anything to laugh at. All the things that are funny to us humans either cannot happen on Mars or are not permitted to happen–sweetheart, what you call ‘freedom’ doesn’t exist on Mars; everything is planned by the Old Ones–or the things that do happen on Mars which we laugh at here on Earth aren’t funny because there is no wrongness about them. Death, for example.”

“Death isn’t funny.”

“Then why are there so many jokes about death? Jill, with us–us humans–death is so sad that we must laugh at it. All those religions–they contradict each other on every other point but each one is filled with ways to help people be brave enough to laugh even though they know they are dying.”

antoviaque• 13 years ago

Bergson comes to mind - the central cause of laughter is mechanism applied to life, and all comic effects are articulated around this cause by our imagination.

"The comic is strictly a human phenomenon. A landscape cannot be a source of laughter, and when humans make fun of animals, it is often because they recognize some human behaviour in them. Man is not only a being that can laugh, but also a being that is a source of laughter."

"Laughter requires an indifference, a detachment from sensibility and emotion: it is more difficult to laugh when one is fully aware of the seriousness of a situation."

"It is difficult to laugh alone, it is easier to laugh collectively. One who is excluded from a group of people does not laugh with them, there is often a complicity in laughter. Thus the comic is not a mere pleasure of the intellect, it is a human and social activity, it has a social meaning."

"Because the mind is flexible, always in activity, we tend to attribute these qualities to the body too, ignoring its materiality. But when we are fully aware that the body is a weigh, a burden for the soul, the situation is comic. We laugh every time somebody looks like a material thing, every time we are under the impression that someone is a thing."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughter_%28Bergson_book%29

pjungwir• 13 years ago

Kierkegaard gives a theory in Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. I don't remember the details very well, but it has something to do with contradiction. I seem to remember near the end he offers some way to distinguish between the ironic and the comic.

Alex3917• 13 years ago

As someone who has published a theory on humor that I think is completely unbreakable, I welcome this project and I'll definitely throw my hat in the ring.

hmslydia4• 13 years ago

What's your theory of humor? Send me a pointer and I'll test it!

smoyer• 13 years ago

To get to the other side ;)

hmslydia4• 13 years ago

Historical curiosity. This answer to "Why did the chicken cross the road" can be interpreted two ways: 1. it's obvious, absurdist humor 2. it is a pun on the phrase "other side" meaning the after life.

Betcha never thought of the second interpretation!

Tycho2• 13 years ago

I did personally think of the second interpretation after many years. Prior to that I thought it was just something that sounded like a joke but wasn't actually funny, or maybe some meme whose origins I didn't understand. Once I thought of the second interpretation, I assumed that's what the joke must have been all along. So I was slightly surprised to read your post there.

irollboozers• 13 years ago

Just FYI - http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/2556917/reload=0

There appears to be an evolutionary need for humor, so the unknown theory here could actually shed some light.

Also, laughing yoga. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahhN3Ryw4O4

f1codz• 13 years ago

i saw this video: a couple of puppies were greedily eating from a saucer full of dog food, when one of those doggies, while attempting to dig through the glorious food, toppled over his head right into the saucer. It was a damn funny scene! But none of the other puppies seemed to react, and they all (including our clown) continued to devour :)

whenever i'm thoughtful on the 'meta-humor' discussion, i'm reminded of this scene, because it seems like strong reminder of people's perception of a lighter vein in a scenario in contrast to a puppy's ignorance thereof.

wallflower• 13 years ago

Quoting from "The Comedy Bible" which I read a long time ago.

Basic joke structure is:

Setup + Punchline

Setup = Attitude + Topic + Premise

Example: Robin Williams

Attitude: Parenting is hard

Topic + Premise: "When you have a baby, you have to clean up your act."

Punchline: "You can't come in drunk and go, 'Hey here's a little switch. Daddy's going to throw up on you'"

gotosleep• 13 years ago

Information is funny if, when revealed to us, it is either obviously true or obviously false.

bennesvig2• 13 years ago

As someone who wrote a humor book and am currently working on another, this topic fascinates me. For the last month, I've been analyzing jokes from different comedians, looking for the root of why they're funny.

As I see it, humor is something that ventures outside of our own "world," yet relates to it. Someone else's inside joke isn't funny to you because it doesn't relate to the "world" you live in. This is also true of referential humor like Family Guy. If you don't know the reference, it's generally not funny.

From analyzing about 30 jokes, these are some of the repeating themes I've come across: - Change the context of something (by far the most common) - Taking a phrase literally - Explain something that doesn't need to be explained. - Under exaggerate. - Over exaggerate. - Connect two unrelated things. - Say something predictable and then take what would have been the cliched ending to an extreme.

The core of these elements and many others is that you're taking a shared view of something and manipulating it, whether through changing the context, taking an element to an extreme, or one of the other numerous ways.

Everyone knows if something is funny on a subconscious level, but few can explain why they laughed at something. Much like how most people know if they like a movie or not, but can't articulate the exact elements that caused them to enjoy the story (unless they've read several books on screenwriting/story telling). I'd be very interested in seeing the results from this study.

larrys• 13 years ago

"For the last month, I've been analyzing jokes from different comedians, looking for the root of why they're funny."

Don't forget to take into account the skill, voice, tone, cadence and delivery of the joke.

The same exact words said by different people different ways can be funny or not.

As an example using Mac Speech you can sometimes make even ordinary sentences funny because combining those ordinary words with a rote computer voice can be very funny.

I don't have a particular example handy but some of those http://www.xtranormal.com/ videos that I've seen are good at that.

bennesvig2• 13 years ago

Voice, tone, delivery, etc are huge. Norm MacDonald can say almost anything and make me laugh because of his delivery.

This is a good comparison of delivery from people telling a similar joke: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtuZfREa0ro

guscost• 13 years ago

Here's my theory: http://guscost.com/2012/05/23/comedy/

irickt• 13 years ago

The proposal seems to be a joke. For example, this video review of the existing theories is hand-wavy and totally "blond" (sorry). https://www.microryza.com/projects/crowdsourcing-humor-using...

If this was serious she would at least mention this recent book, which presents a deep and subtle evolutionary explanation, along with a thorough review of past theories, and yes includes lots of jokes: Inside Jokes by Matthew M. Hurley, Daniel C. Dennett, and Reginald B. Adams Jr. http://insidejokesbook.com/

Basically, humor is a learning mechanism. It's funny when we take something to be true and then suddenly discover it to be false (as long as there is no immediate danger).

anandkulkarni• 13 years ago

Much love for the work, Lydia, but if you'd just asked me instead we could've saved you $700 :)

ohwp• 13 years ago

Interesting. I always found it fascinating that a lot of people start laughing when watching the horror in a movie like "Ichi the Killer". Maybe humor is the emotion of the absurd and unreal.

Why are jokes funny?

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