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The Science of Humor
Hugh Pickens writes "The sense of humor is a ubiquitous human trait, yet rare or non-existent in the rest of the animal kingdom. But why do humans have a sense of humor in the first place? Cognitive scientist (and former programmer) Matthew Hurley says humor (or mirth, in research-speak) is intimately linked to thinking and is a critical task in human cognition because a sense of humor keeps our brains alert for the gaps between our quick-fire assumptions and reality. 'We think the pleasure of humor, the emotion of mirth, is the brain's reward for discovering its mistaken inferences,' says Hurley, co-author of Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind. With humor, the brain doesn't just discover a false inference — it almost simultaneously recovers and corrects itself. For example, read the gag that's been voted the funniest joke in the world by American men. So why is this joke funny? Because it is misleading, containing a small, faulty assumption that opens the door to a costly mistake. Humor is 'when you catch yourself in an error, like looking for the glasses that happen to be on the top of your head. You've made an assumption about the state of the world, and you're behaving based on that assumption, but that assumption doesn't hold at all, and you get a little chuckle.'"
Now, this is funny: Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
Big Brother is Watching You.
Don't expect any replies from the German readership.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/jokes.cognitive.txt
My German's a bit rusty, but so far I get that this joke includes a nun who is stuck in John Mayer in some fashion. Then a dog does something with pancakes.
I need to hear the rest of it so badly./p.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Monty Python - The Funniest Joke In The World
Humor is when you catch yourself in an error
But The Funniest joke in the (english speaking?) World reckons that people from different cultures find different styles of humour to be more/less funny.
So there appears to be a conflict here. You'd expect everyone's brain to be wired to catch the same sorts of errors or false inferences, yet if there's a cultural component to humour that contradicts the "error" theory.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
This makes sense in the context of something I've noticed: the more extreme and deeply-held your views, the less likely you are to have a functioning sense of humour. In particular, hard-core religious people seem to have none whatsoever. If your dogma is so entrenched and rigid, then you aren't going to make self-correction and ambiguity a strong part of your mental tool-kit.
Never trust someone without a sense of humour, kids.
(Of course, too much can be a bad thing, too, at least insofar as maniacal giggling whilst ripping your still-living victims organs out can be considered humorous...)
Would you like a slice of toast?
What, did Randall run over your dog or something? All you do is sound like you have a grudge. I really do pity you if you have this much vitriol against people just because they read a webcomic because it entertains them. And as for the "ancient jokes", did you ever think that maybe people find them funny because they can relate to them?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Except possibly the German fans of Monty Python.
According to Google, the translation is:
If nunstück is git and slotemeyer? Yes! Beiherhund or the gersput flipperwaldt!
Hilarious.
Mod parent down it translates multiple words of the German version of the joke if you're not quick enough to realize whats happening you may have to spend several weeks in the hospital.
comedy = tragedy + time
Are you the guy who keeps ranting about how bad xkcd is every time someone posts a link to an xkcd comic? If so, I think you may need to seek professional help (hell, the fact that you have a greasemonkey script to make sure you don't see links to xkcd is probably enough of a reason to consider this).
yet if there's a cultural component to humour that contradicts the "error" theory.
Indeed. Vast categories of jokes make fun of a group (different race, different cultural background, certain hobbies, certain lifestyles, etc.), including this one by the way. The stereotype this plays on is "hunters are stupid rednecks who shoot first and think later". Hunters would probably find the joke less funny but probably the "researchers" didn't define a category for them, so it didn't how up on their stats...
How about jokes perpetuating stereotypes about minorities or whatever strongly-held views the audience has? Jokes that would offend an average audience but not the intended one.
Sadly, I don't have any deeply religious friends to experiment on.
I didn't expect the Spanish inquisition!
NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition. Our chief weapon is surprise! Surprise and fear, fear and surprise. Our two main waepons are...
I'm sure you know the rest :)
All the same, I'm not surprised at the North Americans not enjoying puns. They seem to like "long" stories either. Too much phoenetic spelling gives rise to less attention on the basis of the words, although with the Canadians, it is a little surprising.
A comedian friend of mine has said that although Irish, UK and most European audiences will take delight in a story style joke, the Americans have to be forced to understand that *short line delivery* it's a joke, laugh now.
Perhaps there could be quiite a few psychological studies undertaken on why "Americans and Canadians preferred jokes where there was a strong sense of superiority".
From TFA:"Bizarrely, computer analysis of the data also showed that jokes containing 103 words were thought to be especially funny. The winning "hunters" joke was 102 words long.
[...] He gasps: "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator says: "Calm down, I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a gunshot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says: "OK, so now what?
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Plenty of humor (or satire) is about laughing at yourself in a normal everyday situation, but it works better when it's presented to you in a witty manner. I mean our everyday lives are funny and tragic, anything, from relationships, to work, to leisure, to death even. Tragedy and comedy are just two ends of the same stick.
You can't handle the truth.
just because it mentions SQL injection,
You mean the famous "Bobbie Tables" one? Yeah, but that one is funny as hell, sorry if you didn't get the humor. And yes, it does not just drop the buzzwords "SQL injection", but actually constructs a small story around it. And I just checked, the strip doesn't even mention "SQL injection", it just shows the consequences of one...
Of course, a webmaster having been called from his weekend because a goat wandered on to his site might find SQL injection less funny, but the same is true of the hunter who just shot his mate.
The reason we don't see it so much in the animal kingdom is two-fold:
1. We're lousy observers, bringing our presumptions with us;
2. There's fewer opportunities.
To make the claim that it's rare or even non-existent (in other words, you don't even know) with zero proof (and something that's contradicted by observation of animals at play or interactions of animals and their owners) is just plain junk.
So that's why FAIL is LOL.
... say your girl is a lousy lay, but I want you to know that that's not my experience at all.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Am I the only one who noticed that the 'funniest joke' wasn't all that funny... then read the rest of the article and wondered what they'd cut out to get the 102-word joke down to less than 80?
Just what could be in those 20-something words to make the joke so much funnier?
“We don't allow faster-than-light neutrinos in here,” says the bartender.
A neutrino walks into a bar.
It's too bad that the GP's comment is modded down to -1. Of the 40 or so comments posted here so far, it's the only one that takes anything resembling a scientific approach toward analyzing humor. The rest are just people posting off-topic comments repeating jokes they heard elsewhere, or posting snide remarks like yours. Also, nothing in the GP's comment sounds like a grudge to me, nor is it vitriolic. It sounds like a very reasonable and intellectual analysis of XKCD comics and their impact on the the internet community.
My dog watches Seinfeld but I don't know if it's for the jokes.
If you think humor or "mirth" is rare or missing in animals you haven't been paying attention, or you're too concerned with your colleges accusations of anthropomorphism.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
According to the funniest-joke-in-the-world article, jokes with 103 words were considered especially funny, however the winning joke has 102 words. That supports my opinion that the joke works a little better if you change the line to "First, let's make sure he's really dead." It's a more plausible phrasing that makes the emergency-services person's intention clearer (to the audience), but works equally well when misunderstood by the hunter.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Google has a special filter which prevents translating dangerous jokes like that. You should be happy, Google just saved your life.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
actually, someone put corn flakes in this guy's piss, today.
that's why he's a grouch.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Forwarding/referencing/reposting xkcd comics is a way for a large minority of socially challenged people to express themselves in a way free of normal societal constraints. In other words, it's nerd humor, and there's nothing wrong with that. The Internet has given lots of small-but-passionate groups a voice.
anyone who has spent any time in an academic or laboratory setting would've seen years, or even decades, ago.
Oh, so you are a hipster of computer science. Interesting!
Apple users and xkcd are one in the same? Seriously? I'm in the first camp and don't get the second camp at all. I think the two are mutually exclusive, unless there's some sort of strange hybrid "I find SQL injection on my Mac to be funny" personas out there.
Whoosh?
der uber whoosh
rewriting history since 2109
Americans tend to vote their jokes into public office.
rewriting history since 2109
What's German for "whoosh?"
Whooshenstauffe
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Over the years, I've had, and met, several dogs who liked to play jokes on people - barking just at the right time to startle them, one who liked to pull chairs away from people as they sat down, and my current dog, who finds great entertainment in breaking wind on house guests, but only if they react in surprise. I suspect that their claim of humor being rare or non-existent in the animal world was due to one of these:
1) Confirmation Bias - they decided the result, and then only accepted as valid evidence that supported their claim. This is usually the result of religious views that humans are "special" and thus animals need to be lessened by taking away permission for them to experience the world the way humans do. ("No, animals do not really feel pain! Also, uh, they don't understand jokes either! It's because my god didn't give them souls!")
2) Lack of experience with animals - they've never actually spent any time around animals, and are thus talking out of their asses (the posterior orifice, not the donkey)
It is likely hard to test how humorous animals are as their mimic is hard to rate or nto at all. E.g. a raven who has just stolen the food of another raven, hiding behind a bush and watching the other raven upset jumping around the hiding place. If you see how the watching raven is behaving you get easy the impression he is laughing his ass off. However without a brain scan we can not "proof" this (providing we can figure where the humour center / laughing center in bird brain is).
I mean every few years we get surprised by some research that says: figured that a lizard can learn under wich cup the reward is, and that every mistake of choosing the cup leads to a longer waiting time for the next "test + reward". Doh, so an animal with a brain of the size of to rice corns can learn.
With birds, especially doves, they made experiments about counting and simple arithmetic. You have two bowls with a few grains. And a switch that can be activated with the peak of the bird. The test is to let the bird peek on that switch as often as the sum of the two bowls of grains are. The birds learned that pretty fast. One particular case is this: the dove stopped in front of the switch. It had figured it either has miscounted or miscalculated. So it went back to the bowls (now empty) and repeated the pickings in each bowl and "calculated/counted" again. Then it activated the switch successful.
Or you now about this parrot, where a researcher taught a few hundred words? The parrot started to correct other parrots when they practiced "speech". He could understand and make simple english sentences, like "I want to go into the garden", "Give me apple".
My assumption is that most live is able to learn, a smaller amount is "intelligent" to a certain level, and a smaller part is so intelligent that it also has humour. The question is more: why is everyone neglecting this and assuming that we humans are unique?
Another story: a cat is proudly prancing on the top of a roof. It slipped and avalanched down the roof into the roof gutter/rain pipe. After it landed it hid in the gutter for a moment (5 - 6 seconds) then it carefully stuck its head out and watched around: "did someone see me?" was written on her forehead. When she was sure no one saw her she continued to "prance" along the rain pipe ... if she had no humour, how can she be felt ashamed of falling down the roof?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
How do you make a duck soulful?
Put it in the microwave till it's Bill Withers.
or should I say Woody Allen?
bjd
Whereas the much superior Babelfish translation is
If the piece of now is git and Slotermeyer? Yes! Beiherhund the or the Flipperwaldt gersput!
The sense of humor is a ubiquitous human trait, yet rare or non-existent in the rest of the animal kingdom.
I have known parrots with excellent senses of humor.
The best part of the summary was "voted the funniest joke in the world by American men"
How can something be voted the funniest joke in the world by american men? Wouldn't that make it the funniest joke of american men?
This is very telling of the state of american society today. The outside world is so insignificant that their funniest joke has to be the funniest joke in the world.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
...apparently this started as a real 911 phone call from a 'Dick Cheney'.
A man spends the first half of his life accumulating stuff, the second trying to get rid of it all.
Somebody got paid to do a study any Henny Youngman era comedian could have told them the result of.
Why aren't illusions hilarious?
I think the two are mutually exclusive, unless there's some sort of strange hybrid "I find SQL injection on my Mac to be funny" personas out there.
Speaking just for myself, I find an SQL injection on your Mac would be hilarious...
Work like no one is watching. Dance like you've never been hurt. Make love like you don't need the money.
Sorry that I don't know the author, but I've found much wisdom in those few words. Perhaps it explains why puns and double entendre(sp?) are so popular?
Seriously though, it may be because those "hard core" ultrareligious sorts live in fear (which IMO is suboptimal). It's not funny if you feel unsafe.
Sounds plausible. I've heard theories that humour is associated with the release of tensions - people *do* laugh at inopportune times, frequently when something stressful has happened, not just when there's a "funny" in the air. So if religious types never feel relaxed (or, conversely, never feel under tension) then the release will never happen and the laughter won't be caused.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The "two goldfish in a tank"-joke doesn't have a loser. I'd be really interested in a list of animals where humor has been observed, and how that manifests (or can be detected). To be genuine, it mustn't be something trained on (like most of dogs "humanoid" behaviour).
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
Ah, you're no fun. You are no fun at all.
The rest of this is addressed to all readers except poster of parent, an intellectual whose greasemonkey filters will hack the hell out of these words and leave them bleeding all over his viewing screen.
My favorite xkcd is number 312 which needs no apology (sorry xkcd, but R.Frost would have approved of it). Of course you have to know a bit about an American Poet Laureate, have at least a nodding acquaintance with Lisp, and understand the role that DWIMNWIS has played in the perlish philosophy. Just finding a way to connect all three of those different realms together is hilarious in and of itself; to do so in rhyme, meter, and parody is over the top.
Generally speaking an xkcd strip is not funny of itself, but provokes laughter by demonstrating some kind of weakness in one of the intricate mental structures of our day. So naturally it can only be appreciated by those who remain open to continuing their education. Which leads to another humorous gem:
Definition of an intellectual: someone who has been educated beyond their intelligence. -- A. C. Clarke.
Will
print " duck" * 102, "marriage!"
I would say that my cat's schtick of frantically crying and scratching at the door to be let in and then casually sauntering away when I open it would qualify. She usually does this at least three times before consenting to enter, and seems quite amused by the whole thing.
"No matter where you go, there you probably are." -- Buckaroo Heisenberg
I don't agree with alot in TFA. I see laughter as an instinct related to conquering a threat. This makes sense in several ways...
- Sounds/looks similar
You have the "Haa Haa Haa" sound combined with showing teeth, the slight arching of the back with each sound, etc.
Even a little smirk says "Heh, easy win. Barely worth my time."
- By laughing, you show that you're not afraid of the challenge set before you.
That challenge could range anywhere from a real threat to a small mind-test (ie. a joke).
- By laughing in the face of danger, you show to yourself and those around you, that you're in control.
This raises morale for both you and those around you. This is the reason why humour is so very important in dire situations. If people can laugh at a threat, then the situation doesn't seem quite as bad, and people are more able to continue their struggle against the threat.
- By laughing at jokes you show that you're clever enough to get the joke.
If the joke is too hard, then it's not funny ('cos you didn't manage to conquer it) but you might pretend to laugh just to not look stupid in front of other people. If the joke is too easy, then you won't laugh because that joke is beneath you, and trying to make you laugh at that is (almost?) an insult.
- Being able to laugh at oneself proves that one is strong enough to take criticism.
Someone who get's offended "has a problem", a weakness. But if you can laugh at yourself, then you're in control anyway.
- If you find a joke to be morally wrong then that shows that you're "not on the same page" as the joke teller.
When that happens usually one of two things happen:
1. the joke teller tries to convince you that it really was funny, and will feel insecure if you still disagree, or
2. learns that that sort of humour was overstepping accepted bounds.
This is used to help members in a group understand what's acceptable within that group. A joke is a tool for testing those bounds in a relatively safe way.
Consequences of laughter thus are:
- stress relief, whether from chasing off physical threats ("Hah! And then the little shit ran off."), simulated threats (practical jokes) or even imaginary threats (spoken jokes).
- bonding with the group, because it shows members are "of the same mind".
So what makes something funny? Well, it needs to be:
- a challenge that can be overcome, whether it's a surprise or a constant challenge (such as gaming, which is "fun")
- something within acceptable norms (though often pushing at the edge of those norms, as that makes it more challenging)
- jokes need the right timing to allow listeners just enough brain time to conquer the challenge. Too long... insult ("Boring. Come on. I'm not that slow."). Too short... frustrating ("Hey, I'm not winning here. Give me a descent chance.").
About gaming... So how does this fit in with laughter? Well, I think the driving forces are very similar. We want challenges that we can beat, and the best games are the hard fought victories. If we play socially, then all points above seem to apply. If we play alone, then all the points above, except the social ones, apply.
The reason different cultures fine different jokes funny is because of different social norms.
Perhaps the 103 word joke gives enough time to parse the situation so that one is ready for the punch line.
Hurley: Well, anytime you find yourself making an error, it’s a downer initially. The initial emotional response to any discovery of error in your understanding of the world has got to be “uh oh.” But in humor, the brain doesn’t just discover a false inference, it almost simultaneously recovers and corrects itself. It gets the joke. The pleasure of the punch line is enhanced by that split second of negativity just before the resolution.
Well, my interpretation is that after the “uh oh” moment, one sees, then understands, thus conquers. And
Well, let's see.
Do you mean this joke:
Q: Two goldfish are in a tank.
A: One says, "Do you know how to drive this thing?"
That definitely has a loser: The person being told the joke is made to think "fish tank" by the context presented by the teller of the joke, and then is ambushed by the teller of the joke specifically by being made to know they were thinking incorrectly -- it's a military tank. The laughter comes from the listener when they realize they were wrong; from the teller at the realization of the listener they've been had. Dominance and submission, both.
Or did you have another "two goldfish" joke?
I just gave you one (abbreviated, but pretty obvious.)
Ever see a cat hide from another cat or dog, smack it on the head when it wanders by, and then "run away", but using very high leaps that aren't effective at distancing instead of the ground covering-speed they are actually capable of? That's an ambush, with a victim, delivered as social one-uppance, but clearly below the threshold of actual violence. Dominance. That's humor, straight up. The laughter *is* the "run."
Dolphins not only ambush and prank, they laugh at the victim's discomfort, too. Ask any dolphin handler. It can be pretty rough humor, too. Like, broken-bone rough. That's more of a reflection of just how powerful an animal they are as compared to humans, I think -- the same jokes on other dolphins wouldn't result in that kind of damage. They'll pull you under when you're swimming, spit water in your face, all kinds of dominating pranks.
Parrots... those are considerably harder to explain, as the behavior is, in fact, linked with their use of language, and that varies enormously by the individual parrot. I'm going to punt and say you need to live with one. They're bloody hilarious, though, believe me.
Dogs... they exhibit a wide range of intelligent behaviors (as do cats, for that matter), but as far as humor goes, just play "throw the stick" with one that hasn't been trained to fetch, and see how easy it isn't to get the stick back, and how the dog will tease in the manner of "I have the stick, here, it's almost in your reach, whoops, you're too slow, aren't you?" Straight up dominance, you're the victim, sub-violent. If you enjoy being teased, then we have submission as well (though note how quickly being teased gets old... submission is a hard place to maintain cheerfully.) It's humor.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
"We laugh so we may not cry" - Roger Ebert
"So, in sum, what are we? We are the creatures that know and know too much. That leaves us with such a burden again we have a choice to laugh or cry. No animal does either. We do both, depending on the season and the need." - Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes)
This cognitive scientist seems to me to be only looking at a specific type of joke - the sleight of hand ones. He doesn't seem to account for the dark humorists - guys like Kurt Vonnegut, Danny DeVito, Bobcat Goldthwait or Woody Allen - who confront their audience with things that are so sad that all you can do is laugh so you don't cry. He also doesn't account for why people laugh for joy (or cry tears of joy). In Kurt Vonnegut's non-fiction A Man Without a Country, he does a great job of analyzing humor and it doesn't require cognitive science (I went to grab it but realized I loaned it to a friend).
Some other things that need to be accounted for: Why people with Asperger's syndrome tend to lack humor or have very strange senses of humor. Why does my friend's wife consider all my favorite comedians to be offensive and unfunny (how can anyone not enjoy Robin Williams' stand-up?) and I consider her sources of comedy to be banal and unfunny? We were watching Bobcat Goldthwait's World's Greatest Dad, for instance, and my friend and I were laughing so hard we had to pause the movie a couple times until we could compose ourselves. During that same scene his wife was on the verge of tears, calling us sick fucks for laughing. She thought the movie was a very sad drama! She couldn't even sit through Sleeping Dogs Lie.
Some questions are best left for philosophy and the question of humor is definitely one of them. Understanding what the brain does when a person is confronted with a humorous situation doesn't really explain why people have a sense of humor and what humor really is. All the examples here are the sleight of hand jokes, and his conclusion that they're funny because they're basically brain farts was something that Vonnegut already concluded about these jokes without studying the human brain. Then there's also toilet humor - completely unaccounted for in this guy's examples.
Vonnegut claimed this to be the funniest joke in the world, which is one of the sleight of hand type jokes this guy is focussing on:
"Last night I had this crazy dream where I was eating flannel cakes. When I woke up, the blanket was gone!"
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
I wonder if jokes are like music, that it is hard to create something that wouldn't more or less resemble something that already exists.
rst, this has to have been written by someone who has either never lived with dogs and/or cats and/or parrots ...
In particular, they've obviously never lived with cockatiels or budgies. Those critters' senses of humor stand out to even casual observers. We have two cockatiels and a blue-crowned conure. The conure shows little humor, and considers the cockatiels pests who should be attacked at any opportunity. She has a scary beak that we were afraid of for her first month in our house. The 'tiels figured out early on that they can easily outfly her, and they torment her relentlessly. This includes picking up food that they know she likes, landing with it just out of her reach, and eating it while watching her. They know just how close they can get and still be safe. And you can see the joy on their little faces as they do this. A humorless animal would stay away from a bigger, stronger, antagonistic opponent, but these little guys clearly enjoy teasing her.
Their behavior would definitely fit into the "making someone seem silly or stupid or incompetent" classification.
Many other parrot owners can no doubt post descriptions of their pet's humor.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Vüsch.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
See:
http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s15e02-funnybot
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
clowns.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Wooosh.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Funniest_Joke_in_the_World
Load of fucking babba.
I'll admit I do find the occasional xkcd comic amusing. Sometimes, the corresponding xkcdsucks entry is also funny. Go figure.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I think you're projecting human emotions on to that cat. For a cat to feel embarrassed it would have to be able to understand that other creatures have thoughts, which is a capability that has only been found in humans and the other great apes. Cats (& dogs) definitely have emotions, I've had enough of them to be sure of that, but I don't think shame is one of them. If they truly felt ashamed, then my dog wouldn't keep getting up on the leather couch when I'm gone. Oh, sure, she puts on a good show of being sorry when I get home, but I've learned to recognize that as typical pack behavior -- being submissive when the pack leader is mad at you. She doesn't actually regret getting her fur all over the couch, otherwise she'd stop doing it.
Condensed version: A guy phones home; maid answers. Guy asks to talk with his wife. Maid says she's in the bedroom having sex with her lover. Enraged, guy tells maid to get his gun and kill the wife and lover. Minutes later, guy hears gunshots; maid picks up phone and asks, "what next?" Guy says to drag the bodies into the back yard, past swimming pool. Maid says, "what swimming pool?" Guy says, "is this 555-1234?"
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I'm not the other poster, but he's right. I get the xkcd jokes. I get the references. They just aren't funny.
According to the article the world's funniest joke is 102 words long. Also, it is claimed that jokes 103 words long are the "funniest" length. Finally jokes with the word "duck" in them also are funnier.
Therefore change "there were two hunters..." to:
"there were two DUCK hunters..."
(Not only have you now included the word "duck" but you've know made the joke the optimal length! Did I really have to explain that?)
Did anyone here besides me find it rather ironic that the article was supposed to be about how humor works, yet the author told that joke so badly that it wasn't funny?
It really is a decent joke, when it's told properly.
What separates recognizable humor from The Joker's mental illness is consensus (per TFA, the funniest joke is determined by votes). At least, that's the methodology according to TFA. I may find a joke insanely hilarious, but it has to be modded up by society to be measured as humorous. And if some things are found only funny in hindsight, cockroaches will probably have the last laugh.
Gently reply
How do you make a duck soulful?
Put it in the microwave till it's Bill Withers.
Stuff it with a shoe?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Or they're trying to drive a glass bowl. That's funny too.
I don't know if it would be the funniest. But the shortest joke is: A smart Pakistani [eoj].
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The rest of the "comics" are just ancient jokes that anyone who has spent any time in an academic or laboratory setting would've seen years, or even decades, ago.
This. For the significant portion of the population which hasn't spent time in an academic or laboratory setting, the jokes are new.
My mother-in-law's African grey likes to sound the fire alarm when she's cooking, and calls the dog a "good boy" then laugh when the dog is in trouble. He also likes to memorize a telephone's ring and some of the sound effects from casual Flash games (to make you go looking at your screen). The last dog he used to call by name, sometimes in what I could only call by an impersonation of my wife's voice, often when the dog was on the other side of a latched door or when he had just been told to stay.
And yes, it does not just drop the buzzwords "SQL injection", but actually constructs a small story around it. And I just checked, the strip doesn't even mention "SQL injection", it just shows the consequences of one...
Precisely. The joke isn't "SQL injection is possible", it's "someone named their child to a string of gibberish just to crash a database". And it was delivered in a funny way.
Q: Two goldfish are in a tank.
A: One says, "Do you know how to drive this thing?"
Well, I understood the joke differently. I thought the fish was wondering how to drive the fish tank, and found that funny. Never thought of a military tank.
Maybe that is because I'm from Europe, and according to the article, we have a penchant for surreal jokes?
I didn't expect the Spanish inquisition!
NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition. Our chief weapon is surprise! Surprise and fear, fear and surprise. Our two main waepons are...
Not so.
When the tribunal of the Inquisition arrived in a city, it proclaimed a time of grace of about a month, in the course of which the heretics could of their own volition confess their errors with the certitude of undergoing only light and secret spiritual penances. After this delay, the inquisitors would publish the edict of the faith which ordered all Christians, under penalty of excommunication, to denounce the heretics and those who protected them. The Inquisition did not have at its command a secret police or a network of spies. It counted upon the collaboration of the Catholic people, acting in this way more as a guardian of the social consensus than as an oppressive apparatus of the State.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
Google has a safeguard, oderweiss the translation attempt would crash all the servers in the world.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jciYm_dtnxY&feature=related
I find much more coherent the explanation that says that humor is a signal of no-danger. If somebody falls down and hurts himself, you don't laugh. If you laugh, the rest of the members of the tribe know is nothing dangerous.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Likewise, sometime the Garfield is funny as well as the Garfield without Garfield.
I thought the two hunters joke in the article was pretty darn funny, so I posted it a couple of hours ago on Facebook. My friends sent this news story, about a Vermont hunter who accidentally shot his friend and then turned his own rifle on himself (I immediately took down the joke) http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/27/9049544-two-dead-in-vermont-hunting-accident So I guess humor is in timing,. Perhaps timing (rate of global extinctions) also explains why the animals aren't laughing.
Gently reply
Interesting idea, but I think mistaken. That there would always be a loser and a dominance struggle suggests one cannot be amused by one's self.
First, this has to have been written by someone who has either never lived with dogs and/or cats and/or parrots and/dolphins, or else is emotionally retarded; second, humor is much simpler: as far as I can tell, it is predatory -- there is always a loser in an expression of humor. Making someone, or something, the butt of a joke engenders social ordering, or status. To put it another way, at a certain basic level, humor seems to me to range from mildly to extreme dominating behavior. Try to find a joke that doesn't have a victim, or a "butt"; that's the source of even calling someone the "butt of a joke."
I'll agree about animals (sometimes) appearing to have a sense of humour. But you're wrong about jokes.
There are only three jokes - what you describe is one, or maybe two, of the jokes. You don't find it funny (and it's probably not that funny for the audience either) - but slapstick "works" not because someone is being made fun of, but because the audience either identifies with the victim and gets a shock, then relief, when they recognise the victim is not them - or they find the wordplay amusing. The first is the "phew, glad that's not me" (man slips on banana peel), the second is "wow, that took me somewhere unexpected" (witty, clever).
Humour is not something every human "gets" - some are too literal/fundamentalist (take themselves too seriously).
Everything in life can be viewed as winners and losers - sounds like you analyse too much. That's why humour is healthy.
Serve it with some collard greens and chitlins?
The humour of a joke is in the ear of the listener (my apologies to Margaret Wolfe Hungerford). I think that the fact that you think to be funny you need to put someone down or dominate someone else speaks to your own character. Granted that in general people tend to group together and look on those outside the group as outsiders. It is documented human nature. This does lead to this kind of 'alpha' humour and it isn't unusual in most places in the world. But it isn't the only kind of humour, and is relied on more, much more in some places than others. I find American humour relies more on put downs and domination than other places, and this seems to be accelerating. But I don't think that all American humour relies on it. I like Steve Wright and his humour, and I don't see many of his jokes making others the butt of a joke. Bob Newhart did great stand up comedy with little if any put down humour. As an example of humour where others are not the butt of a joke, even though not American look at the movie 'The Full Monte'. It was funny as hell, and I didn't see a mean bone in it. Mind you, even with the name of the movie I don't think we saw any bone in it. (See what I did there!?) And there are a ton of other great movies and comedians who don't rely on meanness and put downs.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Maybe Just the Two of Us know who Bill Withers is
I remember a sort of zoo, a cheap little place in Florida in the days before Disneyworld, where a chimpanzee liked to squirt water from his mouth on tourists who got too close.
I also read or saw in a documentary about an octopus in an aquarium that would squirt water on unsuspecting visitors, and then do a color change that at least one of the keepers thought was associated with laughing. (I think the aquarium was at some university or research facility, but I don't remember for sure.)
These are only anecdotes and the interpretation could be 'projecting' or 'anthropomorphizing', but, how does one know that other species don't have a sense of humor? Absence of proof is not proof of absence after all.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
There's a famous story about the African Grey parrot Alex. One of the researchers was cooking a Cornish Hen, at which Alex exclaimed "Oh No, Paco!" (Paco being another parrot). Upon being told it wasn't Paco, Alex then laughed in a very human style.
We would play a game with my grey where we would touch his tail and say "Got yer tail!"
On day my wife walks past him and he pecks her butt and says "got yer tail!" and cracks up laughing.
Mostly they are like living with a 3 year old. One with a very sharp beak that likes to chew things.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
So many animals play, looks like humour to me.
How can the cerebral dissection of humour in this research be applied to beings that don't have concepts? Absurd. Humourous even...
I am not a robot. I am a unicorn.
Q:What's the most important factor in telling a good jo..
A:Timing.
Have gnu, will travel.
This is. http://www.jokes2go.com/06/4/j24.html
no it isn't
bite my glorious golden ass.
Are those european goldfish or american goldfish?
I am not a robot. I am a unicorn.
oh TANK!....I get it, LMAO
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
I crack myself up all the time.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
I love to sit back and curl up with a good flame war. There is nothing funnier in my book. I love seeing people get all worked up and start ripping each other a new ass on a forum, there is something terribly funny about it for some reason--the seriousness in all of it and the emotion over a text based discussion.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
No, I meant victim -- not loser, victim. Analogous to a mugging. It isn't about content -- it's what the mechanism of a joke does. It either victimizes the listener, or the subject. If you disagree, all you need to do is provide a counter example.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I read it like that too. But I'm from Belgium that might explain it .
Slipping shoelaces ?
I read it like that too ( trying to drive a glass bowl ) .
It's interesting : different people like different aspects of a joke. Which is what the article is all about.
Slipping shoelaces ?
They forgot to mention that the rest of the world found American men to be the funniest...
Balderdash!
If you think that it qualifies to make the audience of the joke the victim, that's more or less in direct agreement with TFS: "the emotion of mirth, is the brain's reward for discovering its mistaken inferences".
As for a counter-example - the interpretation of the fish joke where they're in a fish tank.
I'm gonna guess you're american, in which case TFA explains why you think victim-type jokes is the only sort of jokes.
"Among all of Godâ(TM)s creatures, human beings are the only animals who both laugh and weepâ"for we are the only animals who are struck with the difference between the way things are and the way things ought to be."
-- Methodist Bishop William Willimon
"A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing."
-- William James
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
That's just the victim's failure to understand the joke even after it's been made obvious. Making them all the more the victim. " Did you tell so-and-so the joke?" "yeah, but he didn't get it. Sad."
There's no humor in the idea that they're in a bowl. You can't drive a bowl. There's no alternate cognitive mapping. It's pure linear thinking; not funny at all. But there is dominance in relating a joke someone doesn't get. That's part of what jokes are about. There are only three kinds that I am aware of: one where the victim is the person being told the joke, like the goldfish joke, or where the victim is in the story itself, or where both are true vis this generalized "location" joke (you can swap the locations to any two locations to localize it):
An older couple pulls their car into a full service gas station in [A]. The attendant comes over, asks "fill 'er up"? The man behind the steering wheel says "yes, thanks", while the woman in the passenger seat says "Eh? What'd he say?" Driver leans over, speaks loudly, "Asked about filling us up." Woman: "Oh." So the car is filling up, and the attendant wanders back to the driver side window, asks the driver "Where you from?" Driver: "We're from [B]." Woman: "Eh? What'd he say??" Driver leans over, loudly informs: "He asked where we're from." Woman: "Oh." The attendant, catching on that the lady is very hard of hearing, ducks his head down to the driver's window and in a low, conspiratorial tone says "I was in [B] once... had me the worst lay of my entire life." Woman: "Eh? What'd he say??" Driver leans over, speaks loudly: "He said he knows you."
That joke manages to victimize the woman, the listener, and place [B] in one short story.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Just because an animal mimics laughing, does not mean they understand humor, or are laughing at something. Just as a computer playing the laughing sounds does not mean it either.
This just in! Scientists have a sense of humor. Scientist, meet Dante. Like always, you're 1000 years too late. Just like your big bang theory. Pick up a fucking book.
The latest German joke, very popular amongst Germans, especially politicians, is the following:
Germany will not be hurt by the Euro crisis.
Dedicated to Merkel.
Two fish are in a fish bowl. One says, "Do you know how to drive this thing?"
There are several Europeans higher in this thread who interpreted the joke that way and found it funny. So let's actually make that the joke, which has been proven funny to many people. So, now that the joke is perfectly understood and still found funny, who is the victim?
Any behaviorist who believes that many common animals do not possess a sense of humor is an incompetent observer.
Well, my main point is: all this is hard to measure/test. ... and you can not "force" it to obey you (without breaking the otherwise fine relationship ... at least I assume so).
Your dog does not know that you hate the fur on the coach. But it does know you don't like it laying there. Otherwise it would not make the show. So question is: does it get on the coach because it likes you so much, and likes the smell there? Or is it like a child that only does it because it is forbidden, to see if it can get away with it? Or does it indeed have a smile on the face when it hears you coming and jumps down from the coach?
Fact is: the dog does it for a reason
Yes, it might be a typical submissive pack behaviour, but why does it put itself into the position to (need to) be submissive?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Reenacting, badly: Vermont deer hunter accidentally kills friend, then commits suicide.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
The finding that people in the US and Canada prefer jokes which have a strong sense of superiority very aptly illustrates the cultural problems in our countries. I can't speak for Canada, but in the US there is a huge amount of political division. Jokes which show someone else to be stupid reinforces this feeling. But why would this qualify as and get a reaction of mirth?
My thoughts are that there is no superiority complex without an inferiority complex beneath it. I myself experienced this in my teens. Superiority compensates for the feeling of inferiority. They are both divisive in the same way - separating a person from others. When a joke shows a stupid person, you can feel "humor" because it reveals the gap in the hidden assumption that you are inferior. This is a sad kind of humor because it reinforces the divisiveness of your beliefs. It's the same kind of hollow humor that a bully feels when putting someone down. (insert Nelson's "HA-hah")
In the "funniest joke", there is a clash of perspectives in which the hunter is shown to be a dunderhead. It's universally funny because it's unexpected, and additionally funny to Americans because of the superiority aspect of it.
The European preference for off-beat, surreal humor shows an appreciation of creativity, and is a much more self-assured sense of humor. Like two friends making up an increasingly bizarrely hilarious situation, each adding humorous elements to it - it's a humor that brings people together.
It either victimizes the listener, or the subject. If you disagree, all you need to do is provide a counter example.
This is an incredibly old joke, back from the days before automobiles. A guy walks into a bar, orders a beer and says to the bartender "That's a nice horse outside, is it yours?" The bartender says yes. The guy says, "I can make your horse laugh."
"Impossible", says the bartender. The fellow replies "I'll bet you fifty bucks". The bartender makes his bet, the guy walks outside and whispers in the horse's ear, and the horse laughs uproarously.
"Amazing", says the bartender, handing the fellow his winnings. The fellow says "I'll bet you another fifty that I can make him cry."
The bartender says "I have a feeling I'm going to lose, but you're on. But you have to tell me how you do it."
The guy walks outside with his back to the window, nobody can see what he's doing, but when he walks back in, tears are streaming down the sobbing horse's face.
"Ok, so how did you make that horse laugh?"
"I told him my dick was bigger than his."
"How did you make him cry?"
"I showed him."
Note that the humor wasn't in the victim losing the bet. Monty Python's "brain surgery" sketch (as well as many of them) have no victims either.
Free Martian Whores!
He forgot puns. I got a laugh out of a guy by making a word up.
Free Martian Whores!
Calling that humour is a massive strech. You see similar behaviour in youg children - they annoy the crap out of you when you're trying to do something, then wonder off to do something else as soon as you finally acknowledge them. It's a desire for attention, not an attempt to be funny.
Why would you need to to write crappy code to find an SQL injection joke funny? What makes the joke funny is that other people write crappy code. The joke lets you feel a little smug and superior to them.
If she just wanted attention she would come in to be petted; she's certainly not shy in that regard. This is a deliberate ploy to get me to repeatedly stand there holding the door open like an idiot. When she tires of the game, that's when she comes into the room. I have a child, and it's not the same behavior at all. I'm not overly given to anthropomorphism, as I've been around veterinarians and vet techs most of my life. Still, it appears to me to be my cat playing a prank on me.
"No matter where you go, there you probably are." -- Buckaroo Heisenberg
Humour is almost entirely social, not individual, so looking at it on an individual level is severely limited. Human intelligence and thinking is also primarily social. Language.
Stupidity is its own reward.
There's no humor in the idea that they're in a bowl. You can't drive a bowl.
Contrariwise, I happen to find the idea funny. One, how does the fish know about driving but not know what kinds of things can be driven, or not driven? Two, where would the fish need to drive to?
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
yes it is
Is 1563649 a prime number?
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anthropomorphism
Interesting questions. What's the joke?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Oh, believe me, I know how important phrasing is in comedy. "Gives her one" works very well in British English:
An attractive young women goes into a bar and asks for a double brandy. So the barman gives her one.
An attractive young women goes into a bar and asks for a pint of beer. So the barman gives her one.
An attractive young women goes into a bar and asks for a double-entendre. So the barman gives her one.
"I'd give him/her one" is a common way to express the desire for sexual congress in colloquial British English. This is why the joke is funny. Although now I've explained it, it obviously isn't any more.
No, *you* just don't find them funny. Humor is subjective, and anyone old enough to find slashdot interesting ought to be able to recognize this. The difference between "X just sucks" and "I don't like X" is a massive shift in perspective, but an important one in the process of maturing.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Blitzwooshen.
Don't blame me, I voted for Cthulhu.
Interesting definition: "an interpretation of what is not human or personal in terms of human or personal characteristics". Does this apply, however, when describing a physiological state that an animal happens to share with humans? Is describing a cat's experience of hunger as "hunger" an anthropomorphism? What about emotions, such as fear, contentment, anger? I don't think anyone will deny that most mammals, at least, experience these emotions. Why not mirth? Given recent discoveries in animal cognition, maybe the definition of anthropomorphism needs to be revised.
"No matter where you go, there you probably are." -- Buckaroo Heisenberg
Less than a day after this Slashdot posting, a hunter in Vermont shot his friend and hunting buddy, then himself, presumably out of sadness and grief. It hit the news nationwide because the guy who did the shooting was the son of a state representative.
Makes it kinda hard to laugh at the hunter joke in The Fine Article, no matter how universally appreciated it is.
So yeah, by all means, laugh while you still can. But do so even if Big Brother isn't watching. Events come around quickly enough to make any joke lose its funny.
There is actually a Far Side panel where a fish drives a fishbowl on land; this personally influence my subconscious.
I think Theo de Raadt is very amusing, albeit not intentionally :)
Why did someone mod the parent down? I think he has a point... much of what these neuroscientists say about human behaviour have nothing to do with neurology, but are merely their own common-sense guesses, which lend credibility from the fact that the person making the guess is a renowned neurologist.