A "Holy Grail" Humor Theory in One Page.

Hi kilobug, skepticism makes for the best investigation and good discussion.

1. In this case, any old error doesn't cause laughter, but it has to be one that violates your assumptions of what you or someone else is capable of. The example is of course anecdotal so I don't have a ton of information, but I would suggest that most of us, especially people trained in computers, don't expect the a person, or don't find it acceptable, for them to not be able to plug in a cord, or not to check, so that would definitely be the type of thing that would illicit laughter from us...though the more it happens, we likely would laugh less and less and start to just become annoyed. It can also be a matter of "I know you screwed up in some absurd way, but I'll be surprised by finding out what exactly you did this time."

2. Something would have to violate what you were taking for granted or already assuming to find it funny. This is similar to the "Accounting Errors" example from page 13 of the second paper. For an example, you may not have expected the cake to be totally perfect, to where some missed seasoning or so on wouldn't be outside of your assumptions. But you probably did, in fact, expect the person to know the basics of what would taste good. Let's say that you bit into the cake, it tasted bizarre, then you found out that the person had tried to bake it with pickles. THAT'S the kind of error that would violate your expectations and cause you to laugh. Especially if they were right there and they genuinely looked like they thought it was a good idea.

3. This is probably a great example of "first person" laughter, where we're actually laughing at our own expectations being sharply wrong. Like how we might laugh if we're looking for our hat and find out it was on our head. The quality-gap in this case is in YOUR ability to estimate what was going on...laughing at yourself and not the person who exceeded expectations, since you didn't expect that your friend could or would do that. As you can see the difference between first-person (at the self), second-person (such as at someone telling you a bad joke), and a known or unknown third person (the usual targets of jokes and humor) create a lot of the confusion.

4. Anxiety makes us less likely to laugh, but a good enough joke can overcome some anxiety, and the pleasure we feel from laughing certainly can make us feel better. Another cool thing about it is that laughter triggers from recognition in the brain of the person laughing, so a good joke can be stronger than simply telling someone that their problem is no big deal. I have a lot of this under the explanation for the saying "laughter is the best medicine" on page 18 of paper 2.

Humor certainly expresses itself in many complicated ways, but I think the underlying mechanism is pretty simple. It's similar to how evolution expresses itself in thousands of ways in how it creates life and programs our instincts, but the underlying mechanism of variation and selection is fairly easy to understand and can be explained in a short form.

I hope some of these explanations for the examples help to demonstrate that. Regardless, friendly skepticism and disagreement is invaluable.

Wrong spot.

HI Stuart,

You can't assign actual values to the amounts, instead it represents the proportions or relationships of the variables.

Particularly how a lack of Quality Expectation (such as if someone is humble), a lack of low opinion of the Quality Displayed (in paper 1 we use the example of how many people don't laugh at homophobic jokes or teasing because they don't feel that a man being gay is a sign of a low quality), a lack of noticeability (not seeing what happened or not knowing physics for an inside physics joke) or a lack of validity (if the joke is very cheesy or corny) can all single-handedly ruin a humorous moment, particularly if one of the multipliers is 0. Just as how feeling too much anxiety (such as if your mother just died) will kill your sense of humor as well.

I don't see any other method to represent these relationships as accurately in as small an amount of space. So I went with an equation.

This appears to be the same claim as the "misplacement" part of the above theory (errors in patterns vs. errors in "abstractions" which in the link that was provided is referred to as "patterns").

The key difference which stands out now, though (before I see it applied to various forms of evidence and humor) is that this version appears to be less elegant, less clear, and has less connection with our common experiences and understanding of humor, so it doesn't fit any of my own criteria for what would make it better as a hypothesis. I also notice this a lot when it comes to Dennett.

First, regarding puns, yes that's how I explain them. But puns and misplacements frequently aren't funny...they usually create humor through 2nd person laughter (at someone else's bold and forced punnery, showing either their lameness or utter disrespect for people who don't like puns), or through being layered with something else (misplacement combined with further physical failure)

Misplacement by itself is kind of like a hamburger patty without any salt, bun, lettuce or tomato. If it's a wrong enough misplacement, it CAN be funny, just like you CAN eat the plain old hamburger patty without preparing it...but it's pretty uncommon. The "flushed with success" example is a layered pun. It's not just the patty. The person is pointing out first that they didn't use puns, implying that it's lame, obvious, easy or silly, then immediately doing it. This is combined with the misplacement. So you get both him purposefully doing something that he just implied isn't good humor, AND the sense of misplacement...it's a hamburger patty combined with some seasoning, which is what we normally see. Plushed with success might still be somewhat funny because he's failing at punning or still "stooping to it" after mentioning it, but not as funny as "flushed" since that has more pun characteristics.

By the way, I'm well-aware that this is one of the least obvious aspects of the theory, and I'm also well-aware that this is the most ripe for me to focus on and try to put more clearly and speak more about. I'm not proclaiming that this is or was stated perfectly, but I do have a strong feeling that I've gotten a handle on what's going on and just need to trim and organize the thoughts on it well.

In general, this theory seems squarely aimed at humour that could be classified as "laughing at someone" (perhaps one's hypothetical self, etc.). There is a lot of humour of this kind, but it's by no means all there is.

At the risk of overgeneralizing (we're covering a lot of ground here)...I'm essentially saying that yes, all humor is laughing at someone, but it's done for the purposes of peaceful group organizing, so it's not as evil or threatening as that might seem...and a lot of laughter is when someone says something or acts something out that we can imagine them saying and would cause us to laugh at them...of which the imagining causes us to laugh.

Also, we usually don't realize which someone we're laughing at. Sometimes the "someone" is an unknown person with an average-person expectation...and often our primitive brain will laugh at what it thinks is an error by an unknown person. and we get confused at who the someone is.

I am fairly sure (just from introspection, which is of course rather unreliable) that I sometimes find things funny because they're much cleverer than they first appear -- the exact reverse of your status loss mechanism. (But it fits nicely with Hurley&Dennett's.) I suppose you could try to cram this into your framework by saying that I am the one whose status is being lowered here, but I don't think this makes sense in your just-so story. What value would there be in drawing attention in a status-lowering manner to one's own mistake? Especially a mistake one has made only internally?

Yes, this is a very valid concern that has been brought up. The example I've used elsewhere is here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww2d_o0N62w&t=2s

Obviously we can find more examples but just one makes things tidy. The commentator (Isiah Thomas) really clarifies what I'm proposing because he laughs after the HIGHER STATUS display by Jordan, but says "Excuse me! I'm sorry!" which I think underlines the idea that this display is making him laugh at his own expectation or claim (in this case that Jordan was losing his athleticism in his mid-30's) being proven so starkly wrong.

The question of WHY we would laugh at ourselves is also a very good one to ask and I've thought about it. I think that 1) There's a "fail-safe" switch for ruining your own status in that having anxiety about it would counteract the reflex, so it doesn't happen in situations that would totally kill your status. And 2) We view people who can laugh at themselves as being likable and socially desirable. This fits with the idea that they accept their own errors being noticed and peacefully placing them wherever they may be in the status order.

You also asked why we would laugh when we're alone. I think laughter is an unconscious reaction, like smiling, that happens whether we're alone or not. We also, for example, sometimes unconsciously talk to ourselves out loud when we're alone.

Typographical errors are not usually funny, even when their validty and wrongness are both comparable to those in a pun. For instance, in the foregoing sentence there happens to be a missing letter. Maybe you noticed it, maybe not; these things are eminently missable.

As you said yourself, the noticeability on that error is very low. It's also not necessarily a display below expected quality. I make typos all the time, I see them all the time. They don't surprise me. So the difference between "Qe" and "Qd" as well as the "N" (noticeability) are both very low or 0 in the equation.

It seems to me that someone who starts out with visibly low status shouldn't be able to generate humour by doing silly things. (This is about the "expectation" term in your equation.) I think clowns (and probably court jesters) are counterexamples, and I still think so having read what you write about them in your papers. Perhaps in some cases (as you propose) one can explain a jester as mocking the king or courtiers and hence abruptly lowering their status, but I don't think that's the whole of what a jester would do and it certainly doesn't apply to a lot of what a clown does.

People with visibly low status can't generate humor AS EASILY as people with high status. They have to find new ways to mess up or sink to new lows. I think clowns dress the way they do because it earns an initial laugh from kids (adults realize that it's an act, but kids wouldn't recognize high status as well as adults if the clown dressed more normally, so the outfit works better there), but they do all other kinds of things and jokes to keep the laughter going. If it was JUST the outfit, that would get a laugh or two, then people would stop. As you said, the same is true of court jesters, they could probably use their outfits to get an initial laugh, then use their low status to get extra laughter out of mocking others, but you're right, they did other things to be entertaining as well, like maybe juggling or magic. These weren't necessarily funny though.

I can summarize a lot of what I find unsatisfactory in your theory as follows: your theory locates humour in "sudden stupidity", but it seems to me that "sudden cleverness" is approximately equally important and it appears to be entirely neglected in your theory.

I think this is similar to the above points on first-person laughter. Note that sudden cleverness can also be someone telling a clever joke, too.

I also think you exaggerate its novelty. Your theory isn't far from the "superiority theory", for instance. My memory (which is not very reliable) says that Hurley&Dennett's description of this theory lays more stress on the object's inferiority than on the laugher's superiority, at which point the differences look very minor.

I don't know if I'm as focused on "novelty" as I am on elegance, utility and consistency with evidence. Those would be the things I really am more excited about and that I think are most important. Having said that, yes, this theory definitely has things in common with Superiority Theory AND Incongruity Theory and probably some others. What I like is that I think it connects the claims of both in a manner that's logical and (at least at the core) is simple enough to be explained to a child.

But also, I think Superiority Theory focuses on laughter being (as quoted in paper one) sudden joy arising from one's own superiority. This goes much further then that, saying that laughter is not just happiness, but a DISTINCT reflex all its own that has its own physical characteristic (diaphragm spasm), and includes a pleasure chemical and a smile for a clear, logical and specific reason (peaceful social ordering etc). We also introduce a logical basis for anxiety lowering humor and so on.

Obviously, I haven't read all 100+ humor theories so I'm not comfortable proclaiming something is "brand new" and would feel silly doing it. But, I do think it's not true to say that this doesn't have different ideas (or more advanced and logical ideas) than Superiority Theory.

All the best and if you want to focus on anything specific I've said, just let me know. I want to address all the points but I don't want to bury people in mountains of text either. Long or short replies asking about specific issues are both welcome.

Can we clear up one thing before we start?

You said I'm "replying dismissively." This would imply that I'm acting as though other people aren't worth talking to. I'm posting this exactly BECAUSE I want to talk to other people about it, and I'm going to great lengths to try explain my idea. I also don't see myself insulting anyone...the worst I've said is that I don't care as much for certain other theories because they aren't clear enough, don't reflect the evidence that I think is important, and aren't as simple as I suspect the answer in this case should be. These aren't insults towards other people.

To say I'm talking "dismissively" (or bring up "fools" or "cranks," I don't see a fool or crank anywhere) is starting on the wrong foot, I'm not here to engage in insults or slapfights with other people. My enthusiasm is for the ideas, and yes, certainly, for my first thread, I've chosen something that I think could be an important idea and that I'm excited to share.

As long as we are starting with this understanding, I can happily talk about the substantial things you've brought up? Fair enough?

Hi Dagon,

The equation represents the ratios and how to increase or decrease the humor of a situation, and does so in a compact form, so there's no quantitative definition, however a "unit analysis" is probably reflected in the first paper (under "so if we don't find something funny, it's because). It's also applied repeatedly in many ways in the second paper. Beyond that, I would probably need more information to know what doesn't come across.

The best definition of the problem in the current papers is probably the cover quote, a theory that can consistently differentiate between things that are funny and not funny, and also reflect the degree to which something will be found funny.

A third paper with more formal and specific definitions of each may be a good idea.

In regards to "just so" stories, I understand the problem with hasty conclusions, meaning jumping to an explanation that fits a single specific observation without bothering to see if it reflects other evidence, but I don't see how the term "just so story" would refer to a problem apart from that. An explanation that fits multiple observations while also being simple and logically consistent with a likely evolutionary pressure is probably just a decent hypothesis that's worthy of investigation.

Lastly, I think the concept here is a simple one that expresses itself in complex ways, similar to how evolution has the mechanisms of variation and selection, which are simple to explain, but which express themselves in thousands of complex ways.

You might find the post to be completely insane or an epic fail below what you expected, so you laugh at the poster, or you might find the post to have handled the subject so quickly that you laugh at yourself or at others for not having seen it before. Those seem to be the two most likely situations.

Hi Hal, I never quite laughed at Monty Python, and in the course of writing the theory, I came across the idea that British people probably have expectations associated with people of different regional English accents (from what I understand there's a lot of issues associated with that there), so they can laugh at people who have those accents or perhaps the associated mannerisms doing foolish things (like the "Ministry of Silly Walks" bureaucrat), whereas I don't have that "Quality Expectation."

There may be other reasons of course, as I know American people who love Monty Python, but that one jumped out to me and felt like it explained some of my own feeling about it.

This situation can be very similar to one of the ones with the relative being diagnosed with Alzheimer's above. You're concerned about how the person in question views the situation, which makes you feel anxiety. When they joke, it reveals that they have low anxiety or are in a non-threatening mood, which greatly deflates the tension for you. In that case, I'd say that the joke (without knowing much about it) greatly lowered your anxiety and thus elevated your laughter.

It may also be, of course, that there's a secondary evolutionary adaptation to laugh in scenarios where you want to demonstrate social closeness that the theory doesn't reflect. I do think that the current parameters of it can explain it though.

The equation doesn't have measurable units but instead represents the proportions and relationships of the variables. Any other study or article that uses some formula may or may not be a good idea, I can't speak for anyone else, but I think this form allows me to say the most in the least amount of space. (By contrast, there was a study going around recently that spoke about the "formula for happiness," with the "equation" using what seemed like 10 variables and tons of complex notation that seemed to probably take more work to use than to simply write it out).

Re: Anxiety approaching zero, it's not intentional because you can end up in a tangential argument about what feeling amounts to "zero anxiety" then claiming that should make your head explode because the equation is undefined, so I'd rather offer an alternate form just to try to avoid spending time on that. Having said though, in paper 2 we mention Nitrous Oxide which seems to lower anxiety beneath our natural levels and has the side effect of making people laugh at all kinds of inappropriate and abnormal things. So artificial lower of anxiety DOES seem to amplify the overall humor people feel.

I am replying to myself because this is a different point, but still based on the question of how anxiety ought to modulate humor. How does your theory deal with the role of humor to break tension or deal with extreme adversity? These situations should probably be considered high in anxiety and thus should be more "humor-resistant" if I understand your theory.

As an example, an older relative of mine, having been diagnosed with early stage Alzheimer's: "Well at least I won't wander off, as I can't get out of my wheelchair". This was hilariously funny at the time, and broke an awkward, painful, anxious silence. Similarly, humor on the battlefield, or among prisoners of war is well attested and also seems to be problematic under these terms.

Hi 9e,

The first example is first-person laughter, where you laugh at yourself for your own expectations turning out to be so wrong, similar to looking for your phone then realizing you're on the phone already. I would hope this doesn't seem like a forced explanation (apologies if it does). We have standards about what we ourselves are capable of, and oftentimes we find out that we were way off-base. I like the example of finding out that you already had your phone because there's no one else involved and it hopefully thus isolates the issue and demonstrates clearly that you can laugh purely as a result of realizing your own errors.

The second example is a good one, and that's something that I had to think about a lot. I eventually noticed that those incidents result from a misplacement, which almost always comes from something that has something in common with their surroundings but are noticeably out of place. I think that most often these are combined with some other source of humor, like the misplacement being combined with someone else's mess-up, or a reminder of a mess-up, or laughing at someone's bad pun.

I wrote a bit more on this in the papers, right now I'm trying to do several different things so sorry if my explanation of that is jumbled (especially because that's one of the most important and least straightforward aspects).

In regards to bullies laughing at the target, I think it involves them not feeling anxiety at the target's misfortune, and usually their laughter (I say usually because I'm not in their brains so I can't totally dissect or make concrete statements), seems to come from pushing the victim to new lows, like making them carry their bags or embarrassing them in new ways. This would put them below whatever quality-expectation the bully has of them. (apologies here, an expectation of very little quality is still a "quality expectation," sorry if the word "quality" sounds like it always means something above average. I know the word is sometimes used that way.)

Sure, from page 22 of the 2nd paper:

"... Now, the reason for this, and what makes it especially interesting, is in what it reveals about the origins of our humor instinct, which is that it clearly evolved not only before language, but also before we had higher brain functions that allowed hypothetical scenarios or sophisticated deception."

Our humor instinct comes from a part of our brain that was evolutionarily programmed in a time where our intellect expressed itself in terms of "A," then "B", and get "C." Put the animal in the fire, wait until it smells good, then eat it. Grab the stick, hit the branch, and the fruit will fall."

This study was announced a few days ago in Harvard magazine (http://harvardmagazine.com/2014/09/was-the-human-brain-unleashed), discussing the basic parts of the brain compared to the more "advanced" ones in humans.

"...the neurons in the sensory and motor areas seem to be playing a game of telephone, in which information follows serial paths, the cells in the association areas use a communications strategy more like the Internet—with lots of simultaneous connections and pathways.

Buckner and Krienen looked for a simple way to explain this phenomenon. Association areas not only evolved later in humans, they also form later in an individual’s development."

The functioning of our "misplacement" instinct, as I found it in my studying of humor, seemed to indicate precisely that our early form of intelligence, and the laughter that came from, functioned only in terms of A-B-C and recognizing errors in those types of sequences, and our advanced functions that allowed more abstract and hypothetical thinking must have occurred later. The study seems to have used different methods to have arrived at the same conclusion.

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.

There are non-humorous instances of laughter, like tickling for one. But I think Schadenfreude is very definitely humor. It simply requires that you have enough emotional distance from the person who failed that you don't feel anxiety as a result of what happened to them.

Naturally, this is considered cruel by some people, because it indicates a lack of empathy or low-anxiety related to someone else's pain. But if you do have that lack of empathy or low-anxiety in those cases, your humor instinct will almost definitely be what's triggered by Schadenfreude.