[HN Gopher] The Philosophy of Humor: What Makes Something Funny?...
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The Philosophy of Humor: What Makes Something Funny? (2022)
Author : jyunwai
Score : 34 points
Date : 2023-10-28 13:00 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (1000wordphilosophy.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (1000wordphilosophy.com)
| optimussupreme wrote:
| I had a childhood friend, who often started laughing and his
| laughter was so contagious, so I also laughted. He was starting
| to laugh just because he knew I would also start to laugh. And I
| laughed because I knew he expects me to laugh and I wouldn't be
| able to stop myself from laughing. And vice versa recursively.
| The whole situation was so absurd, so we were continuing to laugh
| just because from the outside it looked like we started to laugh
| for no reason.
| yowayb wrote:
| I've had a couple friends this happened with. One of them
| however would laugh SO hard he couldn't breathe!
| underseacables wrote:
| There's a really great book by Kliph Nesteroff called _The
| Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of
| American Comedy_ that dives into the broad history of comedy over
| the ages.
|
| Something that really jumped out for me is that, according to
| Nestorhoff, comedy is very much generational. Comedians who were
| able to appeal to multiple generations are very rare. Don
| Rickles, Lucille Ball, Rodney Dangerfield, Dave Chappelle, etc.
| are able to connnect across those timelines.
| smitty1e wrote:
| Jokes are the failing unit tests of our understanding.
|
| They are funny if they point to some known truth while throwing
| some sort of error in the audience mind.
|
| The comedian is thus a societal test coder.
| 6510 wrote:
| There are 2 kinds of jokes.
| rhyme-boss wrote:
| The root of humor is surprise. Not everything that is surprising
| is funny. But if there's anything you can generalize about humor,
| I think it's subversion of expectation.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| I agree, but as I read the article, I thought more about
| slapstick and physical humor ("The Superiority Theory of Humor"
| as labeled in the article). When I think, for example, of The
| Three Stooges[0], the pratfalls never seemed surprising, rather
| you knew Curly was eventually going to get banged up. I never
| found that part of their routine as funny as the verbal/visual
| puns and comebacks.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_Stooges
| GnarfGnarf wrote:
| There is a strange paradox where sometimes you see a bit
| coming and it's hysterical, other times it's predictable and
| falls flat.
|
| Ex (first case): In _Ruthless People_ , they walk into a
| store to play a VHS tape on a VCR. They don't know (but we
| do) that the tape contains embarrassing scenes, which are
| about to be displayed to the whole store.
|
| Another example of first case: In _Asterix_ , whenever the
| Pirate Ship appears. We know (and they know) they're about to
| get trounced.
|
| With the Three Stooges, we know he's going to smack him
| upside the head, the question is just how's he going to do it
| this time?
| furyofantares wrote:
| I think you can reasonably generalize to surprise +
| inevitability. It needs to be unexpected, but make perfect
| sense in some context once revealed. Not everything funny works
| this way but a whooooole lot does.
| amelius wrote:
| And why is ChatGPT so bad at it?
| drooby wrote:
| GPTs compute the next most likely token.
|
| The punch line of a joke toys with the expectation of the most
| likely conclusion. GPT is fundamentally at odds with this
| because it wants to compute what is expected, so as a result
| there is no surprise, or unveiling of hidden insight.
|
| It also has absolutely zero training on emotional cues, facial
| expressions, body language, etc. I suspect it would do better
| if it had that training.
|
| Perhaps it is possible that humor could be an emergent property
| of GPTs. A higher order pattern that it learns.
| naasking wrote:
| You can hypothetically train the most likely outcome to be
| what people don't expect. I suspect the problem is simply
| that humour is not really in ChatGPT's training set. Most of
| its training data is strictly factual stuff like Wikipedia
| and textbooks. Where's the humour there?
|
| I'm curious to see what would happen if you took a pretrained
| model and then specialized it on a large corpus of jokes.
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| I don't know if she's good or bad at deliberate humor, but
| she's really good at impersonation humor. I'd ask her to
| impersonate someone to get a more nuanced reply and she'd do a
| hilarious monologue.
| cobbzilla wrote:
| lol great question to ask on HN, notoriously dearth of any sense
| of humor. Maybe Betteridge's Law applies in this fora, the answer
| is simply "nothing is funny, here's your downvote now go away"
| Sporktacular wrote:
| It's true. Jokes get downvoted like crazy on HN.
| 6510 wrote:
| How many light bulbs do we have to screw in?
| GnarfGnarf wrote:
| I think comedians and humourists are teachers. They examine
| things in new ways and show us how to look at our condition.
| Laughter comes from the joy of learning.
|
| Comedians from earlier generations are less funny because their
| message has been absorbed into our culture, and what they
| discovered then, has become understood, accepted, and is no
| longer new or surprising.
| hardkorebob wrote:
| ^ concur
| aranchelk wrote:
| > None of These Theories Seem Adequate
|
| Agreed, theories are testable, all of these theories are easily
| disprovable, in fact we can construct test jokes that abide by
| all of them and are still deeply unfunny.
|
| One of the most counterintuitive elements of humor is breaking
| the flow by saying a wrong word and then correcting one's self
| completely tanks jokes.
|
| I have a comedian in mind who does this at least once per his
| weekly show -- cue a grown from the audience and polite applause
| -- it's a friendly crowd.
|
| Explain this and I think you're on your way to a proper theory.
| naasking wrote:
| > in fact we can construct test jokes that abide by all of them
| and are still deeply unfunny
|
| They could be necessary rules, but not sufficient. Necessary in
| the sense that, can you construct a joke that doesn't abide by
| one of the rules, but is still funny?
| aranchelk wrote:
| If it's a rule that I can break and make a funny joke or
| follow and make an unfunny joke, I don't think it can (even
| colloquially) be called a "rule" -- maybe a predictive
| element, maybe nothing.
| acrefoot wrote:
| This podcast explains the three theories and adds the Benign
| Violation Theory: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/whats-so-
| funny/id15545.... Their theory can be summed up as "something is
| wrong, but ok/safe", but it takes some illustrating.
|
| I liked this skittles study, pulled from the transcript:
|
| MANDY: The skittles study goes like this. Participants go into a
| room to fill out a survey. There's a table and a bowl of
| skittles, and there's an actor posing as a research assistant.
| And the goal of the study is to figure out the funniest way the
| actor can offer the bowl of skittles.
|
| They ran this test in lots of different ways, but in the first
| condition:
|
| <TAPE> CALEB: The actor will say, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but
| I'm in a couple seconds. I'm supposed to offer you these
| Skittles. Would you like these Skittles?
|
| MANDY: This isn't that funny.
|
| MANDY: But then, things get a little weird. In another group, the
| actor just flings the skittles at them.
|
| <TAPE> CALEB: Out of nowhere, they'd launch the bowl of Skittles
| and only afterwards say, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I was
| told to launch the bowl of skittles.
|
| MANDY: This is surprising but not that funny. It's a little
| messed up. In the last group though, the actor gives them some
| warning before it happens.
|
| <TAPE> CALEB: They say, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but in a few
| seconds I need to throw this bowl of Skittles at you. Then they
| launch the bowl of Skittles on the participant.
|
| MANDY: It's pretty funny.
|
| <TAPE> CALEB: there was more laughter, certainly, in both of the
| throwing conditions, but there was a lot more laughter when the
| person was told the Skittles were gonna be thrown at them first.
|
| MANDY: Under Incongruity theory, people should be more likely to
| laugh if there's surprise -- but that's not the case here. People
| are more likely to laugh when it's not a surprise, when they're
| warned before it happens.
|
| <TAPE>
|
| CALEB: That's because once you hear that and the Skittles get
| thrown, you know, it's part of the study,
|
| PETER: You're prepared
|
| CALEB: You're prepared! The point of this was to show that it's
| not about surprise and surprise in some cases actually hurts.
|
| MANDY: So if it's not surprise that's making people laugh when
| skittles are being thrown at them, what is it? This is where
| Peter and Caleb's own theory comes in: what they call the benign
| violation theory.
|
| It's no great joke, but it serves as a nice tool to examine the
| theories of humor. The humor from this joke doesn't depend on
| incongruity. Maybe a bit on the relief of tension, but it's not a
| great explanation. And the scenario with surprise actually hurts
| here.
| williamcotton wrote:
| I still think there is a surprise element in the above
| exposition.
|
| The surprise is the realization that we're not supposed to
| throw around bowls of Skittles coupled with the unacknowledged
| realization that this rule is just some tiny, pointless
| restraint. The recognition and release of this restraint allows
| for joy! There's an aesthetic beauty to a rainbow of candies
| flying through the air, akin to fireworks or streamers, yet in
| daily life we choose not to throw the bowl of Skittles because
| we're more focused on the imagined cleanup than the active,
| lived experience.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| It's still surprising because it breaks from expected social
| convention. And it gets progressively funnier as the examples
| go on. Ultimately the surprise is one of a person going through
| the motions of social convention, like the politeness of asking
| permission or warning before doing something anti-social. In
| the form of can you please hold my beer so I can slap you?
|
| I think the surprise is the best theory for a root so far.
| jl6 wrote:
| I guess you had to be there.
| yenwodyah wrote:
| The way I see it, the source of humor is basically the
| superiority theory but applied only to a knowledge gradient.
| Socrates saying that he's handsome is funny because it implies
| that he doesn't know how ugly he is, and the rest of us do. We
| all laugh to show that we possess the knowledge he lacks - we
| "get the joke". The handsomest man in the world saying he's
| handsome isn't funny because it's just a true statement, there's
| no one being dumb to be made fun of.
| naasking wrote:
| > The handsomest man in the world saying he's handsome isn't
| funny because it's just a true statement, there's no one being
| dumb to be made fun of.
|
| There are successful comics who play on their good looks
| exactly like this, and do it well. Anthony Jeselnik, for
| instance.
| dataviz1000 wrote:
| Something I agree with. First, The Superiority Theory of Humor,
| we have the phrase "make fun of" which is when we insult another
| person or thing and causes laughter, usually the target of making
| fun is an out group. One devise of making fun is self deprecating
| humor. Moreover some comedians like Jeff Foxworthy tell stores
| that the audience can relate to which sets the audience in the in
| group. Second, The Relief Theory of Humor, we laugh when we are
| uncomfortable and anxious. Sometimes this mental response
| manifests in the worst places, for example, Judge Judy scolding a
| defendant who is laughing while in an anxious predicament. With
| comedians they can illicit this by making shocking statements.
| There is a fine line between uncomfortable to the point of
| laughing and passed the line to the point of out right disgusted
| (do not go to Comedy Mothership in Austin) where nothing in the
| state of disgust is funny. As for The Incongruity Theory of
| Humor, it might be the other side of the same coin as the first.
| If making other people in the out group very stupid is funny so
| is making the audience and one self, the in group, very smart
| funny.
| hardkorebob wrote:
| To be funny is to be here at this very instance and wonder where
| it freakin went. Carlin is a true humorist.
| webdoodle wrote:
| I think Heinlein nailed it in Stranger in a Strange Land. Humor
| is a reaction to pain, and may have evolved like a hiccup. A
| stress relieving burp that has evolved with the types of stress
| our minds can invent.
| tzot wrote:
| > I think Heinlein nailed it in Stranger in a Strange Land.
|
| Also in _The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress_ he made the research of
| what is humour be one of the primary self-assigned directives
| of Mike (the accidentally created GAI).
| hliyan wrote:
| Shouldn't we first be looking at the _physiology_ of humour,
| starting with the rawest stimulus that induces amusement and then
| trying to determine its evolutionary origins? Philosophical
| explanations feel like attempting to layer abstractions on top of
| something whose fundamental nature we fully don 't understand.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Start with tickling, maybe. It induces laughter, like a good
| joke, and it is as physical as it can get.
|
| An interesting thing with tickling is that it is notoriously
| difficult if not impossible to tickle oneself. Does it suggest
| something on the nature of laughter and humor? I don't know.
| Probably that there is some social aspect to it, and a form of
| unpredictability.
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