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From: ger@trsvax
Newsgroups: net.jokes.d
Subject: Re: MATHEMATICS AND HUMOR by John Allen
Message-ID: <67700006@trsvax>
Date: Mon, 30-Sep-85 13:38:00 EDT
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Posted: Mon Sep 30 13:38:00 1985
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Nf-From: trsvax!ger    Sep 30 12:38:00 1985


> Brad Templeton.

> Everybody's advocating their ideas about what humour is and what makes us
> laugh, but all of these theories can't be complete because while they claim
> to have discovered a necessary condition for laughter, they haven't come
> anywhere near a sufficient one.
 
I guess that my abbreviated discourse on laughter was not filled with enough
data and examples to make it clear to all just what my point was.  I attempted
to show that `fear/stress' was not only a necessary but a sufficient condition
to evoke "laugh responses."  In my proposed schema, laughter is a stress relief
syndrome (common to primates).  It is a rejection of a feared or imagined (what
would happen if...) [survival context] shift.  Accidentally, I saw an interview
with Johnny Carson last evening in which he stated: "When times are tougher,
the audiences feel a greater NEED to laugh."  This certainly would support a
stress relief schema of laughter.  If you would like to point out which part
of this theory is incomplete, I would be very interested in seeing it explained
to me.

> If humour is a subtle philosophical point, why don't I chortle at Descartes?
> In general there are lots of examples of the kind of thing noted in this book
> that aren't funny.
 
Descartes is not generally regarded as "funny" by most readers because there
is no anti-survival context or mechanism contained in his points.  It would
be possible for some person to laugh at Descartes (or ANY author) who found
that there was some fearful idea in the context of what is being said.  Don't
read "horror film scream/fear" for every use of the word fear in my proposal.
FEAR HAS MANY SUBTLE LEVELS of experience, as well as overtly stupid movie
stereotypical reactions.  i.e. There is "fear" associated with crossing the
street.  That is why we look before sauntering out into the traffic.  It
would threaten our own learned survival contexts to do less.  Children have
sometimes not yet learned this survival context fear, so they will dash out
into a busy street without looking at the traffic.  The old movie comedies
have used this exact mechanism to evoke audience laughter.  A man reading a
newspaper will walk into a street without looking.  This evokes a slight
smile in the audience.  The man is struck by a car.  A larger laugh in the
audience at the idea of bodily injury.  Another man doing the same thing will
suddenly fall into a manhole in the street, avoiding the car but getting a
laugh out of the fear of falling into a black hole in the ground.  Another man
will avoid falling into the manhole but will step on (injury again) another's
head.  And so on etc. ad infinitum.


The fear-triggering ideas do not necessarily have to be so overt as to be
externally noticeable.  The subconscious mind has the genetically determined
survival contexts stored within itself.  The things such as breathing, avoid-
ance of bodily injury, or heart beats.  Things of this nature, when threatened
lightly or in idea form only, will evoke a subconscious stress relief in the
form of a smile or facial expression changes.  Drugs, such as alcohol, can
inhibit the performance of the conscious mind's check against survival context.
The depressant effect of the alcohol will inhibit the mind's relay of some-
times very clear anti-survival perceptions.  In doing so the drug allows the
individual to be placed in VERY DANGEROUS situations with maybe no more than
a smile or laugh as personal relief.  Drunks are used for humor value also.

> The same is true for changes in structure, viewing danger while safe,
> viewing something bad, status switch and every other theory I have
> heard.
 
I am not totally sure what "the same" means in your sentence.  I was under the
impression that I had made a clear distinction that each of the stress produc-
ing ideas, as PERCEIVED by the observer in his own context, will cause laughter
or some of its subtler forms (smiling, change of expression, etc.) as soon as
the viewer/hearer has analyzed what was perceived for personal survival con-
text.  NO TWO PEOPLE will have developed the same survival context, as based
on their own life experiences and so, will not laugh at the same things.

> After all, if you really had a solid theory, you would be headlining in Vegas.
 
I do not have a psychological need for attention, for stressing others to the
point of laughter, nor do I see performing in Las Vegas as a desirable behavior
or setting for myself.  The material benefit does not inveigh a desire to be a
comedian, in my own context.  There was an interesting study done on comedians
recently attempting to show the personality traits which were most necessary
for, or predictive of, success.  This study (I'm very sorry that I do not have
a reference right now) found that comedians were mostly misfits in their younger
childhood years, their being incessantly derided by their peers.  This seemed
to be the only real thread of commonality for comedians in general.  In my own
mind, having been "stress-ees" for so long a time, they have developed a keen
insight into what things are stressful to other individuals.  A rather nice
training ground for comedy talent, in my own way of thinking.

> There are many questions to answer. Why do we laugh most at extreme clever-
> ness?

Please cite an example of this whose boundary is outside of the schema that 
I proposed.  I do not totally understand what it is that you are saying.

> What about puns?

I was under the impression that puns, if very good, elicited a groan, not a
laugh.  A smile would indicate that the pun was stressful to the individual
in word context physical setting, not its word-play value.  "Grenadier syrup"
might be funny at the bar because of the bodily injury possibilities of those
who use grenades as weapons.  Puns which elicit different responses in dif-
ferent individuals mean solely that the different individuals have developed
different survival contexts in their own life experiences.  What is stressful
to one person might be readily acceptable to another.

> Why do different cultures have different preferences?
 
Different cultures are subject to different life experiences, so they develop
different survival contexts within themseves.  There is also room for indivi-
dual variation of the members of such groups, if I use my own schema.

> Some of the posted theories cover these points, but none cover them all.
> They all have merit, but they can't all be right, or can they?

I don't know, that's why I'm asking for discussion.  I feel that the schema
that I wrote covers all of these bases.  Are there others?