Thoughts about humor

[davidgoldfarb]

On rec.arts.sf.composition, the topic of humor came up. I mentioned a theory I have, that there are at least four different pathways in the brain that trigger the same reward mechanism (i.e., laughter). zeborahnz asked me to expand on this, and I wound up writing a fairly long essay (someone on rasfc said "This isn't your Ph.D thesis?")...which I want to

Comments

[kouredios]

Intriguing. The recognition type also is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, as my almost-4-year-old is starting to try to tell and "get" jokes. We've been trying out knock-knock jokes on her, and she gets the form, but not the relationship between the "who's there" and "X who" that makes a good one funny. She's making up her own, and they generally look like this: "Knock Knock." "Who's there?" "Teethbrush!" "Teethbrush who?" "Teethbrush I brush my teeth with!" Cue uproarious 4-year-old laughter.

I'm looking forward to watching the process of her "getting it," as I've done with other more abstract language concepts.

[wild_irises]

I like this taxonomy, but I'm still not sure how puzzle-solving is humor. Not everything that makes people laugh is funny, per se.

Example of pure, or relatively pure, puzzle-solving humor?

[thomasyan]

Good question. From the description, it sounds to me like puzzle-solving is an extreme version of recognition. That is, it takes work to figure out something that involves a pattern, which might be opposites or a progression.

David, have you read Cherryh's Foreigner series? There's an in-joke about salads that semi-works for me. As in, I find it amusing, but I don't remember for sure whether I have laughed out loud.

[davidgoldfarb]

I've read very little Cherryh -- there's something about her prose that I bounce off of.

[thomasyan]

It is true that she has a lot of (for me, anyway) garden path sentences, where I suddenly realize I am confused and have mis-parsed it and have to go back and reread it.

Also, the opening of Cyteen was such hard going, it made me worried about whether I would be able to finish the book.

But I found the Foreigner series to be pretty accessible and a lot of fun.

Two aspects you missed...

[anonymous]

Recognizing a disproportion is also a fundamental cue for laughter -- and while that's an element in several forms of humor, it can operate outside a social context entirely. A related form is the "mock threat", as exemplified by tickling. (That is, someone is forcibly touching you, but you know it's not really an attack.) One psychologist I know commented that "laughter is a gasp followed by a sigh of relief".

Also, in transactional psychology, laughter can be merely a "stroke" in various games or scripts.

Re: Two aspects you missed...

[davidgoldfarb]

I would say that recognizing a disproportion is a kind of what I call "puzzle-solving".

The "mock threat" is an interesting concept, and certainly the response to tickling doesn't fit well into what I've said.

I don't know what you mean by "stroke" in this context, so I find it hard to respond to that.

Remus Shepherd, on rec.arts.sf.composition, comments that he doesn't think "social bonding" merits its own category; he feels that being in a group is simply a disinhibitor, that strengthens the responses to the other pathways. I think he has a point.

Re: Two aspects you missed...

[thomasyan]

I think stroke in that context probably is something like stroking the other's ego -- polite laughter.

Re: Two aspects you missed...

[davidgoldfarb]

Okay; if so, that's not something I'm addressing. I'm interested in the involuntary response -- it's not for nothing that we say something makes us laugh. Polite laughter is a consciously-controlled simulation of that reflex.

[sturgeonslawyer]

Interesting mini-essay.

I think the three or four "pathways" aren't as separate as all that -- that the types blesh so well, and that it's hard to find a "pure" example of any of them, suggests this to me. They may be accidental characteristics of humor rather than its essence, so to speak.

[davidgoldfarb]

Well, and if there's one point I'm trying to make, it's that the binary laugh/don't laugh reaction obscures that there are fundamentally different essences. (Which point could perfectly well be wrong, of course. I don't think it is, but then I wouldn't.) In my opinion, to talk of "the essence of humor" is to be deluded.

Have you read Scott McCloud's book Making Comics? He puts forward a set of basic facial expressions (tied to movement of specific facial muscles) and says that all facial expressions are combinations of these. Similarly, in four-color printing you can get millions of different hues, but nonetheless the primary colors exist. The art of comedy is no less subtle, but I think the primary colors exist there too; and I speculate that they correspond to different things happening in the brain.