See Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious by Sigmund Freud for a similar analysis with far more depth.
Comedy Theory (2022)
171–180 of 182 posts
Re: Comedy Theory (2022)
#172It's really annoying and deadening, not to mention foolish, when people try to reduce every activity of the soul to a mechanical, comprehensible process.
This. I've seen so much of this on Hacker News that it's almost like a game now to discover the variant of the archetype post in today's feed.
People with a "nerdy" mindset want to find the structure behind everything. That's not a bad thing, but it's so annoying to people who actually do comedy...or music...or art.
Not everything in life can be reduced and programmed. But they'll keep on trying.
Re: Comedy Theory (2022)
#173I have a theory that everything is search. Protein folding? Search for minimal energy. DNA evolution - search for ecological niche fit. Cognition? attention is search, memory is search, imagination is also search, problem solving - of course is search. Scientific progress? It is (re)search. Optimizing an AI model? Search for optimal parameters to fit the data. Reinforcement learning? Search for optimal behavior to ma…
I think a more specific denominator you might wanna look into is free energy minimization as you mention in your first example. I really liked reading Active Inference and What Is Life? on the subject.
Re: Comedy Theory (2022)
#174Ah, yes, a step-by-step method for creating comedy from a site called rpgadventures - complete with templates, diagrams, and tables - what's funnier than that?
Re: Comedy Theory (2022)
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Related to what you're saying, there's a whole essay by Mark Twain where he explains the difference between comedy (and comedic storytelling) and simply "telling a joke". He didn't think much of the "punchline" type of jokes, he was all about the storytelling... as you can tell by "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" and his many other stories.
Mark Twain wrote a book called "Roughing It", and I can't put my finger on it and tell you exactly what it is about this book, but there's some essence of Mark Twain dictating this story to you, the reader, that has persisted all of these many years since it was written that imbues it with a special kind of comedy magic the likes of which you are unlikely to find anywhere else. I have tried to read it 3 times and end…
> I can't finish it, it's too funny.
maybe like monty python's ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Funniest_Joke_in_the_World
Re: Comedy Theory (2022)
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heard Adrian Edmondson on Desert Island Discs and one of the interesting things he said about comedy was that there were a limited number of jokes all of which he believed are contained in the recorded works of Laurel and Hardy and that he would be able to enumerate and show all of them from those works. He also said he was tired of comedy as he knew all of the jokes. Later he sort of contradicted himself by saying t…
I think the word "joke" in the context of his interview was more or less intended to mean "bit" or "skit" or "humour-incitement type" -- rather than literally joke as in "knock knock." I believe he actually said that all humour is passed on, i.e. that all the comic acts that have come along after Laurel and Hardy were in essence re-enacting scenes that they had performed, in another form, prior. Of course, Laurel and…
> they used to break character
My personal favourite:
https://youtu.be/G_X_7TrcHGM?feature=shared
> I think he's married to Jennifer Saunders (of Absolutely Fabulous and French and Saunders fame) but I don't think they ever collaborated much.
He appeared in Ab Fab, but it was all written by Saunders. She previously collaborated with Dawn French.
Re: Comedy Theory (2022)
#177Once of my favorite visual breakdowns of comedy structure is the interactive site The Pudding did for an Ali Wong standup show a couple years back: https://pudding.cool/2018/02/stand-up/
Re: Comedy Theory (2022)
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the word "joke" in the context of his interview was more or less intended to mean "bit" or "skit" or "humour-incitement type" -- rather than literally joke as in "knock knock." I believe he actually said that all humour is passed on, i.e. that all the comic acts that have come along after Laurel and Hardy were in essence re-enacting scenes that they had performed, in another form, prior. Of course, Laurel and…
> if the contrary was true and humour was infinite. Then everything could be funny. I don't think that necessarily follows. Some infinities are greater than others. (Even though I happen to think anything could be funny with sufficient effort. Even tragedy)
Yes, for example, odd numbers are infinite, that doesn’t imply everything is odd.
Re: Comedy Theory (2022)
#179comedy is search = you need to always be 'turned on' and working with details.
Re: Comedy Theory (2022)
#180I don't get it.