Is there a theory of humor which explains why theories of humor are invariably hilariously inadaquate?
No, any consist theory of humor cannot explain all humor. Gerbils' Incompleteness Theorem.
Comedy Theory (2022)
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Re: Comedy Theory (2022)
#62Art isn’t search, nor is it an algorithm to be optimized. Unfortunately, the modern human experience is so utterly commoditized that the incentive to cram everything possible into an algorithmic, quantitative box is enormous and almost overpowering or seemingly inevitable. Maybe I’m overreacting a little to this particular instance, but I do think that in general we need to be willing to resist this cultural phenomenon and put some things behind a line that we’re willing to defend.
Re: Comedy Theory (2022)
#63I've yet to see a theory of comedy which actually addresses that there are multiple kinds of comedy: - Bullying, where the joke is not particularly funny, but instead relies on attacking someone's status in front of a crowd. The crowd laughs in recognition of the successful attack, not because the joke is clever. - Epiphany humor -- the joke relies on some new thought, connection, or idea, and the "joke" is the leap…
How would you call jokes that only work due to laugh tracks (sitcoms)? Bandwagon humor?
Re: Comedy Theory (2022)
#64Is there a theory of humor which explains why theories of humor are invariably hilariously inadaquate?
It's kinda like music theory - if you're already a talented composer, music theory helps clarify a few technical mysteries and sheds light on other composers' work. But it tells you nothing about creating interesting music, and it's typically apparent when a composer writes according to theory rather than according to their own ears.
Likewise I think some sophisticated humorists would benefit from reading philosophies of satire, psychology of slapstick, etc, to help hone their craft. But those are not how-to guides.
Re: Comedy Theory (2022)
#65Art isn’t search, nor is it an algorithm to be optimized. Unfortunately, the modern human experience is so utterly commoditized that the incentive to cram everything possible into an algorithmic, quantitative box is enormous and almost overpowering or seemingly inevitable. Maybe I’m overreacting a little to this particular instance, but I do think that in general we need to be willing to resist this cultural phenomen…
I understand where you're coming from but unfortunately there is a vector that represents exactly that feeling of yours and it can be found via search
Re: Comedy Theory (2022)
#66Art isn’t search, nor is it an algorithm to be optimized. Unfortunately, the modern human experience is so utterly commoditized that the incentive to cram everything possible into an algorithmic, quantitative box is enormous and almost overpowering or seemingly inevitable. Maybe I’m overreacting a little to this particular instance, but I do think that in general we need to be willing to resist this cultural phenomen…
Agreed
Re: Comedy Theory (2022)
#67Is there a theory of humor which explains why theories of humor are invariably hilariously inadaquate?
> Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process
Re: Comedy Theory (2022)
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure if I'm missing something (perhaps the joke, as it were) but the Calvin & Hobbes strip seems to be entirely about having a sense of humour, rather than a theory of comedy .
The C&H explanation has two parts, what triggers the humor response (perception of things that don't make sense) and why we have the humor response (evolutionary fitness). A theory of the humor mechanism should be congruent to a theory of comedy. The physiological manifestation of the humor response is also explained by evolutionary fitness when you consider it as countering the physiological reaction to the percepti…
That's much more interesting than just the comic strip alone, thanks!
Re: Comedy Theory (2022)
#69Related: Information is surprise https://plus.maths.org/content/information-surprise
> If your string of symbols constitutes a passage of English text, then you could just count the number of words it contains. But this is silly: it would give the sentence "The Sun will rise tomorrow" the same information value as he sentence "The world will end tomorrow" when the second is clearly much more significant than the first. Whether or not we find a message informative depends on whether it's news to us and what this news means to us.
> [Claude] Shannon stayed clear of the slippery concept of meaning, declaring it "irrelevant to the engineering problem", but he did take on board the idea that information is related to what's new: it's related to surprise. Thought of in emotional terms surprise is hard to measure, but you can get to grips with it by imagining yourself watching words come out of a ticker tape, like they used to have in news agencies. Some words, like "the" or "a" are pretty unsurprising; in fact they are redundant since you could probably understand the message without them. The real essence of the message lies in words that aren't as common, such as "alien" or "invasion".
Re: Comedy Theory (2022)
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
If absurdity made us despondent or desperately sad instead, that probably wouldn't do much for the ol' evolutionary fitness.
By default you don't have to have any such emotional reaction to absurdity. You could just analyze the situation and take action accordingly.
The point is exactly that you _can't_ just analyze every single situation that ever happens and then know what to do. That there's a huge amount of life experience for which there is no analytical solution. So you can't "just analyze" every single thing. What do you do then? Dispair? Or laugh.
The ancients eventually came up with the whole God thing to explain all confusion away but i have a feeling that happened after the evolutionary push to not kill yourself the first time you see lightening