[Nuosphere]

Around the sametime I saw Jeffs TED presentation on Youtube - I was reading a book called the Naked Jape by Jimmy Carr - a great book all about comedy. The topic of 'why humans laugh' is discussed, but watching Jeff talk about the predictive mind made me realise one thing.

The funny part is always the punchline - and it's unexpected - the more unexpected, it seems - the funnier the joke. It would make sense that our minds are listening to the joke and trying to predict the outcome - (searching throught Nueral Sub-systems perhaps) - when the answer is given - then the reaction in a brains (firing of synapses? chemical reactions) causes a reaction we find pleasurable (rapid construction of a new neural sub-system?)- a reaction called laughter.

That is my theory...it's not much of a theory, I know, but it's mine...and if you don't like it, well then stop reading this topic, stop following me...in fact, <censored>

[Woccam]

Laughter? I've spent a large part of my long life in and out of the comedy industry, trying to make people laugh, and I've been paid for it, too.

I had a theory about what is funny but I've only once been able to apply it directly to any comic routine. My speculation was this:

Laughter, I thought, may arise in people when they observe someone apparently in a position of danger, but which the observer knows isn't really dangerous at all.

I arrived at this hypothesis while I was inventing stunts for the British version of Candid Camera in the early 1960s. Only once did I directly apply it to a practical joke. I decided that pillow fighting must be funny (if at all) in part because it simulates rage without being really harmful.

So this became a stunt. With cameras rolling we challenged people in the street to pillow fights in order to audition for the Pillow FIghting section of the Olympic Games. (I forget which Olympics we had in mind but surely the Olympics by now have a pillow fighting section, or if not they soon will have).

The stunt became a comic routine for my friend Jonathan Routh at London's then-fashionable Establishment Club; and ultimately Jonathan compiled a book about the sport, entitled "Shindai, the art of Japanese Bed Fighting," for which I took the photographs.

I hired a studio and we got models to re-enact the classic bedfighting positions. How the feathers flew! Unfortunately I later got a substantial bill from the studio owner for cleaning all the feathers out of his lights.

Oddly enough a book of that title is still in print at Amazon under the name of a writer unknown to me. Whether it's the same book I'm not willing to pay to find out.

How all this could be reframed in neural terms I have no idea.
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Woccam

[nfordintel]

My theory of why laughter is so pleasurable and good for you is that it is the body's way of rewarding you for something, just as it rewards you with good feelings when having sex to encourage you to propogate.

The question is why the body/brain wants to encourage whatever action leads to laughter?

As we know, the brain's connections get stronger each time they are used and weaker when not used. This can lead to particular connections dominating the brain to the exclusion of new ideas, new ways of looking at problems, etc.

So the brain looks for a way to encourage us to break out of this rut -- to think outside the box and be creative.

If I ask you: "How do you get down off a camel?", your brain will go to work, but if you are like most of us, you will say: "I don't know." (especially if you know a punch line is coming). I continue: "You don't get down off a camel, you get down off a duck."

First, your brain will take the beaten path and try out the most likely meaning of the words. It will wonder: "Huh? You just asked me how you get down off a camel, then you tell me that you don't get down off a camel. That doesn't make any sense."

Then: "Get down off a duck? People are too big to get up on ducks, so this doesn't make any sense either."

So your brain rejects the most likely meanings and tries to find other meanings of the words which will cause the statement to make sense.

After analyzing the (many) different meanings of "down" and "off" and how those meanings each relate to a camel versus how they relate to a duck, your brain figures out the unexpected meaning of the joke. (Hopefully it does. I've told this to people who just never got it.)

In reponse to this joke, you have given your brain a nice workout, plus thought of things in a new way. It rewards you with laughter (or maybe an amused groaning, in this case).

[intelligent robot]

Interesting perspectives in this thread.

The theory of the brain 'giving a reward in return for a mental workout' might very well be true; I've noticed that people (including myself) get excited, and sometimes even laugh, when they've solved a difficult puzzle or problem. It doesn't even have to be funny, but the laughter is the same.

[crystela]

nice post dude....



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