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From: bs@faron.UUCP (Robert D. Silverman)
Newsgroups: net.math
Subject: Re: MATHEMATICS AND HUMOR by John Allen
Message-ID: <355@faron.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 23-Sep-85 10:20:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: faron.355
Posted: Mon Sep 23 10:20:10 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 25-Sep-85 09:26:32 EDT
References: <1117@mtgzz.UUCP> <60800004@trsvax>
Organization: The MITRE Coporation, Bedford, MA
Lines: 94

> 
> >> BUT does your theory explain why this is "funny" ?  i.e why does this
> >> result in laughter, and the emotion we experience as 'humour' ?
> >> My own opinion is that it's purely the manipulation of STRUCTURE that
> >> we find amusing.  All jokes alter some sort of structure (social,
> >> lingustic, sexual) in a clever way.  Since a fundamental part of our
> >> cognitive system is recognition and manipulation of structures ...
> >> ... that produce the experience of mirth.  
> 
> > Nobody seems to explain WHY structure flipping or context flipping or
> > philospical point comprehension would result in laughter and the pleasant
> > feeling that humor provides.
> 
> For some time now I have been developing a personal theory of laughter that
> would help me to understand all aspects of humor.  First, as a basis, it 
> appears that each of us has developed our own "standard context" world view
> which makes us feel comfortable (non-stressed) and, in our own opinions,
> maximizes our personal "life-survival" potential.  We hold our standard
> contexts (dearly sometimes) to be `right' as opposed to `wrong' and most of
> us feel a need to indoctrinate others into our own contexts so as to develop
> a sort of general agreement about the `rightness' of them.  It is also common
> for us to accept a context from others that we feel might increase our own
> chances of success (survival) in life -- vis a vis the way that some people
> try to dress and act `like' famous personages such as Michael Jackson, John
> Wayne, Dennis Ritchie, or whomever they feel to be a worthy success image.
> 
> In any case, LAUGHTER IS REJECTION.  This simple definition means that what
> we `perceive' as `humor' are those things which we consider to be outside of
> our own standard contexts and, by laughter, we are (mentally) rejecting their
> inclusion into our own arenas.  The actual physical body mechanism of laughter
> is a stress releasing mechanism which allows us to "unstress" what we have
> just seen (most of the stress is probably at the subconscious level, hidden
> from conscious inspection.  This is due to the nature of the "sub-conscious
> mind" itself.  i.e. observant, gullible and believing.)  I would say that
> this physiological action is akin to one which is now well known, that of the
> "shot of adrenaline" during "fight or flight" (potential non-survive) situa-
> tions.  Have you ever wondered why you see some people laughing/smiling under
> very high stress conditions such as death or disaster?  Obviously, the laugh-
> ter itself is a stress reduction mechanism.  They are certainly not finding
> anything funny or humorous about their current environments.  It "feels good"
> to reduce mental and physical stress in one's self, so we all laugh.
> 
> When I was younger, I would wonder why laughter felt so good but yet the
> stereotype of the institutionalized mentally unbalanced patient was often one
> who was constantly in uncontrollable laughter.  The actual description of the
> laughter as "uncontrollable" is certainly very interesting also.  Within the
> above definition, the `mental' patients are unable to cope with life itself
> and are rejecting the entire physical environment in which they find themsel-
> ves.  This continuous act of (mental and physical) stress relief is all that
> they can now accomplish within their own (aberrated) standard contexts.
> Isn't laughter funny?
> 
> I would be very interested in hearing any current medical research on stress
> relief which supports or denies this theory.  Informally, it has explained
> to my satisfaction, every aspect of humor/laughter that I have applied it to
> so far.  From an example above, the `funny' aspect of W.C. Fields' remark is
> the personal rejection of his attempted switch of our own context (from a
> `generally-agreed context' of YMCA clubs) into his own `privately-held' con-
> text.  Our humor would also be a subconscious rejection of the "clubbing of
> children" (certainly a "problem" [non-survival] action, in so far as it is
> viewed by the subconscious mind).  Someone, with a different personal context,
> might find no humor in Fields' remark.  This difference could have come in the
> form of having personally observed a child (or a baby seal) clubbed.  These
> personal contexts are formed at the conscious level and are subjected to a
> continuous review for survival potential.  Once included (clubbing) in the
> conscious context set, the subconscious no longer has to deal with it and the
> subconscious can go back to its other `background' tasks of regulating body
> temperature, heart rate, etc.  Laughter is the defense/rejection of collapsing
> a person's conscious standard context set, and the physical stress relief
> medium of the subconscious.
> 
> I have also found that I can now better understand why people "make fun" of
> other people.  The humor is an ill-disguised (in my context) attempt to get the
> person being made fun of to be rejected by the group as he is considered to be
> dangerous to the survival context of the fun-makers -- or -- the attempt is
> to "lower" the butt of the humor, so that the perpetrators feel "higher" than
> that.  I have noticed that Carson's Tonight show on TV uses this form of humor
> to a marked degree.  It allows an audience of low self-confidence to perceive
> itself as "higher" (on a conscious level) than the one being made fun of. i.e.
> the one being "put-down".  The laughter is the subconscious stress relief valve
> of accepting a destructive (non-survival) slur into one's personal unconscious
> context set.  My personal regard for comedians is directly proportional to the
> amount of conscious context shifts they use, rather than their use of the more
> insidious "put-downs" of other people.  Laughter as a rejection of pain,
> hostility, grief, stupidity, or whatever is really not as funny as I first
> thought (moved to conscious context from subconscious context).
> 
> Comment?  Or do you just laugh in the general direction of this hypothesis?
> 
>            ...!ihnp4!sys1!sysvis!george  :-) "Never let 'em see you sweat."

Can we keep this sophistry out of net.math??? 

Bob Silverman   (they call me Mr.9)


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