there’s a famous Monty Python sketch
called the funniest joke in the world
the premise is this an unsuspecting joke
writer in the UK pens a joke so funny
that exposure to it results in
hysterical laughter followed by Swift
and southern death it being the midst of
World War two the British government
quickly weaponized as the joke
translating it into German a separate
translator for each word to avoid
needless casualties and British soldiers
then chant the joke on the battlefield
decimating the German army now there are
a lot of absurdities that make this
sketch funny the most obvious is the
idea of a joke so funny it’s fatal
comedians may say they killed at a gig
but they don’t generally mean it
literally
but the absurdity that I find most
thought-provoking as an anthropologist
who studies humor is the idea of a the
funniest joke in the world because we
know that there can’t be a world’s
funniest joke we know that humor is
subjective is there can’t be a funniest
joke in the world because different
people find different things funny but
at the same time we have a really hard
time letting go of the sense that some
things are just funny and some things
are just unfunny a lot of the research
on humor falls victim to the same
fallacy most scholars of humor are
aiming to unlock the secret of humor to
answer once and for all the question
what makes things funny and most
researchers look for the answers in the
jokes themselves trying to come up with
a set of objective criteria that
separate jokes from non jokes
in other words humor scholars sometimes
treat humor like alchemy mix the right
things together
in the right way and boom you have a
joke expose a person to the resulting
joke and blammo you have laughter the
problem is humor isn’t a formula
a Reddit user found as much when he
trained a recurring neural network on
5000 jokes and came up with such
computer-generated gems as what do you
say to a prince no and that’s actually
one of the more comprehensible ones
another one goes a man went to the
window and he asked him to go to the
girl it’s so if at when you mean there
is like it
okay so computers aren’t going to be
taking over open mic nights anytime soon
but in addition to reassuring comedians
that they have job security this example
also points to a fundamental flaw in the
alchemical approach to humor context
matters one of the things that
anthropologists emphasize about language
is that the meaning of an utterance can
never be found solely in the words
itself words themselves that meaning is
deeply embedded in the context and this
is true of humor as well humor can’t be
located solely in the words that make up
a joke humor lives in the telling in the
who’s and when’s and where’s and why’s
what do you say to a prince no is I
think we can all agree not a funny joke
not a good joke at the very least and
yet many of you laughed when I said it
knowing that this series of words was
generated by a computer program to come
up with jokes we can find humor in the
utter failure we can find subversion in
the nonsense the same series of words
coming from say a person a loved one
recovering from a stroke wouldn’t be
quite so funny so the the alchemical
approach to humor with us focus on the
ingredients of a joke tends to overlook
the fundamental importance of context it
also runs into trouble when we consider
the fact that different people find
different
things funny if one person lasted a joke
and another person doesn’t is the joke
funny is it even a joke do we say it’s a
joke in ones instance and not a joke in
the other or do we say that the person
who didn’t laugh is wrong that they
didn’t get the joke
what if they understand why the joke is
funny but they don’t themselves find it
funny I think it’s safe to say that I
get the joke why was 6 afraid of 7
because 7 8 9
but I’m unlikely to laugh at it we still
call it a joke
and what about puns more generally which
are jokes but prompt groans instead of
laughter okay so maybe we can say that a
joke is anything oh good lord well you
get a little foreshadowing here okay
having some issues okay so maybe we can
say that a joke is anything that has the
potential to make at least one person
laugh but then we face the problem of
having to classify pretty much
everything in the world as a joke after
all you probably laugh many times over
the course of a given day a study done
by to neurobiologists at the free
university of berlin found that research
subjects laughed a median of five point
eight times per 10 minutes of
conversation that’s a lot of laughter
how much of it is prompted by actual
jokes
well in 1993 the psychologist robert
Provine did a study where he found that
only about 10 to 20% of conversational
laughter is in response to something
humorous something that observers
characterized as humorous
so if we can’t locate laughter in the
specific things that make us laugh then
how do we study it
that’s where anthropology comes in as an
anthropologist who studies humor I
emphasize that humor is a social process
it’s one that’s messy and complex and
culturally specific all the way to its
core
that means contradicting a lot of the
ways that we intuitively think about
humor
for example laughter is more volitional
than we tend to think it is
we don’t just choose not to laugh if we
are for example offended by something we
also choose to laugh much of the time
for example we’re more likely to laugh
on or with other people consider the
difference between going and seeing a
stand-up comedy show in person as part
of an audience and watching it at home
by yourself and even when you’re
watching it at home by yourself it was
still filmed in front of a live audience
so in a sense you’re still laughing with
other people
imagine if stand-up comedy routines were
filmed with the comedian talking
straight to the camera with no audience
present would they be as funny probably
not or at the very least you probably
wouldn’t laugh as much
that’s because laughter isn’t an
individual phenomenon it’s social the
early 20th century philosopher Unruh
Bergson argued that in order for
something to be funny it needs to
involve human beings or things that
we’ve imbued with human characteristics
the natural world can be beautiful
terrifying sad cruel but never funny
according to Bergson if that’s true then
attempts at computer-generated humor are
doomed to fail what will be funny aren’t
the jokes that the computers come up
with but rather the futile attempts by
the programmers to actually get computer
to write jokes so laughter is social in
multiple ways we laugh with people we
laugh for people and we laugh at people
hand in hand with laughter social nature
is the fact that laughter is
communicative we use laughter in much
the same way that we use language to
convey information about ourselves and
the situations were in consider intense
and that’s because humor is indirect
humor requires leaving things unsaid
what comes between fear and sex Flint is
a joke what comes between fear fear the
German word for four and six the German
word for six Flint the German word for
five is not a joke
neither is what comes between four and
six five if I tell this joke I’m leaving
out crucial information and I’m relying
on you to be able to provide that
missing information and how do I know if
you were able to fill in the blanks if
you were able to supply that information
that I left out you’re probably not
going to explicitly confirm it you’re
probably not going to say oh it sounded
like you were saying English words but
they were actually German numbers
instead you’ll probably laugh so if
humor is indirect that laughter is an
equally indirect way of expressing humor
appreciation we use laughter to
communicate many different things that
we recognize the speaker was intending
to be funny that we were able to fill in
the blanks of the missing information
the speaker left out that we didn’t feel
offended or threatened by the
the joke or the person telling it that
we are a cooperative conversational
partner that we’re like the speaker in
some ineffable way consider inside jokes
despite the name inside jokes are rarely
actual jokes there are other references
to events or ideas that only a small
group of people are privy to if you’re
not familiar with the reference there’s
no way you can possibly get the joke if
you are familiar with the reference it
shows that you’re part of the same group
as the person making the reference so
telling inside jokes is a really
powerful way to increase group cohesion
inside jokes demonstrate a groups group
nests they celebrate the group’s shared
experiences and this is true of humor
more generally when we tell jokes were
connecting with people we are
emphasizing our shared backgrounds our
shared experiences our shared beliefs
but one of the things that
anthropologists emphasize about social
cohesion is that it requires division in
order to have an in-group you need an
out group in order to have boundaries
you need to police them so at the same
time that we use humor to form and
reaffirm social bonds we also use it to
divide and exclude returning to inside
jokes
imagine you’re hanging out with a group
of friends and one of them says
something that seems to you to be a non
sequitur everyone else laughs because
they were privy to the particular event
that your friend is referencing your non
laughter simultaneously demonstrates
that you’re not apar
of the in-group and further alienates
you from that group so humor serves as a
kind of social litmus test separating
those in the know from those out of the
loop and because we think of humor as
something that cuts to the heart of the
human experience sharing a sense of
humor with your intimates becomes an
incredibly important thing it’s easy
enough to be friends or partners with
someone who has different hobbies or
even different political views it’s much
harder to be friends or partners with
someone who doesn’t find the same things
funny according to a 2013 mass comm
serve a sense of humor was the third
most important quality in a prospective
mate for women and fourth most for men
now what these people mean when they say
sense of humor of course is a sense of
humor similar to mine which is seen as
indicating being similar more generally
this means that anytime someone says
something humorous or potentially
humorous they’re effectively forcing
their audience to declare their
allegiance do you get the joke or do you
not do you laugh or do you remain silent
in short are you like me or are you
unlike me but as much as we revile those
who disagree with us about what it isn’t
isn’t funny we also need them to exist
in my work on humor I’ve argued that in
order to find something funny we need to
at least be able to imagine that there
are people who wouldn’t find it funny
getting the joke afterall is only
meaningful if it’s possible for the joke
to not be gotten laughter and unlap derp
as Michael Billick has dubbed it are
mutually constitutive
each one defines the other so maybe we
can’t literally weaponize humor the way
that the British military does in the
Monty Python sketch but humor is a
social weapon it’s a scalpel that we use
to divide the world up into people like
us and people not like us that’s why
attempts to locate humor in the words or
the things that make us laugh attempts
to devise universal rules for what makes
something funny are never going to be
successful humor is a social process not
a particular set of words and humor is
by its very nature specific there’s no
such thing as a joke everybody finds
funny because if everybody found it
funny then nobody would find it funny
humor is paradoxical in this way it
simultaneously builds bonds and destroys
them
it creates social order and strews
disorder it’s both trivial and vitally
important humor is creative chaos that’s
what makes it difficult to study but
it’s also what makes it endlessly
fascinating Thanks
you
[Music]
called the funniest joke in the world
the premise is this an unsuspecting joke
writer in the UK pens a joke so funny
that exposure to it results in
hysterical laughter followed by Swift
and southern death it being the midst of
World War two the British government
quickly weaponized as the joke
translating it into German a separate
translator for each word to avoid
needless casualties and British soldiers
then chant the joke on the battlefield
decimating the German army now there are
a lot of absurdities that make this
sketch funny the most obvious is the
idea of a joke so funny it’s fatal
comedians may say they killed at a gig
but they don’t generally mean it
literally
but the absurdity that I find most
thought-provoking as an anthropologist
who studies humor is the idea of a the
funniest joke in the world because we
know that there can’t be a world’s
funniest joke we know that humor is
subjective is there can’t be a funniest
joke in the world because different
people find different things funny but
at the same time we have a really hard
time letting go of the sense that some
things are just funny and some things
are just unfunny a lot of the research
on humor falls victim to the same
fallacy most scholars of humor are
aiming to unlock the secret of humor to
answer once and for all the question
what makes things funny and most
researchers look for the answers in the
jokes themselves trying to come up with
a set of objective criteria that
separate jokes from non jokes
in other words humor scholars sometimes
treat humor like alchemy mix the right
things together
in the right way and boom you have a
joke expose a person to the resulting
joke and blammo you have laughter the
problem is humor isn’t a formula
a Reddit user found as much when he
trained a recurring neural network on
5000 jokes and came up with such
computer-generated gems as what do you
say to a prince no and that’s actually
one of the more comprehensible ones
another one goes a man went to the
window and he asked him to go to the
girl it’s so if at when you mean there
is like it
okay so computers aren’t going to be
taking over open mic nights anytime soon
but in addition to reassuring comedians
that they have job security this example
also points to a fundamental flaw in the
alchemical approach to humor context
matters one of the things that
anthropologists emphasize about language
is that the meaning of an utterance can
never be found solely in the words
itself words themselves that meaning is
deeply embedded in the context and this
is true of humor as well humor can’t be
located solely in the words that make up
a joke humor lives in the telling in the
who’s and when’s and where’s and why’s
what do you say to a prince no is I
think we can all agree not a funny joke
not a good joke at the very least and
yet many of you laughed when I said it
knowing that this series of words was
generated by a computer program to come
up with jokes we can find humor in the
utter failure we can find subversion in
the nonsense the same series of words
coming from say a person a loved one
recovering from a stroke wouldn’t be
quite so funny so the the alchemical
approach to humor with us focus on the
ingredients of a joke tends to overlook
the fundamental importance of context it
also runs into trouble when we consider
the fact that different people find
different
things funny if one person lasted a joke
and another person doesn’t is the joke
funny is it even a joke do we say it’s a
joke in ones instance and not a joke in
the other or do we say that the person
who didn’t laugh is wrong that they
didn’t get the joke
what if they understand why the joke is
funny but they don’t themselves find it
funny I think it’s safe to say that I
get the joke why was 6 afraid of 7
because 7 8 9
but I’m unlikely to laugh at it we still
call it a joke
and what about puns more generally which
are jokes but prompt groans instead of
laughter okay so maybe we can say that a
joke is anything oh good lord well you
get a little foreshadowing here okay
having some issues okay so maybe we can
say that a joke is anything that has the
potential to make at least one person
laugh but then we face the problem of
having to classify pretty much
everything in the world as a joke after
all you probably laugh many times over
the course of a given day a study done
by to neurobiologists at the free
university of berlin found that research
subjects laughed a median of five point
eight times per 10 minutes of
conversation that’s a lot of laughter
how much of it is prompted by actual
jokes
well in 1993 the psychologist robert
Provine did a study where he found that
only about 10 to 20% of conversational
laughter is in response to something
humorous something that observers
characterized as humorous
so if we can’t locate laughter in the
specific things that make us laugh then
how do we study it
that’s where anthropology comes in as an
anthropologist who studies humor I
emphasize that humor is a social process
it’s one that’s messy and complex and
culturally specific all the way to its
core
that means contradicting a lot of the
ways that we intuitively think about
humor
for example laughter is more volitional
than we tend to think it is
we don’t just choose not to laugh if we
are for example offended by something we
also choose to laugh much of the time
for example we’re more likely to laugh
on or with other people consider the
difference between going and seeing a
stand-up comedy show in person as part
of an audience and watching it at home
by yourself and even when you’re
watching it at home by yourself it was
still filmed in front of a live audience
so in a sense you’re still laughing with
other people
imagine if stand-up comedy routines were
filmed with the comedian talking
straight to the camera with no audience
present would they be as funny probably
not or at the very least you probably
wouldn’t laugh as much
that’s because laughter isn’t an
individual phenomenon it’s social the
early 20th century philosopher Unruh
Bergson argued that in order for
something to be funny it needs to
involve human beings or things that
we’ve imbued with human characteristics
the natural world can be beautiful
terrifying sad cruel but never funny
according to Bergson if that’s true then
attempts at computer-generated humor are
doomed to fail what will be funny aren’t
the jokes that the computers come up
with but rather the futile attempts by
the programmers to actually get computer
to write jokes so laughter is social in
multiple ways we laugh with people we
laugh for people and we laugh at people
hand in hand with laughter social nature
is the fact that laughter is
communicative we use laughter in much
the same way that we use language to
convey information about ourselves and
the situations were in consider intense
and that’s because humor is indirect
humor requires leaving things unsaid
what comes between fear and sex Flint is
a joke what comes between fear fear the
German word for four and six the German
word for six Flint the German word for
five is not a joke
neither is what comes between four and
six five if I tell this joke I’m leaving
out crucial information and I’m relying
on you to be able to provide that
missing information and how do I know if
you were able to fill in the blanks if
you were able to supply that information
that I left out you’re probably not
going to explicitly confirm it you’re
probably not going to say oh it sounded
like you were saying English words but
they were actually German numbers
instead you’ll probably laugh so if
humor is indirect that laughter is an
equally indirect way of expressing humor
appreciation we use laughter to
communicate many different things that
we recognize the speaker was intending
to be funny that we were able to fill in
the blanks of the missing information
the speaker left out that we didn’t feel
offended or threatened by the
the joke or the person telling it that
we are a cooperative conversational
partner that we’re like the speaker in
some ineffable way consider inside jokes
despite the name inside jokes are rarely
actual jokes there are other references
to events or ideas that only a small
group of people are privy to if you’re
not familiar with the reference there’s
no way you can possibly get the joke if
you are familiar with the reference it
shows that you’re part of the same group
as the person making the reference so
telling inside jokes is a really
powerful way to increase group cohesion
inside jokes demonstrate a groups group
nests they celebrate the group’s shared
experiences and this is true of humor
more generally when we tell jokes were
connecting with people we are
emphasizing our shared backgrounds our
shared experiences our shared beliefs
but one of the things that
anthropologists emphasize about social
cohesion is that it requires division in
order to have an in-group you need an
out group in order to have boundaries
you need to police them so at the same
time that we use humor to form and
reaffirm social bonds we also use it to
divide and exclude returning to inside
jokes
imagine you’re hanging out with a group
of friends and one of them says
something that seems to you to be a non
sequitur everyone else laughs because
they were privy to the particular event
that your friend is referencing your non
laughter simultaneously demonstrates
that you’re not apar
of the in-group and further alienates
you from that group so humor serves as a
kind of social litmus test separating
those in the know from those out of the
loop and because we think of humor as
something that cuts to the heart of the
human experience sharing a sense of
humor with your intimates becomes an
incredibly important thing it’s easy
enough to be friends or partners with
someone who has different hobbies or
even different political views it’s much
harder to be friends or partners with
someone who doesn’t find the same things
funny according to a 2013 mass comm
serve a sense of humor was the third
most important quality in a prospective
mate for women and fourth most for men
now what these people mean when they say
sense of humor of course is a sense of
humor similar to mine which is seen as
indicating being similar more generally
this means that anytime someone says
something humorous or potentially
humorous they’re effectively forcing
their audience to declare their
allegiance do you get the joke or do you
not do you laugh or do you remain silent
in short are you like me or are you
unlike me but as much as we revile those
who disagree with us about what it isn’t
isn’t funny we also need them to exist
in my work on humor I’ve argued that in
order to find something funny we need to
at least be able to imagine that there
are people who wouldn’t find it funny
getting the joke afterall is only
meaningful if it’s possible for the joke
to not be gotten laughter and unlap derp
as Michael Billick has dubbed it are
mutually constitutive
each one defines the other so maybe we
can’t literally weaponize humor the way
that the British military does in the
Monty Python sketch but humor is a
social weapon it’s a scalpel that we use
to divide the world up into people like
us and people not like us that’s why
attempts to locate humor in the words or
the things that make us laugh attempts
to devise universal rules for what makes
something funny are never going to be
successful humor is a social process not
a particular set of words and humor is
by its very nature specific there’s no
such thing as a joke everybody finds
funny because if everybody found it
funny then nobody would find it funny
humor is paradoxical in this way it
simultaneously builds bonds and destroys
them
it creates social order and strews
disorder it’s both trivial and vitally
important humor is creative chaos that’s
what makes it difficult to study but
it’s also what makes it endlessly
fascinating Thanks
you
[Music]
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