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Um, do you want to start or do you want me to start?

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Uh why don't you start?

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Okay.

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Uh let me think.

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You for did you forget your lines?

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Uh no, I'm trying to think of uh you know, there's one time there was one time in one of

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our short intro introductions where uh you thought there was a long

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space, and then I was kind of like quietly said it, and you're like, oh that's a different

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vibe, sort of like, you know, and I like it was because I literally forgot what I was gonna

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say and I didn't admit, but I like couldn't I couldn't remember my line for the short

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intro.

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So you couldn't remember the line I'm Dave Petrozowski.

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No, I think it I think it was I think it was um by evolutionary by actual evolution I

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couldn't remember the line by actual evolutionary psychologists.

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So I sort of you were like so by by evolutionary psychology actuaries.

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Yeah.

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No, no, no.

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So it was actual evolutionary psychology and then dot dot dot.

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And I couldn't think of by actual evolutionary psychologists.

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So so I just waited longer and longer.

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And then I kind of quietly said it because I like remembered it, but didn't want to say

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that I had forgotten.

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Um I don't think we ever used that take, but but maybe we can use this.

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So Okay.

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Well uh without further ado, this is Evolutionary Psychology, the podcast.

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Where I will remember to say, um well yeah, you can you can say that part.

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Actual evolutionary psychology.

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By actual evolutionary psychologists.

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I can't believe that.

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We nailed it.

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I couldn't think of that.

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Nailed it.

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So yeah.

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Excellent.

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Okay.

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So David, today we have uh a special guest, David Pinsoff.

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Have you ever heard of him?

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I've never heard of him.

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I don't know who he is.

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Well it's about the the thing that that was was something called a joke.

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And what he's gonna talk about is how humor is sort of about

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making mistakes and why um that was sort of funny.

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Okay.

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Well, I hope he explains why that was funny and gets to the the bottom of it because uh I

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find it pretty puzzling.

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Yeah, it may not have been that funny, but um it was medium.

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Ma maybe he'll explain why it wasn't funny.

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Why it wasn't funny, exactly.

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Okay.

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Okay.

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Well, uh, but no, for real, this is uh a really cool episode where David explains his um in

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in still a hot not even hot off the presses, like preprint version of the theory of humor,

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which I think is really, uh, really amazing.

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Um, and I I certainly feel like I understand humor uh post uh

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digested by David.

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Um, you know, the world is a different place for me now that I've heard this theory of

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humor than before.

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So um I hope everybody um finds it useful and informative and slightly funny.

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Yeah, I'm really excited about it.

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It's lovely to hear you s hear you say that, Dave.

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That's high praise.

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Uh yeah.

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So enjoy uh the mix up theory of humor.

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Sounds good.

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You can pay me uh once the uh music starts.

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David, um today it's you and I and not uh anyone

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else.

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I know it's been a long time since we've had one of these.

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I know.

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And so I just can hear everybody hanging up their phone.

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Well, I guess you don't hear it when people turn their so um if you're looking for a guest,

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um, we're sorry to disappoint you.

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We can just we should just cut all of this because it's a terrible way to start.

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So today we're gonna talk about um Today we're going to talk about humor.

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And uh and usually when there's a talk about humor, I'm always expecting

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my first thought is like this talk better be funny.

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Um or uh and typically they're not.

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Um, but you did you've been presenting on this.

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So can you tell me a little bit?

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So you have this idea about humor, and we'll talk about it in a second.

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Um number one, uh, what is the what's the how did this uh

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tell me of the the growth of this idea and where did it come from and is this something you

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thought of like you know a year ago or 10 years ago um and and then we'll talk about

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what the idea is and then we'll um and then maybe I would love to sort of talk about how

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um I think this idea explains a lot of humor that yeah uh I had

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sort of had a running tally.

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I think for me at least humor was sort of one of the big question marks.

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And I feel like your your theory nails it.

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And then I would love to hear people's thoughts, you know, after we post this about things

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that might not cover, just to really push on this idea.

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But I really think um to be um, you know um biased but i really

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do think this is probably the best idea about what humor is that i've heard so but yeah how

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did you um uh how did you um birth this idea um

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well uh like you i was frustrated that there was not a good

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evolutionary theory of humor uh when i see a a juicy Darwinian

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mystery, something that's unexplained, something that uh when people ask me about, I just

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draw a blank.

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Like that really, really motivates me.

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Um, so I had always known that like this was the big uh blank, the big gap in

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our evolutionary understanding of human nature that had been unfilled for a very long time.

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Uh, and because I'm kind of an ambitious person, I had always just wanted, I was just

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really hungry to solve this thing, uh, to figure it out.

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Um, and I wasn't actively working on it.

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It was like always in the back of my mind like, what is going on with this huge part of the

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human experience?

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There's there's gotta be a good Darwinian explanation for this.

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I just can't figure it out.

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And so uh Can I interrupt really quick?

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Yeah, yeah.

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I think just for everybody listening, and not to sort of like pull rank at all, but like I

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think you in the Venn diagram of people to figure out at least the next best idea, you are

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both, in a sense, you are a professional comedian and a professional evolutionary

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psychologist.

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I mean you you literally are a professional in both of these domains.

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It's true.

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It was a great Venn diagram of both of my interests.

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So I I work on comedy, I work for Cards Against Humanity.

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I do you know data science, like literally figuring out which combinations of cards uh make

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people laugh.

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Right.

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Um and I've you know analyzed that data and uh and so I'm steeped in comedy both in my

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professional and in my academic life.

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Right.

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And so that was another impetus for really you know, goading me to figure this out.

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Like if if I can't figure this out, then this will be a good idea.

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Yeah, you know, like I'm I'm the person to figure this out.

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Um I don't know.

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May maybe that's arrogant of me, but uh it's you know, so you gotta try, you know.

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I I at least I gave it a try.

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Yeah.

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Um actually not even that act.

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So it wasn't that I was like I sat down to figure it out and I found the solution.

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It was like I was reading something else.

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And that just I see yeah triggered the idea in me.

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So I at the time I forget why I was just like reading about coordination games and and and

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common knowledge.

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Light reading, light reading.

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Yeah.

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Well I so I I know that's what we read.

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I know, yeah.

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Like uh light reading or sorry, heavy reading, but important reading.

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Um and that I think coordination games are one of the biggest, most underrated topic uh

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topics in evolutionary psychology.

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I think uh there's far uh there's not enough uh work on coordination at all.

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And coordination, just because I mean, obviously we've talked about it before, but it's

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such a simple but also sort of abstract idea.

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Can you just sort of clarify what coordination is?

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Because it's gonna be really important for this whole conversation.

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So I think it'll be really good to just clarify how you think about it.

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Yeah.

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So you can f uh mathematically formalize it as um you

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know.

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Oh we just lost we just lost 10 more listeners.

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Okay.

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So all right.

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And we've maybe one person was like, oh yes, give it to me in mathematical formalism.

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Yes, I'm kidding.

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Okay.

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Uh uh no this is going to be as simple as possible.

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I promise you'll be able to follow it.

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So let's just start with like a really simple coordination game where I have two options

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and you have two options.

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And if we both pick option one, we gain a benefit.

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And if we both pick option two, we gain a benefit.

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But if we're mixed up and I go with one and you go with two, or vice versa, we pay a cost.

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That's that's it.

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That's the simplest way of describing a coordination game.

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I see.

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So like driving on the side of the road, it doesn't matter which side of the road we drive

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on, as long as we are both uh, for lack of a better word, coordinated will be

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fine.

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The problem is when we we neither of us is coordinated to the point where we're both

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occupying the same lane going in different directions, then we're in trouble.

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That's right.

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And so in the case of driving on the same side of the road, uh you would say that there are

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are two different equilibria in game theory.

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An equilibrium is is sort of uh a an outcome where no player can deviate from the

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equilibrium or do something different and gain an advantage.

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So it sort of stays in that stable state because no player can benefit by deviating from

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it.

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And so uh there are two equilibria with driving on one on the left side or the right side.

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Um coordination games sometimes have multiple equilibria, sometimes they have one

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equilibrium.

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Um it doesn't really matter.

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The basic most important part of it is that we both benefit by aligning our behavior in

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some way.

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And I should emphasize that it doesn't necessarily mean that we're doing the same thing.

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Um so if we're both talking at the same time, that's bad.

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You could think of that as a coordination failure.

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If we're both listening at the same time and sitting in awkward silence, that's also bad.

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So coordination.

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I know that's I mean we're we're very bad.

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I feel very targeted.

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Yeah.

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We're very bad coordination partners.

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Uh but no coordination is really hard.

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It's it's hard to carry on a a a smooth conversation with someone.

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Uh and we often like subtly evaluate like how valuable this person is as a social partner

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based on how smooth the conversation is and how uh not awkward it is.

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And we can get into awkwardness later.

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I think awkwardness is tied in with this concept of coordination.

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Um yeah, I'm sure everybody has had this experience of like you just talk to somebody and

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then afterwards like, oh, that went really, really well, or like you're just having a

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conversation with somebody and then there's just awkward silence, and you're just like,

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This is you know, and especially like in a dating context, that's even amplified.

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But I think even just regular life, it's sort of some people you just kind of you just kind

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of, as the kids say, you kind of vibe with, and then some people are like, What is this?

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Yeah.

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Yeah, you you can I think vibing is a way of conveying what it's like to

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effectively coordinate with someone for mutual benefit.

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Maybe we should write a paper called A Theory of Vibing, but I think that's basically it.

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You know, like we're mutually benefiting and just getting each other and understanding each

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other, and we're just working together really smoothly.

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There's no awkwardness, there's no confusion.

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I think that's ultimately what vibing is like.

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You know, we're we're part of the same in-group, we get the same references and in inside

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jokes.

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Um, so that's that's coordination.

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And you know, so as as I said before, you know, sometimes it means, you know, doing the

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same thing as others, like driving on the same side of the road, but oftentimes it it's

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it's doing a complimentary thing.

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So, you know, uh talking while the other listens, listening while the other talks, leading

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while the other follows, following while the other leads.

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Uh it it doesn't matter so much that the actions are the same.

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What matters is that um that they produce a mutual benefit.

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Right.

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And so this is different from other kinds of games in that they're non zero sum or they're

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they're positive some.

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So uh you cannot beat me at uh passing me in the hallway, for example.

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Sounds like a challenge.

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Yeah.

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You you cannot uh beat the other cars on the road by driving in the wrong lane, right?

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Either all the cars benefit from a safer driving environment or all the cars lose from a

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more dangerous driving environment.

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Either we both benefit from having a smooth conversation where we transmit useful

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information to each other, or we both lose by wasting our time and not communicating

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anything of value and, you know, uh and and and bungling the interaction.

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Right.

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So we're we're either winning or losing together.

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That's another important feature of coordination games.

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And the other uh really important feature of coordination games is that they often require

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common knowledge.

243
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Um, so common knowledge is uh a hugely important term in game theory.

244
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Uh I'm grateful that uh the great Stephen Pinker is writing a book on common knowledge, it

245
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should be awesome.

246
00:13:06,380 --> 00:13:09,260
Uh, I think it's a really understudied and hugely important topic.

247
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Roughly, common knowledge in the game theoretic sense means that everyone knows that

248
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everyone knows something.

249
00:13:17,030 --> 00:13:22,870
So if we're going to coordinate for mutual benefit, uh, I need to know what to

250
00:13:22,870 --> 00:13:25,030
do in order to gain the mutual benefit, right?

251
00:13:25,510 --> 00:13:28,550
But I also need to know that you know what to do.

252
00:13:28,710 --> 00:13:32,470
Otherwise, I shouldn't do it because you might not do the same thing, right?

253
00:13:32,790 --> 00:13:34,390
Or do the complimentary thing.

254
00:13:34,550 --> 00:13:40,120
Uh, which means that um I need to know that you know that I know what to do, because then I

255
00:13:40,120 --> 00:13:42,680
can't count on you to uh coordinate with me.

256
00:13:42,840 --> 00:13:47,000
So we basically we need to know that the other one knows, that the other one knows, and so

257
00:13:47,000 --> 00:13:51,240
on, what to do in order to work together and and smoothly coordinate.

258
00:13:51,640 --> 00:13:51,800
Right.

259
00:13:51,880 --> 00:13:53,880
The episode with Michael Moncrief.

260
00:13:55,320 --> 00:13:56,680
Uh Michael Moncrief.

261
00:13:57,080 --> 00:14:00,200
Hey Michael, um is uh was a lovely example of that.

262
00:14:00,280 --> 00:14:05,290
We're in the um east, east of the um the Berlin Wall.

263
00:14:05,530 --> 00:14:07,610
Um was it in Poland or something?

264
00:14:07,770 --> 00:14:09,130
It doesn't, the details don't really matter.

265
00:14:09,210 --> 00:14:15,050
But it was this radio free um Europe was on, and it was they told people to flicker

266
00:14:15,210 --> 00:14:19,850
their lights in this small village if they're listening and they're sort of not happy with

267
00:14:19,850 --> 00:14:20,970
the current regime.

268
00:14:21,130 --> 00:14:23,050
And all of a sudden, all these lights were flickering.

269
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And Michael conveyed that, you know, a couple of days later was you know the beginning of

270
00:14:28,810 --> 00:14:31,700
the end of that uh of the iron curtain, basically.

271
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And the idea was that there were lots of people, maybe who knew other people who were not

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happy.

273
00:14:38,100 --> 00:14:42,900
Maybe they were not happy too, but it became a thing of everyone could see that everyone

274
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else could see.

275
00:14:44,020 --> 00:14:49,700
And so this function of sort of I know that you know that I know.

276
00:14:49,860 --> 00:14:55,780
It sounds jargony, but it's this difference between um understanding, as you

277
00:14:55,780 --> 00:15:01,590
put it, that we'll both be we both represent that each other are we're all we're both a

278
00:15:01,590 --> 00:15:05,830
team and we're gonna work together versus just knowing that we might be just sort of ships

279
00:15:05,990 --> 00:15:09,830
maybe usually passing the night but we just happen to be going in the same direction but I

280
00:15:09,830 --> 00:15:12,150
don't know that you know that I'm doing the same thing.

281
00:15:12,310 --> 00:15:16,790
So I can't rely on you to sort of be my partner, quote unquote.

282
00:15:16,950 --> 00:15:17,350
Yeah.

283
00:15:17,670 --> 00:15:17,910
Right.

284
00:15:17,990 --> 00:15:18,230
Yeah.

285
00:15:18,310 --> 00:15:23,430
So with with the Moncrief example, uh we might all have private knowledge that the regime

286
00:15:23,430 --> 00:15:23,910
sucks.

287
00:15:24,070 --> 00:15:28,380
And we might have private knowledge that other people are are unhappy with the regime.

288
00:15:28,860 --> 00:15:34,460
But we might not know that other people know that that the regime sucks or that we hate the

289
00:15:34,460 --> 00:15:34,700
regime.

290
00:15:34,780 --> 00:15:37,660
We might not know that other people know that that we are dissatisfied.

291
00:15:37,820 --> 00:15:43,020
We might not know that they know that we know that they know that they're dissatisfied.

292
00:15:43,180 --> 00:15:47,020
And if we want to mount an effective rebellion or resistance, we need common knowledge.

293
00:15:47,100 --> 00:15:51,260
We need to know that if we're going to resist or overthrow the regime, that other people

294
00:15:51,260 --> 00:15:52,940
are going to have our backs.

295
00:15:53,500 --> 00:15:57,430
And in order to rally that kind of movement, you need common knowledge.

296
00:15:57,590 --> 00:15:57,750
Yeah.

297
00:15:57,830 --> 00:16:02,390
Um, really quick, really quick, sorry to interrupt, but I also wonder just as another

298
00:16:02,390 --> 00:16:07,270
callback to a different episode, um, I also wonder if the loneliness, feeling people

299
00:16:07,270 --> 00:16:11,110
feeling lonely is a a lack of co feeling like there's common knowledge.

300
00:16:11,350 --> 00:16:14,390
Um that would be a really interesting thing to look at, I think.

301
00:16:14,470 --> 00:16:19,520
Like just sort of to what extent do you feel like there's common knowledge uh in especially

302
00:16:19,520 --> 00:16:25,280
in a mass uh media environment, you're really not getting cues of common knowledge that

303
00:16:25,360 --> 00:16:28,880
nobody knows what I think, or nobody cares what I think.

304
00:16:29,040 --> 00:16:35,040
Um, I wonder if a lot of social media or just weird stuff people do online is this sort of

305
00:16:35,040 --> 00:16:40,320
weird klugey attempt to sort of create common knowledge, given that we're sort of getting

306
00:16:40,320 --> 00:16:46,150
super stimuli of one-sided, we're getting a lot of inundation about epistemic

307
00:16:46,150 --> 00:16:52,150
or information cues, but we're not getting um you're not being seen and you're

308
00:16:52,150 --> 00:16:54,070
not getting cues of common knowledge.

309
00:16:54,470 --> 00:16:54,710
Yeah.

310
00:16:54,790 --> 00:16:56,550
No, that's a really interesting hypothesis.

311
00:16:56,630 --> 00:16:58,070
I I buy that completely.

312
00:16:58,150 --> 00:17:01,190
And and I I think it it also ties into your work with groups.

313
00:17:01,350 --> 00:17:04,400
I think you need group you need common knowledge to have a group.

314
00:17:04,560 --> 00:17:07,680
Because we all need to know that everyone knows that everyone knows that we're in this

315
00:17:07,680 --> 00:17:09,520
group and these people are not in this group.

316
00:17:09,680 --> 00:17:13,120
Without that common knowledge, the whole concept of a group shatters.

317
00:17:13,440 --> 00:17:17,520
You cannot maintain a group without common knowledge that that there is the group.

318
00:17:17,600 --> 00:17:20,080
It's a it's a construction of our of our minds.

319
00:17:20,160 --> 00:17:21,040
Um, this group.

320
00:17:21,200 --> 00:17:25,840
I mean, there there's no in intrinsic difference between, say, you know, the the Mets and

321
00:17:25,840 --> 00:17:27,600
the Yankees or whatever.

322
00:17:27,760 --> 00:17:31,440
It's you know, we've all agreed and agreed that everyone else agrees that these are two

323
00:17:31,440 --> 00:17:32,480
different groups.

324
00:17:32,720 --> 00:17:32,960
Right.

325
00:17:33,040 --> 00:17:34,290
Um it's like money.

326
00:17:34,450 --> 00:17:35,170
It's just a court.

327
00:17:35,330 --> 00:17:36,290
Yeah, it's just yeah.

328
00:17:36,770 --> 00:17:37,010
Exactly.

329
00:17:37,250 --> 00:17:37,650
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

330
00:17:37,810 --> 00:17:37,970
Yeah.

331
00:17:38,050 --> 00:17:38,610
No, that's right.

332
00:17:38,690 --> 00:17:42,930
And so a lot of weird, even like moral outrage stuff and probably a lot of the the the

333
00:17:42,930 --> 00:17:47,650
terrible things people do online, it might be a weird attempt to sort of create that.

334
00:17:47,810 --> 00:17:53,490
So if you had if the the the emotion of lack of sort of um uh common

335
00:17:53,490 --> 00:17:56,530
knowledge might be a really interesting research topic.

336
00:17:56,900 --> 00:17:58,020
Yeah, no, I I fully agree.

337
00:17:58,100 --> 00:17:58,980
That would be cool to look at.

338
00:17:59,780 --> 00:18:01,060
Sorry, digression done.

339
00:18:01,140 --> 00:18:06,420
So we've got coordination, common knowledge under our belts into this idea of humor.

340
00:18:06,820 --> 00:18:07,140
Okay.

341
00:18:07,460 --> 00:18:13,380
Um so i you really cannot overstate the importance of coordination to the

342
00:18:13,380 --> 00:18:14,420
human experience.

343
00:18:14,660 --> 00:18:18,420
It's the water we swim in uh and we ought it's often invisible to us.

344
00:18:18,580 --> 00:18:21,700
So like what we're doing right now is playing a coordination game.

345
00:18:21,940 --> 00:18:27,890
Language itself is a massive coordination game where we have all agreed on which

346
00:18:27,890 --> 00:18:31,090
sounds correspond to which things in the world.

347
00:18:31,330 --> 00:18:35,970
It's kind of an unbelievably complicated coordination game that we're all playing and

348
00:18:35,970 --> 00:18:36,930
playing really well.

349
00:18:37,010 --> 00:18:42,450
It's it's phenomenal, like how smoothly we can communicate with each other and transmit

350
00:18:42,610 --> 00:18:47,180
subtle, complex ideas and representations from one head to another.

351
00:18:47,340 --> 00:18:50,220
It's miraculous when you think about how it works.

352
00:18:50,380 --> 00:18:53,340
But it is just a bunch of coordination games.

353
00:18:53,500 --> 00:18:57,100
Each word in our language is a coordination game.

354
00:18:57,260 --> 00:19:00,780
We have all coordinated on the fact that this word means this thing.

355
00:19:01,180 --> 00:19:05,420
Dog means the four-legged furry thing with the tail that's cute, right?

356
00:19:06,350 --> 00:19:12,350
Um, and so it's it's in in even, you know, culture, conventions, norms, even social

357
00:19:12,430 --> 00:19:16,350
status, I think, is ultimately uh in large part a coordination game.

358
00:19:16,510 --> 00:19:20,430
We all have to agree on who is high status and who's low status.

359
00:19:20,590 --> 00:19:24,510
And everyone has to know that everyone knows who's high status and who's low status.

360
00:19:24,590 --> 00:19:28,750
If I'm discoordinated with other people and I don't know who's high status and who's low

361
00:19:28,750 --> 00:19:34,270
status, and I suck up to and praise someone who's an incom a nincompoop or a social

362
00:19:34,510 --> 00:19:40,400
pariah, um, or if I insult and you know casually diss someone who's you know widely

363
00:19:40,400 --> 00:19:45,440
respected and venerated, that's gonna be really bad for me and my my social well-being.

364
00:19:45,520 --> 00:19:49,360
So I need to coordinate with everyone else on who's at the top, who's at the bottom, who's

365
00:19:49,360 --> 00:19:50,800
a good person, who's a bad person.

366
00:19:50,960 --> 00:19:54,960
If I'm mixed up with other people, that's gonna impose huge costs on me.

367
00:19:55,200 --> 00:19:55,760
Right.

368
00:19:56,160 --> 00:20:00,510
So that's a good segue into this idea of a mix-up.

369
00:20:01,310 --> 00:20:07,310
Um so uh if we're if coordination is the water we swim in, um, there is a

370
00:20:07,310 --> 00:20:09,950
difference between doing it well and doing it poorly.

371
00:20:10,190 --> 00:20:16,110
And one of the easiest ways to uh fail to coordinate is to be mixed up

372
00:20:16,110 --> 00:20:16,830
about something.

373
00:20:16,990 --> 00:20:22,190
And so the simplest example of this is when we look at the coordination game of language.

374
00:20:22,350 --> 00:20:26,750
So we've all agreed that you know these sounds correspond to these things, but what about

375
00:20:26,750 --> 00:20:31,560
the case of a homonym where you have a word that's, you know, two words that sound

376
00:20:31,800 --> 00:20:35,160
identical and yet mean different things?

377
00:20:35,720 --> 00:20:38,280
That those kinds of words are really dangerous.

378
00:20:38,440 --> 00:20:42,920
You could think of them as kind of hot spots where where mix-ups are likely to occur

379
00:20:43,080 --> 00:20:45,640
because it's really they're really easy to confuse.

380
00:20:45,880 --> 00:20:50,200
Um uh it's really easy to to bungle up these these these two meanings.

381
00:20:50,440 --> 00:20:52,360
Um so that's one example.

382
00:20:52,520 --> 00:20:57,950
So I might, you know, uh uh say one version of a homonym, and you might hear a different

383
00:20:57,950 --> 00:21:01,870
version, and that might cause us to catastrophically miscommunicate in some way.

384
00:21:02,030 --> 00:21:06,510
And so you could imagine that being a really strong selection pressure on our communicating

385
00:21:06,590 --> 00:21:12,030
collaborative ancestors to avoid those kinds of catastrophic uh miscommunications and to

386
00:21:12,030 --> 00:21:16,190
have mental machinery that can detect them and avoid them and signal when they've occurred

387
00:21:16,270 --> 00:21:21,550
so that we can diffuse their costs and continue uh collaborating in a mutually beneficial

388
00:21:21,550 --> 00:21:21,790
way.

389
00:21:22,030 --> 00:21:25,180
Um so homonyms would be one case of a mix up.

390
00:21:25,420 --> 00:21:30,620
You could mix up a high status person with a low status person as I discussed earlier.

391
00:21:31,180 --> 00:21:35,500
You could uh mix up, you know, uh the purpose of the rule.

392
00:21:35,980 --> 00:21:40,140
You could, you know, confuse the letter of the law for its spirit or the spirit of the law

393
00:21:40,140 --> 00:21:41,100
for its letter.

394
00:21:41,660 --> 00:21:43,180
You could mix up people.

395
00:21:43,370 --> 00:21:47,850
You know, a lot of comedy involves impersonating someone, making it easy to confuse them

396
00:21:47,850 --> 00:21:49,610
with the person they're impersonating.

397
00:21:49,930 --> 00:21:55,770
Shakespeare played a lot with mistaken identities and the hilarious

398
00:21:55,770 --> 00:21:59,290
consequences that can flow from mistaken identities.

399
00:22:00,490 --> 00:22:05,210
I mean, virtually any domain of human endeavor where we coordinate with one another,

400
00:22:05,290 --> 00:22:07,690
there's always the possibility of some kind of mix-up.

401
00:22:13,260 --> 00:22:13,660
Yeah, exactly.

402
00:22:13,740 --> 00:22:14,140
Yeah, yeah.

403
00:22:14,460 --> 00:22:18,540
So uh trying to pass each other in the hallway is one of the simplest coordination games we

404
00:22:18,540 --> 00:22:18,940
could play.

405
00:22:19,260 --> 00:22:23,500
We could either, you know, uh uh we we each have the the two choices of either going left

406
00:22:23,500 --> 00:22:23,900
or right.

407
00:22:24,060 --> 00:22:28,060
And if we go in the same direction, we bump into each other, and if we uh uh move in

408
00:22:28,060 --> 00:22:31,350
opposite directions, we pass each other and we gain a benefit.

409
00:22:31,510 --> 00:22:35,430
Um, and often when when we struggle to do that and we dance back and forth trying to pass

410
00:22:35,430 --> 00:22:36,550
each other, we laugh.

411
00:22:36,950 --> 00:22:39,750
And I think that especially if it's going on for a while.

412
00:22:39,830 --> 00:22:39,990
Yeah.

413
00:22:40,230 --> 00:22:40,390
Yeah.

414
00:22:40,470 --> 00:22:43,750
The the longer it goes on, the the more costly it is, and the more the more potentially

415
00:22:43,750 --> 00:22:44,390
costly it is.

416
00:22:44,470 --> 00:22:49,910
If we misinterpret this as a kind of hostile or romantic interaction, that could

417
00:22:49,910 --> 00:22:51,110
potentially be very costly.

418
00:22:51,190 --> 00:22:53,430
And so we need to signal we shouldn't take this seriously.

419
00:22:53,510 --> 00:22:55,110
This is just a misunderstanding.

420
00:22:55,600 --> 00:22:57,280
And so that's what laughter is signaling.

421
00:22:57,360 --> 00:23:02,080
It's diffusing these potential costs and these anticipated costs that could emerge from

422
00:23:02,080 --> 00:23:04,080
this failure to coordinate.

423
00:23:05,440 --> 00:23:07,920
So we can think about mix-ups in two ways.

424
00:23:08,080 --> 00:23:13,920
We can rank them based on how confusable they are, or how tempting they are, or how easy

425
00:23:13,920 --> 00:23:15,280
they are to fall prey to.

426
00:23:15,680 --> 00:23:20,290
It's it's it we don't really have an intuitive way we don't of describing this, but I do

427
00:23:20,290 --> 00:23:23,330
think it's really important, like how tempting the mistake is.

428
00:23:23,650 --> 00:23:29,330
So um to give the easiest example, um homonyms will have higher

429
00:23:29,330 --> 00:23:34,370
confusibility than any other random pair of words you take from the English lexicon.

430
00:23:34,610 --> 00:23:34,770
Right.

431
00:23:34,930 --> 00:23:39,600
Um so on the continuum of how uh e easy it is to fall prey to this mix-up.

432
00:23:39,840 --> 00:23:44,960
Homonyms would be at one extreme end of the continuum, and you know, couch and saxophone

433
00:23:44,960 --> 00:23:47,120
would be at another extreme end of the continuum.

434
00:23:47,200 --> 00:23:49,040
You're never gonna mix up couch and saxophone.

435
00:23:49,200 --> 00:23:49,280
Right.

436
00:23:49,520 --> 00:23:49,680
Right.

437
00:23:50,000 --> 00:23:55,440
Um and then there's an example here of uh, I'm not gonna name who it is, but somebody who

438
00:23:55,440 --> 00:24:01,360
is trying to speak a different language uh was describing that um they learned the word for

439
00:24:01,360 --> 00:24:06,720
hot, and uh um and in the language they were learning, um,

440
00:24:07,150 --> 00:24:07,390
hot.

441
00:24:07,710 --> 00:24:11,150
There's two versions of hot, and one means sort of temperature hot, the other one means

442
00:24:11,150 --> 00:24:11,790
horny.

443
00:24:12,190 --> 00:24:17,470
And so this person was like going to taxi cabs in this country and just sort of being like,

444
00:24:17,550 --> 00:24:18,270
How are you doing?

445
00:24:18,430 --> 00:24:20,030
And they were very proud of themselves.

446
00:24:20,270 --> 00:24:23,790
They were like getting on the taxi cam and they were just saying, like, um, you know, I'm

447
00:24:23,790 --> 00:24:26,750
okay, but you know, I'm really horny today, right?

448
00:24:26,990 --> 00:24:30,510
Uh, because uh, you know, they it was a hot day, right?

449
00:24:30,670 --> 00:24:36,160
So very, very proudly um uh and also another linguistic um uh

450
00:24:36,320 --> 00:24:42,160
mix-up was somebody was um and both of these are are true stories was um

451
00:24:42,400 --> 00:24:48,080
somebody was uh learning Italian, um she was German, and she was very proud of

452
00:24:48,080 --> 00:24:53,920
ordering um fish at a counter, but she was uh insistently saying, I am a tuna, um,

453
00:24:54,080 --> 00:24:56,080
instead of saying I'd like a tuna.

454
00:24:56,240 --> 00:24:59,760
So so examples of mix-up linguistically that are actually pretty funny.

455
00:24:59,840 --> 00:25:00,080
Yeah.

456
00:25:00,430 --> 00:25:00,590
Yeah.

457
00:25:00,830 --> 00:25:06,430
No, the example I use uh uh is um I had a uh a friend in college who spoke English as a

458
00:25:06,430 --> 00:25:11,630
second language and he thought that the phrase hook up with uh meant meet up with, which is

459
00:25:11,630 --> 00:25:13,470
kind of an understandable and tempting mix up.

460
00:25:14,670 --> 00:25:17,790
You could almost pull that off if you had enough context clues.

461
00:25:17,870 --> 00:25:17,950
Yeah.

462
00:25:18,270 --> 00:25:18,430
Right.

463
00:25:18,510 --> 00:25:21,950
But then when you say like I hooked up with a bunch of guys at Taco Bell last night, um

464
00:25:22,190 --> 00:25:23,950
that could that could potentially be funny.

465
00:25:24,100 --> 00:25:24,180
Yeah.

466
00:25:24,340 --> 00:25:24,500
Yeah.

467
00:25:24,580 --> 00:25:27,540
I mean and you know you could think about it like, you know, it's a it's kind of an

468
00:25:27,540 --> 00:25:28,340
understandable mix up.

469
00:25:28,420 --> 00:25:29,060
It's kinda tempting.

470
00:25:29,140 --> 00:25:30,260
And it's also really costly.

471
00:25:30,340 --> 00:25:34,820
Like it would severely damage my reputation if you thought that I had sex with a bunch of

472
00:25:34,820 --> 00:25:36,500
men at Taco Bell, right?

473
00:25:36,660 --> 00:25:37,220
Uh randomly.

474
00:25:37,700 --> 00:25:38,500
So um or not.

475
00:25:38,580 --> 00:25:40,980
May maybe maybe it would uh you know increase my standing.

476
00:25:41,380 --> 00:25:42,820
It would but it's a mix up, yeah, for sure.

477
00:25:43,780 --> 00:25:45,060
Nevertheless, it is a mix up.

478
00:25:45,380 --> 00:25:48,970
Um and and you could imagine um costs resulting from it.

479
00:25:49,130 --> 00:25:54,330
And you would expect natural selection to favor systems for detecting, anticipating,

480
00:25:54,490 --> 00:25:58,810
avoiding, and signaling these kinds of mix-ups because they're everywhere and the potential

481
00:25:58,810 --> 00:26:00,250
for them is everywhere.

482
00:26:01,370 --> 00:26:06,890
So confusability or temptingness, that's one dimension by which we could look at mix-ups.

483
00:26:07,690 --> 00:26:13,060
Mix-ups that are kind of tempting and understandable are going to, I think, be funnier than

484
00:26:13,060 --> 00:26:15,780
mix-ups that are not at all confusable or tempting, right?

485
00:26:16,740 --> 00:26:20,660
The more tempting they are, the more similar the two interpretations are, the two words

486
00:26:20,660 --> 00:26:25,540
are, the two roles are, the two people are, the two substances are, whatever, um, the

487
00:26:25,540 --> 00:26:26,420
funnier it's going to be.

488
00:26:26,660 --> 00:26:26,820
Yeah.

489
00:26:26,900 --> 00:26:32,740
And I think like good humorists then are people who actually will see confusability where

490
00:26:32,740 --> 00:26:33,620
people hadn't before.

491
00:26:33,700 --> 00:26:39,590
So, like an example I love is uh in the American version of the office, Steve Carell

492
00:26:39,830 --> 00:26:42,550
at a certain point, he's having financial troubles.

493
00:26:42,710 --> 00:26:48,630
Um, and he just like turns to the camera and he shouts, I declare bankruptcy.

494
00:26:49,110 --> 00:26:49,830
Uh right.

495
00:26:49,990 --> 00:26:55,190
And it's it's uh he declare, you know, he thought it was literally like you just yell

496
00:26:55,350 --> 00:26:56,310
bankruptcy.

497
00:26:56,470 --> 00:27:00,860
And and that that's the process of declaring bankruptcy, right?

498
00:27:00,940 --> 00:27:06,380
And so it's confusing declare for this, you know, bureaucratic, you know, um explaining the

499
00:27:06,380 --> 00:27:09,180
the humor, which is less funny, which which is actually interesting.

500
00:27:09,340 --> 00:27:14,380
Um but but yeah, but I I love that example of just like I shouting, I declare bankruptcy.

501
00:27:14,460 --> 00:27:14,780
Yeah.

502
00:27:15,180 --> 00:27:15,340
Yeah.

503
00:27:15,500 --> 00:27:16,780
No, that's that's a wonderful example.

504
00:27:16,940 --> 00:27:20,300
Um I so I'm going I'm in the process of trying to test some of these ideas empirically, and

505
00:27:20,300 --> 00:27:26,130
I'm trying to gather like short um jokes that I can like measure people's um you know

506
00:27:26,290 --> 00:27:27,330
perceptions of funniness.

507
00:27:27,410 --> 00:27:27,570
Right.

508
00:27:27,730 --> 00:27:31,250
I've been looking through old Mitch Hedberg stuff because I love Mitch Hedberg.

509
00:27:31,490 --> 00:27:33,490
Mitch Hedberg was so funny.

510
00:27:33,730 --> 00:27:33,890
Yeah.

511
00:27:34,210 --> 00:27:39,810
The the problem with him though is that um a lot of his jokes have multiple mix-ups layered

512
00:27:39,810 --> 00:27:44,210
into them, including mix-ups about the nature of comedy itself and like what the purpose of

513
00:27:44,210 --> 00:27:45,730
a joke is and what comedy should be.

514
00:27:46,130 --> 00:27:46,690
Which is really good.

515
00:27:46,770 --> 00:27:50,210
And we can get into because I think one thing I love about your theory and we I don't want

516
00:27:50,210 --> 00:27:54,840
to get too far ahead, but it also explains Andy Kaufman, which I don't think any theory of

517
00:27:54,840 --> 00:27:57,240
humor that I had heard of had had encountered.

518
00:27:57,320 --> 00:28:02,120
And even I I would argue the variability in people thinking Andy Kaufman isn't funny and is

519
00:28:02,120 --> 00:28:02,440
funny.

520
00:28:02,600 --> 00:28:02,840
Yeah.

521
00:28:03,240 --> 00:28:03,640
Yeah.

522
00:28:03,880 --> 00:28:08,200
So um I was I was looking at Mitch Hedberg, and I think also part of it um is is just his

523
00:28:08,200 --> 00:28:08,600
delivery.

524
00:28:08,760 --> 00:28:14,040
And we can talk about what you know what what what comic timing is and and uh and why comic

525
00:28:14,040 --> 00:28:17,560
timing can accentuate or uh uh the punchline of a joke.

526
00:28:17,800 --> 00:28:22,040
But I I remember I I came across one Mitch Headburg joke that just it had me laughing.

527
00:28:23,630 --> 00:28:26,430
Maybe late to some Mitch Headberg head headburgh, yes.

528
00:28:26,670 --> 00:28:29,230
Um so I I uh I can I can do my best impersonation.

529
00:28:29,630 --> 00:28:35,550
Yeah, it's hard to do yeah, it's hard to do this in uh I I think soccer is a combination no

530
00:28:35,630 --> 00:28:37,390
sorry I already screwed it up.

531
00:28:38,350 --> 00:28:39,390
Take two, take two.

532
00:28:39,630 --> 00:28:39,950
Take two.

533
00:28:40,110 --> 00:28:45,070
I think foosball is a combination of soccer and shish kebabs.

534
00:28:47,800 --> 00:28:53,400
He's like he's something about, you know, I play tennis and I'm pretty good at it, but I'll

535
00:28:53,400 --> 00:28:55,000
never be as good as a wall.

536
00:28:55,400 --> 00:28:56,760
Yes, that's another great one.

537
00:28:57,080 --> 00:28:58,840
That thing is relentless.

538
00:28:59,320 --> 00:29:00,440
Unbelievably funny.

539
00:29:00,600 --> 00:29:06,120
Uh and trying to like deconstruct why it's funny, like they're just so damn tempting, and

540
00:29:06,120 --> 00:29:10,770
you never would have thought, like, once you s think about foosball as soccer and shish

541
00:29:10,850 --> 00:29:12,450
kebabs, like you cannot unsee that.

542
00:29:12,530 --> 00:29:17,890
It's like such a tempting way and such a wrong way of understanding the game of foosball.

543
00:29:17,970 --> 00:29:21,650
But like you're just pulled so strongly in that direction once he makes that connection.

544
00:29:21,890 --> 00:29:23,890
And the same thing with you know uh with tennis.

545
00:29:23,970 --> 00:29:28,610
Like it's it's it's a really tempting mistake to think of a wall as being good at tennis

546
00:29:28,770 --> 00:29:30,130
because it is good at tennis.

547
00:29:31,010 --> 00:29:32,210
Yes, exactly.

548
00:29:32,440 --> 00:29:32,680
Yeah.

549
00:29:32,760 --> 00:29:35,640
It's absurd it's such a huge error.

550
00:29:35,960 --> 00:29:37,160
Such a huge mistake.

551
00:29:38,360 --> 00:29:40,040
To be like depressed that you're never gonna be able to do that.

552
00:29:41,960 --> 00:29:43,640
That actually that's really funny, right?

553
00:29:43,800 --> 00:29:48,200
Like that's actually if you were just like and we reveal the world's best tennis player and

554
00:29:48,200 --> 00:29:49,240
there's a wall, right?

555
00:29:49,320 --> 00:29:50,280
Like that's funny.

556
00:29:50,360 --> 00:29:50,840
Yeah.

557
00:29:51,480 --> 00:29:56,570
So to test this empirically, I'm I'm trying to use jokes like that and measure two

558
00:29:56,570 --> 00:29:57,050
components.

559
00:29:57,130 --> 00:30:00,570
So we already talked about the first component, which was confusability or temptingness.

560
00:30:00,650 --> 00:30:04,490
I'm still looking for the best word to describe it because it's kind of unintuitive.

561
00:30:04,650 --> 00:30:09,690
Um so there's there's that, and then the second component, um, I think is uh

562
00:30:09,850 --> 00:30:14,410
costliness or uh the the size of the mix-up.

563
00:30:14,730 --> 00:30:14,810
Right.

564
00:30:14,970 --> 00:30:19,770
Um and the way I'm starting to think about this is as the kind of as the discrepancy

565
00:30:19,770 --> 00:30:25,160
between the two things that are mixed up, um, how far apart they are in conceptual space,

566
00:30:25,480 --> 00:30:30,040
how misaligned are the two people in their understanding of reality.

567
00:30:30,360 --> 00:30:30,680
Right.

568
00:30:30,920 --> 00:30:36,760
Um So um that's sort of how I'm thinking about the costliness of how how the mind would

569
00:30:36,760 --> 00:30:38,280
estimate how costly a mix-up is.

570
00:30:38,440 --> 00:30:43,240
It seems like a good rule of thumb might be that you know, the further apart the two things

571
00:30:43,240 --> 00:30:48,450
that are being mixed up are, um, the more costly it it should expect be expected to be.

572
00:30:48,610 --> 00:30:48,770
Yeah.

573
00:30:49,090 --> 00:30:53,650
So if if I confuse pretty big with very big, that's not going to be a very costly mix-up in

574
00:30:53,650 --> 00:30:54,290
most cases.

575
00:30:54,450 --> 00:30:54,850
Right.

576
00:30:55,090 --> 00:30:59,250
But if I confuse very big with very small, that could be a very costly mix-up.

577
00:30:59,490 --> 00:31:00,050
Right.

578
00:31:01,490 --> 00:31:05,170
And so I think there's costliness.

579
00:31:05,330 --> 00:31:05,410
Yeah.

580
00:31:05,490 --> 00:31:09,730
I mean, and just to like an example of that, like I think and I'll I'll tread carefully

581
00:31:09,730 --> 00:31:10,130
with this one.

582
00:31:10,290 --> 00:31:14,800
But like I think one probably the funniest thing I've ever seen, and and this is part

583
00:31:15,040 --> 00:31:20,960
partially because of like what I study, um, is uh Dave Chappelle has a skit,

584
00:31:21,120 --> 00:31:26,800
uh, I think it was on the uh Chappelle show, where it's a blind um black man

585
00:31:26,800 --> 00:31:28,800
who's a white supremacist, right?

586
00:31:28,960 --> 00:31:32,080
Yeah, and it's it's super funny.

587
00:31:32,450 --> 00:31:38,450
Um and uh and and I think it's exactly because you can't imagine a higher

588
00:31:38,450 --> 00:31:42,530
cost fix right than being not being aware of what you are.

589
00:31:42,690 --> 00:31:46,610
He actually I I listened to a video Dave Chappelle actually mentioned that that can his

590
00:31:46,610 --> 00:31:52,370
idea came from a family member of his who was actually lighter skinned and passed as white.

591
00:31:53,020 --> 00:31:55,820
And actually, I think it was his uncle or somebody.

592
00:31:56,140 --> 00:32:01,980
And so that idea of sort of mixing up your racial identity and the high cost social

593
00:32:01,980 --> 00:32:05,900
consequences that follow, you know, that struck him as funny.

594
00:32:05,980 --> 00:32:11,900
And I think that validated, I mean, that's that's um that's a really nice example of the

595
00:32:12,060 --> 00:32:16,490
the the intensity of the humor is driven by the costliness.

596
00:32:16,570 --> 00:32:21,050
And I think people sort of like professional comedians kind of intuitively get this.

597
00:32:21,130 --> 00:32:22,570
So yeah, totally.

598
00:32:22,730 --> 00:32:26,970
You cannot imagine a more costly mix up than mixing up an in group member for an out group

599
00:32:27,130 --> 00:32:29,210
member, particularly when they're violently.

600
00:32:29,370 --> 00:32:30,010
Yes, exactly.

601
00:32:30,170 --> 00:32:32,090
And you're like going to the meetings, right?

602
00:32:32,250 --> 00:32:32,330
Yeah.

603
00:32:33,450 --> 00:32:33,690
Totally.

604
00:32:33,930 --> 00:32:34,810
Yeah, exactly.

605
00:32:34,970 --> 00:32:40,170
That's is like, yeah, you cannot imagine, as you said, a more um a higher cost mix up.

606
00:32:40,250 --> 00:32:40,490
Yeah.

607
00:32:40,730 --> 00:32:40,970
Yeah.

608
00:32:41,130 --> 00:32:46,160
Um, another good example of a costly mix-up um is from the movie Rat Race.

609
00:32:46,400 --> 00:32:47,280
I don't know if you've seen it.

610
00:32:47,680 --> 00:32:47,920
No.

611
00:32:48,400 --> 00:32:54,000
Um so in the movie, uh so John Lovitz plays um a Jewish father with his

612
00:32:54,000 --> 00:32:58,720
Jewish family, um, and uh he's trying to race to get to the the the money, I guess the

613
00:32:58,720 --> 00:32:59,280
premise of the movie.

614
00:32:59,360 --> 00:33:02,080
They're all racing to get to this this you know bag of money.

615
00:33:02,240 --> 00:33:06,960
Uh and uh his daughter is getting increasingly petulant and really wants to, you know, pull

616
00:33:06,960 --> 00:33:10,400
over and do something, and she sees a sign for the Barbie Museum.

617
00:33:11,230 --> 00:33:12,910
She goes, please, please, can we go to the Bar Museum?

618
00:33:12,990 --> 00:33:15,550
And finally, you know, he caves, okay, we'll go to the Barbie Museum.

619
00:33:15,790 --> 00:33:20,590
And they and they go in, and this is the first of many mix-ups where uh the Barbie Museum

620
00:33:20,750 --> 00:33:25,150
is not about the doll, but about the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie.

621
00:33:26,270 --> 00:33:26,590
Right.

622
00:33:26,750 --> 00:33:27,230
Exactly.

623
00:33:27,310 --> 00:33:27,470
Yeah.

624
00:33:27,870 --> 00:33:30,590
Uh which is a really catastrophic mix-up for a Jewish family.

625
00:33:30,670 --> 00:33:34,350
And it turns out to be an anti-Semitic museum, and there are like neo-Nazi thugs there

626
00:33:34,670 --> 00:33:35,550
trying to sniff them out.

627
00:33:36,030 --> 00:33:36,430
Exactly.

628
00:33:36,590 --> 00:33:36,830
Yeah.

629
00:33:37,080 --> 00:33:40,600
Um and then so they uh but this is just the first of of many mix-ups.

630
00:33:40,920 --> 00:33:44,360
So they so they they flee the museum in like one of the cars.

631
00:33:44,440 --> 00:33:46,680
Um they just get in the car and like flee the museum.

632
00:33:47,080 --> 00:33:51,960
And uh it turns out that it's um uh implausibly uh none other than Hitler's car.

633
00:33:52,200 --> 00:33:52,280
Right.

634
00:33:52,360 --> 00:33:54,280
They discover it as they're on the road.

635
00:33:54,520 --> 00:33:54,840
Exactly.

636
00:33:55,080 --> 00:33:58,360
Uh and then they're and then the husband and wife are bickering over whether or not it's

637
00:33:58,360 --> 00:34:01,640
appropriate for her to like put on Ava Braun's lipstick because it was in the glove

638
00:34:01,640 --> 00:34:04,250
compartment, and they're like fighting over whether they should she should put on the

639
00:34:04,250 --> 00:34:07,850
lipstick and then the dark lipstick gets smeared on the top of the steering wheel.

640
00:34:08,010 --> 00:34:08,170
Right.

641
00:34:08,330 --> 00:34:12,410
And then and then the the the Nazi thugs catch up with them and there's a car chase and

642
00:34:12,410 --> 00:34:16,650
they've you know he veers off the road and crashes into this like outdoor convention and

643
00:34:16,650 --> 00:34:20,250
the cigarette lighter flies into his throat and it's caught in his throat and he slams his

644
00:34:20,250 --> 00:34:21,130
face on the steering wheel.

645
00:34:21,370 --> 00:34:21,530
Of course.

646
00:34:21,690 --> 00:34:23,050
And and and the lipstick Yep.

647
00:34:23,290 --> 00:34:23,690
Of course.

648
00:34:23,850 --> 00:34:24,170
Yep.

649
00:34:24,330 --> 00:34:26,100
Uh long long walk to that.

650
00:34:26,500 --> 00:34:28,420
A dark a dark impression on his lip.

651
00:34:28,500 --> 00:34:28,660
Yeah.

652
00:34:28,820 --> 00:34:31,300
Where the dark light look reminiscent of a Hitler mustache.

653
00:34:31,620 --> 00:34:36,900
So he gets out of the car and he finds a podium and he starts like slamming the podium and

654
00:34:36,900 --> 00:34:40,980
like but but but because the cigarette lighter is still on his throat, he can't talk, and

655
00:34:40,980 --> 00:34:44,980
so like what's coming out of his mouth is like a garbled gibberish that that's it's like

656
00:34:44,980 --> 00:34:46,660
vaguely reminiscent of a German accent.

657
00:34:46,980 --> 00:34:48,980
And he's like pounding the podium like tree.

658
00:34:50,770 --> 00:34:54,850
And then the camera zooms out and it's a convention for World War II veterans.

659
00:34:57,010 --> 00:34:58,210
Yeah, no, exactly.

660
00:34:58,370 --> 00:35:02,850
So yeah, that's just yeah, bumbling through costly mess after costly.

661
00:35:03,650 --> 00:35:06,770
Like this I I think of this as like a supernormal stimulus.

662
00:35:06,930 --> 00:35:07,090
Yeah.

663
00:35:07,330 --> 00:35:11,330
Like you know, you could not like in ancestral environments, you could not have engineered

664
00:35:11,730 --> 00:35:15,410
a situation like this a mix up this costly and like this tempting.

665
00:35:15,890 --> 00:35:19,420
Like um so it's i I I think of it as analogous to like fast food.

666
00:35:19,660 --> 00:35:19,820
Yeah.

667
00:35:19,900 --> 00:35:20,780
Um that's great.

668
00:35:20,860 --> 00:35:21,260
Yeah, yeah.

669
00:35:21,340 --> 00:35:25,500
You would be like if aliens were like, I don't know what makes the humans laugh, this would

670
00:35:25,500 --> 00:35:26,300
describe it, right?

671
00:35:26,380 --> 00:35:26,540
Yeah.

672
00:35:26,860 --> 00:35:27,500
Yeah, totally.

673
00:35:27,660 --> 00:35:31,260
Like at the maximum temptingness, like he looks just like Hitler.

674
00:35:31,340 --> 00:35:35,100
He's got the mustache, he's pounding the podium, he's got Hitler's car right behind him,

675
00:35:35,260 --> 00:35:37,500
and then you'll uh maximum costliness.

676
00:35:37,580 --> 00:35:40,220
He's at a convention for elderly World War II veterans.

677
00:35:40,300 --> 00:35:44,670
One of them even like takes out a gun and aims it at uh and then they flee again in another

678
00:35:44,670 --> 00:35:44,990
vehicle.

679
00:35:45,070 --> 00:35:50,190
And like the movie is full of these kinds of really implausible but hilarious, you know,

680
00:35:50,510 --> 00:35:52,510
mix-ups of extreme magnitude.

681
00:35:52,990 --> 00:35:58,670
I remember um I saw the movie in a packed theater, um, and the the the John Lovitz Hitler

682
00:35:58,670 --> 00:36:04,190
mix-up elicited the by far the loudest laughter I had ever witnessed in a movie going

683
00:36:04,350 --> 00:36:04,590
audience.

684
00:36:04,750 --> 00:36:08,510
Like the entire theater was just uh absolutely uproarious.

685
00:36:08,670 --> 00:36:08,910
Yeah.

686
00:36:09,070 --> 00:36:12,520
Um so um I don't know if the if the movie has aged well or not.

687
00:36:12,600 --> 00:36:16,680
And we could talk about you know why comedy doesn't age as well as other genres of art.

688
00:36:17,000 --> 00:36:18,200
Yeah, that's a really interesting thing.

689
00:36:18,280 --> 00:36:21,160
Yeah, watching stand up from like the 60s or 70s.

690
00:36:21,240 --> 00:36:26,360
I mean, some of it is evergreen, and I think people some people were explicitly like trying

691
00:36:26,360 --> 00:36:27,560
to be evergreen.

692
00:36:27,640 --> 00:36:30,280
Um, but yeah, some stuff does not hold up for sure.

693
00:36:30,440 --> 00:36:33,320
And that's an interesting maybe yeah, we can circle back to that.

694
00:36:33,560 --> 00:36:36,280
So costliness, confusability.

695
00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:38,040
Um, yeah.

696
00:36:38,530 --> 00:36:38,770
Yeah.

697
00:36:38,930 --> 00:36:44,450
So I'm in the middle of trying to um test to just basically see if we can predict

698
00:36:44,450 --> 00:36:47,970
funniness by measuring the costliness and measuring the confusability.

699
00:36:48,210 --> 00:36:54,210
Um and and so far, um just from some preliminary data, it's looking like just temptingness

700
00:36:54,210 --> 00:36:56,850
alone is explaining a good chunk of the variance in funness.

701
00:36:56,930 --> 00:37:01,010
It's like twenty to thirty percent of the variance just from the measuring how tempting the

702
00:37:01,170 --> 00:37:01,810
the mix up is.

703
00:37:01,970 --> 00:37:04,690
So I think I think we're on the right track and now I gotta figure out how to measure

704
00:37:04,690 --> 00:37:05,570
costliness.

705
00:37:05,810 --> 00:37:08,320
Um but uh yeah, that's that would be the next step.

706
00:37:08,640 --> 00:37:08,960
Cool.

707
00:37:09,200 --> 00:37:11,440
And then um, so that's that part.

708
00:37:11,520 --> 00:37:13,680
But then what is hum why humor?

709
00:37:13,840 --> 00:37:15,600
Like what's the selection pressure for it?

710
00:37:15,680 --> 00:37:17,040
So those are the two things.

711
00:37:17,280 --> 00:37:17,600
Yeah.

712
00:37:17,760 --> 00:37:20,880
Um, what's what's up with the why does that exist?

713
00:37:20,960 --> 00:37:23,040
Um, why would there be selection for it?

714
00:37:23,200 --> 00:37:25,440
Or is it a byproduct of some like what is it?

715
00:37:25,520 --> 00:37:25,680
Yeah.

716
00:37:26,000 --> 00:37:27,760
Yeah, no, so I think it's an adaptation.

717
00:37:27,840 --> 00:37:33,170
I think there were strong selection pressures for to develop a sense of humor

718
00:37:33,810 --> 00:37:38,050
because the benefits of it were so great in our highly socially interdependent uh

719
00:37:38,130 --> 00:37:39,570
cooperative species.

720
00:37:39,730 --> 00:37:43,650
Um and so you can think about those two components, confusability and costliness, as

721
00:37:43,650 --> 00:37:49,090
basically just combining to map out to the expected costs of failing to coordinate with

722
00:37:49,090 --> 00:37:49,410
others.

723
00:37:49,570 --> 00:37:49,730
Right.

724
00:37:49,970 --> 00:37:53,730
So, you know, the confusibility you could think of as the likelihood of the cost being uh

725
00:37:53,730 --> 00:37:56,850
incurred, and the cost is just the magnitude of the cost incurred.

726
00:37:57,010 --> 00:37:59,330
And so it's pretty straightforward logic.

727
00:37:59,410 --> 00:38:03,520
You know, the the bigger those two things are, the bigger the benefit from avoiding it.

728
00:38:03,680 --> 00:38:03,920
Right.

729
00:38:04,240 --> 00:38:07,920
The bigger the benefit from anticipating it in advance and avoiding it.

730
00:38:08,080 --> 00:38:14,080
Um, and uh the bigger the benefit of signaling it to other people uh and creating

731
00:38:14,080 --> 00:38:19,360
common knowledge of it to uh diffuse the costs of it if and when it does.

732
00:38:19,760 --> 00:38:22,400
Signaling and common knowledge of the mixability.

733
00:38:22,560 --> 00:38:26,960
So it's it's so it's the the selection pressures or the lack of coordination or the mistake

734
00:38:26,960 --> 00:38:32,490
that you would make, um, the mix the mixing something up, and then the point

735
00:38:32,730 --> 00:38:38,570
of doing this thing of finding something funny and producing whatever we do, this weird

736
00:38:38,570 --> 00:38:44,170
thing we do, um that that's a signal of can you

737
00:38:44,170 --> 00:38:45,370
unpack that a little bit?

738
00:38:45,770 --> 00:38:46,010
Sure.

739
00:38:46,170 --> 00:38:49,530
So I I so uh the way I map it out is by dividing it into two parts.

740
00:38:49,610 --> 00:38:53,850
So I think the first part of the evolution of humor is just the the evolution of the sense

741
00:38:53,850 --> 00:38:59,380
of humor, just the ability to detect and anticipate and avoid mix-ups.

742
00:38:59,620 --> 00:39:00,660
That's just the sense part.

743
00:39:00,740 --> 00:39:02,740
You can think of that leave laughter out of the picture.

744
00:39:03,220 --> 00:39:08,980
It's just it's straightforwardly uh adaptive, beneficial, fitness enhancing to be

745
00:39:08,980 --> 00:39:12,900
able to detect, avoid, uh, and anticipate mix-ups.

746
00:39:13,300 --> 00:39:13,540
I see.

747
00:39:13,780 --> 00:39:16,180
So like it's sort of intrinsically pleasurable.

748
00:39:16,340 --> 00:39:17,860
You know, just to make sure I understand it.

749
00:39:17,940 --> 00:39:22,100
So the idea is almost like it's in in the same way it's intrinsically pleasurable to sort

750
00:39:22,100 --> 00:39:27,850
of like discover uh something that might be fitness promoting like a new friendship or a

751
00:39:27,850 --> 00:39:32,490
group that you never knew existed or like a lovely place to visit or like your home is

752
00:39:32,490 --> 00:39:34,330
nicer than you expected.

753
00:39:34,490 --> 00:39:40,410
Um you get the idea is that to see confusibility, costly mis

754
00:39:40,650 --> 00:39:46,520
discordination or confusability ahead of time, because doing that avoids

755
00:39:47,160 --> 00:39:48,360
the the error.

756
00:39:48,440 --> 00:39:51,400
It's sort of like a caution tape around a hidden hole.

757
00:39:51,720 --> 00:39:57,560
It's intrinsically pleasurable because exactly it's it's a rewarding thing

758
00:39:57,720 --> 00:40:01,480
because it's a a signal of you've avoided a a cost.

759
00:40:02,200 --> 00:40:02,600
Exactly.

760
00:40:02,760 --> 00:40:03,080
Exactly.

761
00:40:03,160 --> 00:40:04,200
That's a great way of putting it.

762
00:40:04,840 --> 00:40:06,280
Um so that's the first stage.

763
00:40:06,440 --> 00:40:09,470
And so so I've I tried to model this mathematically.

764
00:40:09,630 --> 00:40:14,190
And so um so straightforwardly you can just show that you know ha having the ability to uh

765
00:40:14,190 --> 00:40:18,990
uh detect and avoid these mix-ups helps you um you know avoid the costs of coordination

766
00:40:18,990 --> 00:40:23,630
failure, reap the benefits of better coordination, um, and and these costs and benefits

767
00:40:23,630 --> 00:40:27,790
will loom larger when they're when interactions are longer, and the and the potential to

768
00:40:27,790 --> 00:40:32,110
continue reaping those benefits or continue incurring those costs uh is larger.

769
00:40:32,190 --> 00:40:36,160
So if we spend a longer time dancing back and forth in the hallway, then we're gonna reap

770
00:40:36,240 --> 00:40:39,760
we're gonna incur more costs if we fail to detect the mix-up.

771
00:40:39,840 --> 00:40:44,720
Um and uh if if we we interact with each other a lot and it's really important that we

772
00:40:44,720 --> 00:40:49,200
understand what we're what we're thinking and feeling, then the the the benefits of

773
00:40:49,200 --> 00:40:50,800
coordinating are gonna be higher.

774
00:40:51,040 --> 00:40:53,520
So the first part is just evolving that sense.

775
00:40:53,600 --> 00:40:56,790
And I really do think it's analogous to a sense like seeing or hearing.

776
00:40:56,870 --> 00:41:01,350
Um I think we're scanning the social world for coordination opportunities and uh we're

777
00:41:01,430 --> 00:41:06,710
we're picking up on on these hot spots, these these tempting, confusable areas that could

778
00:41:06,710 --> 00:41:09,110
potentially be costly for us uh socially.

779
00:41:09,430 --> 00:41:10,870
And so the first part is sensing.

780
00:41:11,030 --> 00:41:16,150
And the second part is even if you're the best humor sensor in the world and you never get

781
00:41:16,150 --> 00:41:21,030
into mix-ups, you're always anticipating them in advance, or or i if a mix-up does occur,

782
00:41:21,110 --> 00:41:26,720
you immediately spot it and you and you switch to whatever the the alternative uh behavior

783
00:41:26,720 --> 00:41:26,880
was.

784
00:41:27,040 --> 00:41:32,400
So if we're mixing up our meanings of the phrase hook up with and I say, you know, I hooked

785
00:41:32,400 --> 00:41:36,480
up with a bunch of guys at Taco Bell and I and I uh see that a weird expression on your

786
00:41:36,480 --> 00:41:39,920
face and I instantly realize that, oh, there was a mix up involving this meaning.

787
00:41:40,000 --> 00:41:42,320
I'm gonna switch to the other meaning of hook up with.

788
00:41:42,400 --> 00:41:45,440
Now I know what it means and we'll continue coordinating successfully.

789
00:41:45,760 --> 00:41:50,240
Even if I have sensed it and have avoided it in future interactions with you, there's still

790
00:41:50,240 --> 00:41:55,950
that initial cost that I paid, or that we paid, because you uh mistook what I did,

791
00:41:56,110 --> 00:41:56,350
right?

792
00:41:56,590 --> 00:41:59,150
You you you thought that I had sex with random people.

793
00:41:59,550 --> 00:42:05,310
Um so um, even if I avoid that mix-up and subsequent interactions with you,

794
00:42:05,470 --> 00:42:07,870
that initial cost is still going to be there.

795
00:42:08,350 --> 00:42:12,590
And so that uh brings us to the second stage of of the evolution of humor, which is

796
00:42:12,590 --> 00:42:12,990
laughter.

797
00:42:13,150 --> 00:42:16,500
So, how do we erase that initial cost?

798
00:42:16,740 --> 00:42:21,780
How do we create common knowledge that you're no longer you're no longer going to view me

799
00:42:21,780 --> 00:42:25,780
as a weirdo who has sex with random guys in public places, right?

800
00:42:25,940 --> 00:42:31,140
Uh how do we establish common knowledge that we know, uh that the other knows, that the

801
00:42:31,140 --> 00:42:34,340
other knows, that uh this was just a misunderstanding.

802
00:42:34,420 --> 00:42:39,690
Uh we're not going to take this communication seriously, Um, we're not going to treat it as

803
00:42:39,690 --> 00:42:44,650
actual communication and we're going to just forget about it, no harm, no foul, and move

804
00:42:44,650 --> 00:42:44,730
on.

805
00:42:45,370 --> 00:42:51,130
So you're telling me that that you know that it was a mix-up and that you see that

806
00:42:51,130 --> 00:42:56,490
there was a cost, and I know it was a mix-up, and I know there was a cost.

807
00:42:57,050 --> 00:43:02,250
And we're getting into the logic of how laughter

808
00:43:03,100 --> 00:43:08,700
allows both of us to have common knowledge that we both represent that there was a mix up

809
00:43:08,700 --> 00:43:09,740
and there was a cost.

810
00:43:10,140 --> 00:43:10,700
Exactly.

811
00:43:10,860 --> 00:43:13,500
And and um it needs to be shared too.

812
00:43:13,580 --> 00:43:16,540
Because if I'm laughing at it and you're not laughing with me, then that's a problem.

813
00:43:16,700 --> 00:43:18,140
You might not know that there was a mix up.

814
00:43:18,380 --> 00:43:21,900
So we need to be laughing together to establish common knowledge.

815
00:43:22,060 --> 00:43:22,220
Right.

816
00:43:22,380 --> 00:43:27,870
Um so we both So if I didn't laugh, it would and and the and and we'll keep going.

817
00:43:27,950 --> 00:43:30,350
But like, yeah, that means something to you.

818
00:43:30,990 --> 00:43:35,310
And it means something about what I am changing about my representation of you.

819
00:43:35,470 --> 00:43:35,710
Right.

820
00:43:35,950 --> 00:43:36,270
Yes.

821
00:43:36,510 --> 00:43:36,910
Exactly.

822
00:43:37,230 --> 00:43:37,550
Interesting.

823
00:43:37,790 --> 00:43:41,470
And if you don't share the laughter, I might think that you think that I'm a weirdo.

824
00:43:41,630 --> 00:43:45,550
And then that lowers the benefits of of uh cooperating with you, you know, for me.

825
00:43:45,870 --> 00:43:46,110
Right.

826
00:43:46,270 --> 00:43:46,430
Right.

827
00:43:46,670 --> 00:43:50,680
Or I think hooking up is is uh means meeting up with people, right?

828
00:43:50,840 --> 00:43:51,000
Right.

829
00:43:52,120 --> 00:43:55,400
Yeah, but there's some inference about why I'm not laughing.

830
00:43:55,720 --> 00:43:58,440
Or uh or yeah, or like I'm your enemy.

831
00:43:59,080 --> 00:44:04,920
And so I don't I reject the the laughter because the work that

832
00:44:04,920 --> 00:44:08,280
the laughter is doing is reparative for you.

833
00:44:08,520 --> 00:44:09,720
Hmm yeah.

834
00:44:09,960 --> 00:44:11,000
Yeah that's a great point.

835
00:44:11,080 --> 00:44:13,750
Yeah you might not want to defuse those costs.

836
00:44:13,910 --> 00:44:19,350
If you're my rival, you might enjoy me being embarrassed or devalued by others and you

837
00:44:19,350 --> 00:44:21,590
might try to resist the laughter.

838
00:44:21,910 --> 00:44:22,150
Right.

839
00:44:22,310 --> 00:44:28,150
Um Yeah, I think one of the way people one of the ways people show a low status, low

840
00:44:28,310 --> 00:44:31,990
power person is somebody who laughs a lot.

841
00:44:32,630 --> 00:44:35,670
Um, and the people around them are not laughing with them.

842
00:44:36,660 --> 00:44:37,060
Yeah.

843
00:44:37,300 --> 00:44:41,860
It's a person who thinks that they're, you know, constantly struggling to coordinate with

844
00:44:41,860 --> 00:44:44,020
people or is aware that they're struggling to coordinate with people.

845
00:44:44,260 --> 00:44:46,340
And they're trying to repair those failures.

846
00:44:46,500 --> 00:44:49,860
And people just aren't accepting the bid to repair those failures.

847
00:44:50,020 --> 00:44:50,180
Right.

848
00:44:50,340 --> 00:44:52,020
Because they're just seen as a low value part.

849
00:44:52,820 --> 00:44:58,310
And I think if you do look at people um like I think people even kind of intuitively know

850
00:44:58,310 --> 00:44:58,550
this.

851
00:44:58,630 --> 00:45:02,790
So, like, I've seen people just sort of act, like if you get an actor, for example, who's

852
00:45:02,790 --> 00:45:08,390
pretty good and just pretends to be like lower status or meek or whatever, it's this kind

853
00:45:08,390 --> 00:45:10,790
of like constant l laughter.

854
00:45:10,950 --> 00:45:16,710
Um, and it's a different kind than I mean, obviously, there's sort of taxonomies

855
00:45:16,870 --> 00:45:22,790
of there can be biting humor where people are very they're using it in a way that's

856
00:45:23,100 --> 00:45:26,140
the opposite, where it's sort of like attacking other people's status.

857
00:45:26,220 --> 00:45:29,660
But there is this version of sort of you're lo you're exactly right of like kind of

858
00:45:29,660 --> 00:45:30,940
laughing at themselves.

859
00:45:31,260 --> 00:45:32,380
Yeah, totally.

860
00:45:32,700 --> 00:45:38,220
Um, and this is a good way to segue into what I think is the third part of the model, which

861
00:45:38,220 --> 00:45:42,300
is um identifying others' sense of humor.

862
00:45:42,460 --> 00:45:42,700
Mm-hmm.

863
00:45:42,860 --> 00:45:48,540
Uh and preferentially uh affiliating with people with better senses of humor, um, who get

864
00:45:48,540 --> 00:45:53,970
your jokes, um, who laugh at the things that you laugh, We laugh at the same things, right?

865
00:45:54,050 --> 00:45:55,650
Who you you laugh with instead of at.

866
00:45:55,890 --> 00:45:56,210
Right.

867
00:45:56,450 --> 00:46:00,610
So if you have a really good sense of humor, if you're good at telling jokes, which signals

868
00:46:00,610 --> 00:46:04,610
that you're good at spotting and anticipating and avoiding mix-ups, well, that means that

869
00:46:04,610 --> 00:46:08,770
the benefits of coordinating with you are going to be higher than coordinating with some

870
00:46:08,770 --> 00:46:09,890
other buffoon, right?

871
00:46:10,050 --> 00:46:12,210
Because you're going to be better able to avoid those mix-ups.

872
00:46:12,290 --> 00:46:13,810
We're going to cooperate more smoothly.

873
00:46:13,970 --> 00:46:15,090
We're going to vibe more.

874
00:46:15,170 --> 00:46:18,450
And so you're a better coordination partner if you have a better sense of humor.

875
00:46:18,690 --> 00:46:23,980
Whereas if you're a a a buffoon, a fool, an idiot, uh, we're gonna get into so many

876
00:46:23,980 --> 00:46:25,340
different kinds of misunderstandings.

877
00:46:25,420 --> 00:46:27,900
We're gonna struggle to vibe and to work together.

878
00:46:28,060 --> 00:46:31,100
And that's just a very low-value social partner for me.

879
00:46:31,260 --> 00:46:36,300
And I should want to avoid them and preferentially affiliate with the smooth, funny, witty

880
00:46:36,300 --> 00:46:41,340
people who are good at coordinating and good at getting the prevailing social norms and

881
00:46:41,340 --> 00:46:42,140
conventions.

882
00:46:42,300 --> 00:46:46,780
Um, and so I think that is what is involved in the art of joke telling or being a funny

883
00:46:46,780 --> 00:46:49,020
person, why we find funny people attractive.

884
00:46:49,290 --> 00:46:51,210
It shows that they're really good at coordinating.

885
00:46:51,290 --> 00:46:53,850
They understand the the culture that they live in.

886
00:46:53,930 --> 00:46:54,810
They're good at culture.

887
00:46:54,890 --> 00:46:56,250
They're good at communication.

888
00:46:57,130 --> 00:47:01,850
And we want to coordinate with those people because the long run payoffs of coordinating

889
00:47:01,850 --> 00:47:07,370
with them are going to be higher with fewer mix-ups over time

890
00:47:08,250 --> 00:47:10,810
than with than than coordinating with someone else.

891
00:47:11,080 --> 00:47:11,240
Right.

892
00:47:11,480 --> 00:47:12,120
That's really interesting.

893
00:47:12,280 --> 00:47:15,960
I wonder too, like, you know, people often talk about, you know, in their friends or in

894
00:47:15,960 --> 00:47:20,040
their mates, they want somebody who's funny and smart.

895
00:47:20,680 --> 00:47:24,520
Um, and I wonder, like, if part of that, it's two things.

896
00:47:24,680 --> 00:47:30,360
One is that um there's sort of like right at what's on the edge of your conf

897
00:47:31,000 --> 00:47:33,080
thinking or confusability.

898
00:47:33,240 --> 00:47:38,600
Um, and so if somebody is discovering confusibility that you hadn't thought of, um

899
00:47:39,350 --> 00:47:43,670
it's it's it's a con it's sort of there's an arms race where there's always somebody who's

900
00:47:43,670 --> 00:47:49,510
sort of um it's showing that they're in this competitive thing of sort of um

901
00:47:49,750 --> 00:47:55,350
I'm not being very articulate about it, but but basically it's it's a um there's there's

902
00:47:55,350 --> 00:48:01,270
never enough um uh so like what's something if you found something very easily confusable

903
00:48:01,590 --> 00:48:04,070
to the point that it's trivial, yeah.

904
00:48:04,320 --> 00:48:09,840
If you might not find that funny, but if I do, it sort of means that we're whatever quote

905
00:48:09,920 --> 00:48:14,080
unquote, like you know, intelligence means, which is just a difference, it's not like a

906
00:48:14,080 --> 00:48:19,200
mechanism, it's not you know, but um, but it kind of it kind of it it teases apart.

907
00:48:19,280 --> 00:48:24,800
Oh, if somebody is like picking out stuff that I hadn't thought of, that's they're spending

908
00:48:24,800 --> 00:48:29,760
time, they're valuable, there's sort of some cognitive resource there that's interesting.

909
00:48:30,000 --> 00:48:35,010
It also though um shows like what you care about and what your interests are, and to

910
00:48:35,330 --> 00:48:40,290
whatever extent, like everybody is sort of like occupying different status games, right?

911
00:48:40,450 --> 00:48:42,450
Or like you're just uh pursuing a thing.

912
00:48:42,610 --> 00:48:47,170
So if I make a joke of I don't know about sports for you, David, you know, and uh like you

913
00:48:47,170 --> 00:48:50,690
know, I sit down and I'm like, well, you know, this thing, and it involves like a confusion

914
00:48:50,690 --> 00:48:52,690
about sports, you might like not laugh.

915
00:48:52,930 --> 00:48:56,770
And the fact that I think it was the right joke to tell you, you'd just be like, Well, you

916
00:48:56,770 --> 00:48:58,610
don't know me, I don't care about sports.

917
00:48:58,770 --> 00:49:02,380
And so it's sort of a way to sort of filter people.

918
00:49:02,620 --> 00:49:08,620
Humor attempts are a way to filter people by like what um what status game we're all gonna

919
00:49:08,620 --> 00:49:09,660
coordinate on.

920
00:49:09,900 --> 00:49:14,460
And so that that would be another like I think those would be two two things.

921
00:49:14,620 --> 00:49:16,780
Um and there's a lot of use of humor, right?

922
00:49:16,860 --> 00:49:20,220
Like I mean people are trying people are using humor all the time.

923
00:49:20,460 --> 00:49:25,850
Um So that was uh um really not funny two points, but that that's my two points.

924
00:49:25,930 --> 00:49:26,090
Yeah.

925
00:49:26,410 --> 00:49:27,610
No, no, I totally buy that.

926
00:49:27,690 --> 00:49:33,610
So this ties into um uh Flamson and Barrett's uh encryption theory of humor, which

927
00:49:33,610 --> 00:49:36,010
is really complementary with my approach.

928
00:49:36,330 --> 00:49:40,010
And the the idea there is basically what you were getting at, which is when you tell a

929
00:49:40,010 --> 00:49:45,050
joke, what you're doing is you're encrypting um a piece of information that can only be

930
00:49:45,050 --> 00:49:50,170
decrypted by uh people who share your background knowledge and your and your cultural

931
00:49:50,220 --> 00:49:50,700
knowledge.

932
00:49:51,180 --> 00:49:56,780
So if I'm going to, you know, tell a story about a mix-up or you know, simulate or

933
00:49:56,780 --> 00:50:01,740
role-play a mix-up in a in a specific kind of coordination game, the only people who are

934
00:50:01,740 --> 00:50:05,100
going to pick up on that are going to be the people who are playing that same coordination

935
00:50:05,100 --> 00:50:09,660
game or who share my knowledge about what it means to be uh mixed up.

936
00:50:09,820 --> 00:50:13,660
And so that's going to be a great way of differentiating people who are in my subculture

937
00:50:13,660 --> 00:50:14,620
from people who are not.

938
00:50:14,780 --> 00:50:17,420
And what's great about it is that I can do it covertly.

939
00:50:17,580 --> 00:50:21,670
So if I tell a joke and you get it, um, but someone else doesn't.

940
00:50:21,990 --> 00:50:27,190
Um, that allows us to affiliate with one another and exclude that third person without

941
00:50:27,190 --> 00:50:30,230
overtly telling the third person, I don't like you, go away.

942
00:50:30,470 --> 00:50:31,110
Right.

943
00:50:31,350 --> 00:50:35,110
Um, which could potentially be costly because then that could develop, you know, animosity,

944
00:50:35,270 --> 00:50:36,150
resentment, and so forth.

945
00:50:36,310 --> 00:50:36,390
Right.

946
00:50:36,550 --> 00:50:41,830
And so it it evolves us, it allows us to sort of exclude people and hobnob with other like

947
00:50:41,910 --> 00:50:46,100
minded people without making it overt um or or offensive or common knowledge.

948
00:50:46,340 --> 00:50:46,500
Right.

949
00:50:46,580 --> 00:50:50,820
Like a lame example of this, like let's imagine, and apologies to anybody named Josh, but

950
00:50:50,900 --> 00:50:53,700
um maybe I'll choose a different because we should have Josh Timeron.

951
00:50:53,940 --> 00:50:57,540
But let's assume like somebody named Josh is a jerk and we both know Josh is a jerk.

952
00:50:57,620 --> 00:51:03,540
And then like somebody comes up and and I basically am like, oh Josh, you know, like I I

953
00:51:03,540 --> 00:51:05,140
just say basically Josh, right?

954
00:51:05,220 --> 00:51:07,780
And it's a signal to you that this person's a jerk.

955
00:51:07,860 --> 00:51:09,380
Um but the person doesn't know.

956
00:51:09,460 --> 00:51:14,890
You know, like you could imagine um, you know, it's kind of ki it's sort of sophomoric, but

957
00:51:14,890 --> 00:51:19,930
like I think a lot of times, even just thinking about like when I was like in my teens, uh

958
00:51:20,250 --> 00:51:24,330
groups of kids, you just sort of like allude to past things.

959
00:51:24,490 --> 00:51:29,450
Like you would even just words, you would just sort of say like stupid nonsense words, but

960
00:51:29,450 --> 00:51:34,140
you would just sort of repeat them when it was roughly appropriate and and kids would just

961
00:51:34,140 --> 00:51:34,700
laugh, right?

962
00:51:34,780 --> 00:51:37,180
Like just the funny made up word you made, you know.

963
00:51:37,420 --> 00:51:42,620
Um and uh and so it's almost like it's picking out this point of coordination that other

964
00:51:42,620 --> 00:51:43,660
people wouldn't know.

965
00:51:43,900 --> 00:51:45,500
But somehow it's amusing.

966
00:51:45,580 --> 00:51:47,980
I don't know if it reaches the point of funny, but yeah.

967
00:51:48,140 --> 00:51:50,540
Um yeah, no that's interesting.

968
00:51:50,700 --> 00:51:53,660
Um yeah the the gibberish words that's an interesting case.

969
00:51:53,740 --> 00:51:58,860
It could be that sometimes the humor comes from its similarity to another word.

970
00:51:59,180 --> 00:51:59,500
Right.

971
00:51:59,740 --> 00:52:03,690
Um or or or even another another word that you maybe shouldn't say.

972
00:52:03,930 --> 00:52:04,170
Right.

973
00:52:04,330 --> 00:52:05,530
Um, that could be part of it.

974
00:52:05,690 --> 00:52:10,890
Another part of it is just there's such a strong expectation that when we open our mouths

975
00:52:10,890 --> 00:52:15,210
and put phonemes together, yeah, that we're going to be providing valuable information.

976
00:52:15,290 --> 00:52:17,690
We're going to be communicating something of relevance.

977
00:52:18,010 --> 00:52:22,920
And and the and the more we we violate that social convention and are mixed up about the

978
00:52:22,920 --> 00:52:27,480
purpose of opening our mouths and putting phonemes together, the more costly that that

979
00:52:27,480 --> 00:52:27,800
could be.

980
00:52:28,440 --> 00:52:33,480
Confusing the purpose of talking with you know flapping our mouths is a kind of tempting

981
00:52:33,480 --> 00:52:33,800
mix up.

982
00:52:33,880 --> 00:52:37,000
If you, you know, if you don't speak a language, it might seem like they're just flapping

983
00:52:37,000 --> 00:52:37,480
their mouths.

984
00:52:37,880 --> 00:52:42,440
And when you try to imitate that, that could be a pretty costly and and tempting mix up.

985
00:52:42,600 --> 00:52:43,640
So maybe that's what's going on there.

986
00:52:44,040 --> 00:52:44,280
Yeah, yeah.

987
00:52:44,440 --> 00:52:48,600
I mean, like even just because you know I have a pre sch or you know a preschool age uh at

988
00:52:48,600 --> 00:52:53,190
home and like uh and like even just like on the playground, just like kids running around

989
00:52:53,350 --> 00:52:55,750
just like yelling like something like donk, right?

990
00:52:55,990 --> 00:52:57,270
Like I'm just making up a word.

991
00:52:57,350 --> 00:53:01,430
But you know, and the fact that they're they all start doing it and they just laugh when

992
00:53:01,430 --> 00:53:03,990
they're doing it, like they're playing with language, right?

993
00:53:04,150 --> 00:53:04,310
Yeah.

994
00:53:04,550 --> 00:53:09,110
I mean, the other thing that's to the costly thing is like, you know, uh, you know, around

995
00:53:09,110 --> 00:53:14,780
this age, um, things like that are related to like disgust, like poop, are really just

996
00:53:14,780 --> 00:53:16,060
intrinsically funny, right?

997
00:53:16,140 --> 00:53:20,380
Like the funniest thing is like pretending like this ball I'm gonna throw at you is like

998
00:53:20,380 --> 00:53:22,300
poop and it's just hilarious, right?

999
00:53:22,700 --> 00:53:23,260
Oh yeah.

1000
00:53:23,580 --> 00:53:23,740
Yeah.

1001
00:53:23,900 --> 00:53:26,940
No, I think I mean there there's really interesting yeah.

1002
00:53:27,180 --> 00:53:30,700
Yeah, scatological and there's really interesting developmental hypotheses you could make.

1003
00:53:30,860 --> 00:53:35,180
So I would expect, you know, toddlers who are learning how to potty train and learning the

1004
00:53:35,500 --> 00:53:40,460
the norms and conventions surrounding uh poop and bodily waste, like it's really important

1005
00:53:40,460 --> 00:53:42,540
that they're learning this stuff and they learn it really well.

1006
00:53:42,790 --> 00:53:47,270
And these are all coordination games we're playing about how to deal with poop, how to talk

1007
00:53:47,270 --> 00:53:47,670
about it.

1008
00:53:47,830 --> 00:53:53,670
Um and uh in the critical period, the developmental period where we're learning about this

1009
00:53:53,670 --> 00:53:59,190
stuff, um, we should find mix-ups uh relating to it especially valuable and rewarding.

1010
00:53:59,270 --> 00:53:59,510
Right.

1011
00:53:59,670 --> 00:53:59,910
Right.

1012
00:53:59,990 --> 00:54:03,190
Because we're we're we're gaining important pieces of pieces of information about what not

1013
00:54:03,190 --> 00:54:05,350
to do, how not to deal with with poop.

1014
00:54:05,590 --> 00:54:05,830
Right.

1015
00:54:05,910 --> 00:54:06,070
Right.

1016
00:54:06,230 --> 00:54:06,390
Yeah.

1017
00:54:06,710 --> 00:54:11,400
Um there's a really oh sorry, go yeah, there's a really interesting thing too that's funny.

1018
00:54:11,480 --> 00:54:12,680
Um because we discordinated.

1019
00:54:12,840 --> 00:54:17,880
Um there's a uh we haven't had Daniel Schnitzer on yet either, but like the idea of self

1020
00:54:17,960 --> 00:54:19,240
conscious emotions.

1021
00:54:19,480 --> 00:54:25,240
Um, like David, we're both parents and I like I'm really aware of um the the self

1022
00:54:25,320 --> 00:54:30,360
conscious emotions being things like guilt, shame, pride, where it's sort of my emotions

1023
00:54:30,520 --> 00:54:34,520
are an anticipation of how others will think of me.

1024
00:54:34,910 --> 00:54:35,230
Right.

1025
00:54:35,470 --> 00:54:40,990
So if I do something, um, you know, like if I walk around and I've got toilet paper stuck

1026
00:54:40,990 --> 00:54:46,670
to my pants and I'm walking around work, you know, that's not actually that costly

1027
00:54:46,830 --> 00:54:47,710
personally for me.

1028
00:54:47,870 --> 00:54:50,990
Like, you know, I'm like less aerodynamic, but like who cares?

1029
00:54:51,310 --> 00:54:56,350
But um, you know, but but um, but people will look at it and think, oh, that's gross, or

1030
00:54:56,430 --> 00:54:57,710
like think I'm weird.

1031
00:54:57,950 --> 00:55:03,780
And so the emotional reaction isn't about the consequences for you, but it's an

1032
00:55:03,780 --> 00:55:07,220
anticipation of how others will respond to you.

1033
00:55:07,460 --> 00:55:12,340
And there's a really interesting developmental thing too, where sort of, you know, some

1034
00:55:12,420 --> 00:55:16,980
self-conscious emotions sort of come online, or what counts as costly, you know, like

1035
00:55:17,060 --> 00:55:19,380
nobody's gonna laugh at a baby for pooping, right?

1036
00:55:19,460 --> 00:55:22,580
And like babies don't care that they have poop all over them, right?

1037
00:55:22,740 --> 00:55:22,900
Yeah.

1038
00:55:23,060 --> 00:55:26,310
But like, but that's very different by the time you are an adult.

1039
00:55:26,390 --> 00:55:32,230
And somewhere in between that, different content is becoming entrained into or

1040
00:55:32,230 --> 00:55:37,990
turned on into what it what are the relevant self-conscious emotional contents, right?

1041
00:55:38,390 --> 00:55:44,070
And I think that that also I think would make predictions about if if humor what

1042
00:55:44,230 --> 00:55:49,510
what what humor content should be should be related to these um self-conscious emotions

1043
00:55:49,670 --> 00:55:55,540
too, because the self-conscious emotions are about the costs and benefits of

1044
00:55:55,620 --> 00:56:01,460
if something if you do something um and you lose status uh or people think worse of you.

1045
00:56:02,180 --> 00:56:02,500
Yeah.

1046
00:56:02,740 --> 00:56:06,100
No, that's that's a good way to transition into embarrassment.

1047
00:56:06,740 --> 00:56:12,020
So I think the theory um has some really interesting implications on on what

1048
00:56:12,020 --> 00:56:15,110
embarrassment is and what its adaptive function is.

1049
00:56:15,430 --> 00:56:18,150
So I think of embarrassment as a close cousin of shame.

1050
00:56:18,550 --> 00:56:19,750
So shame is is very simple.

1051
00:56:19,830 --> 00:56:22,790
You know, Dan Schneezer has has studied this, and we're gonna have him on soon.

1052
00:56:22,870 --> 00:56:24,070
I'm excited to talk to him.

1053
00:56:24,230 --> 00:56:28,710
But um shame is just when when you're devalued by others, when when others think you're a

1054
00:56:28,710 --> 00:56:33,190
bad social partner, you're mean, you're disgusting, you're selfish, you're dumb, whatever,

1055
00:56:33,430 --> 00:56:34,470
you're ugly.

1056
00:56:34,780 --> 00:56:39,340
When you perceive that, you feel shame and you feel motivated to um hide that part of

1057
00:56:39,340 --> 00:56:41,500
yourself and mitigate those costs.

1058
00:56:41,660 --> 00:56:46,860
Maybe it causes you to defer to other people and and try to placate them, to hide, to, to

1059
00:56:46,860 --> 00:56:49,580
fear other other people excluding you, or or whatever.

1060
00:56:49,820 --> 00:56:55,100
You can think of shame as as uh mobilizing a response to being devalued by other people,

1061
00:56:55,260 --> 00:56:58,620
um, particularly other you other people that you you care about.

1062
00:56:59,100 --> 00:57:01,970
Um so embarrassment is not shame.

1063
00:57:02,130 --> 00:57:03,970
Um it's not as clearly negative.

1064
00:57:04,050 --> 00:57:08,050
Sometimes embarrassment can be kind of funny and kind of positive, depending on how it how

1065
00:57:08,050 --> 00:57:09,010
it plays out.

1066
00:57:09,250 --> 00:57:15,090
So uh so I think what embarrassment is, is a kind of mix-up in

1067
00:57:15,090 --> 00:57:20,530
the audience uh that you're that you're in, or the audience that's observing you, and they

1068
00:57:20,530 --> 00:57:24,900
are struggling to coordinate on whether or not your status has fallen.

1069
00:57:25,220 --> 00:57:25,940
Oh, interesting.

1070
00:57:26,100 --> 00:57:26,340
Yeah.

1071
00:57:26,500 --> 00:57:28,580
A really interesting example, just to plug in.

1072
00:57:28,660 --> 00:57:28,900
Yeah.

1073
00:57:28,980 --> 00:57:32,180
Uh one thing that people find really difficult, because I've worked in like, you know,

1074
00:57:32,340 --> 00:57:33,220
working with infants.

1075
00:57:33,300 --> 00:57:37,140
And when you work with infants, you, you know, you do like baby talk, we're like, hi, you

1076
00:57:37,140 --> 00:57:38,180
know, look at this.

1077
00:57:38,340 --> 00:57:42,180
And it's like very weird to do that with adults.

1078
00:57:42,420 --> 00:57:48,420
And so people feel embarrassed to do to show um what how

1079
00:57:48,420 --> 00:57:51,990
to interact with an infant to adults, right?

1080
00:57:52,230 --> 00:57:57,510
And so it's this thing of like, I'm supposed to do this, but there's part of me that's

1081
00:57:57,510 --> 00:58:01,750
like, well, this is going to be costly to um to these people.

1082
00:58:01,910 --> 00:58:05,350
And you kind of feel embarrassed for the people who are doing it sometimes.

1083
00:58:05,830 --> 00:58:09,350
I mean you can push this even harder where like, you know, if you watch like a YouTube

1084
00:58:09,590 --> 00:58:15,580
video for kids and the adults is like really infant directed, you're kind of like,

1085
00:58:15,740 --> 00:58:18,220
I feel bad, like I'm embarrassed for you, you know.

1086
00:58:18,540 --> 00:58:22,940
Like and it's yeah, the guy in the Barney costume who's doing offish dance.

1087
00:58:23,020 --> 00:58:24,460
Yeah, it's kind of embarrassing.

1088
00:58:24,620 --> 00:58:25,100
Yeah.

1089
00:58:25,340 --> 00:58:26,140
Um, yeah.

1090
00:58:26,220 --> 00:58:30,300
And I think what makes it embarrassing is that it's you're not quite sure whether the

1091
00:58:30,300 --> 00:58:34,460
person has lost status or whether other people think that the person has lost status, or

1092
00:58:34,460 --> 00:58:38,150
whether you should start devaluing that person or whether you think other people are going

1093
00:58:38,150 --> 00:58:39,030
to devalue that person.

1094
00:58:39,190 --> 00:58:39,350
Right.

1095
00:58:39,510 --> 00:58:40,870
Um, it's kind of ambiguous.

1096
00:58:40,950 --> 00:58:45,430
Like, yeah, they're kinda doing something kind of silly and and and oafish, but does that

1097
00:58:45,430 --> 00:58:46,710
mean that they're stupid?

1098
00:58:46,790 --> 00:58:48,710
Does uh it's not quite obvious.

1099
00:58:48,870 --> 00:58:49,030
Right.

1100
00:58:49,190 --> 00:58:53,510
Um, or like if you have the toilet paper on on on your foot, like, yeah, it's kind of

1101
00:58:53,510 --> 00:58:56,520
gross, but like, you know, uh anyone could have done that.

1102
00:58:56,600 --> 00:58:57,720
It's kind of an honest mistake.

1103
00:58:57,880 --> 00:58:58,040
Yeah.

1104
00:58:58,120 --> 00:59:02,200
Like, does that mean that, you know, Dave is gr is gross and and and incompetent, or is it

1105
00:59:02,200 --> 00:59:04,120
just a a mistake that any of us could have made?

1106
00:59:04,200 --> 00:59:05,480
Like it's it's kind of ambiguous.

1107
00:59:05,560 --> 00:59:06,200
It's tempting.

1108
00:59:06,360 --> 00:59:08,760
Like, you know, you you could imagine us making one of two errors.

1109
00:59:08,840 --> 00:59:14,440
We could we could all um think that everyone else thinks that your status has fallen, or

1110
00:59:14,520 --> 00:59:19,230
um, you know, we could uh think that your status has stayed the same and everyone else

1111
00:59:19,230 --> 00:59:22,750
thinks that your status has fallen in when you either way it's going to be costly because

1112
00:59:22,750 --> 00:59:27,870
we're going to have disagreement about what your status is in the wake of this embarrassing

1113
00:59:27,870 --> 00:59:28,430
situation.

1114
00:59:28,750 --> 00:59:28,990
Right.

1115
00:59:29,150 --> 00:59:33,950
Um and often you can have two mix ups where you can have one person who has a a mix up or a

1116
00:59:33,950 --> 00:59:38,270
faux pas, and then that causes the audience to be mixed up about whether to treat that faux

1117
00:59:38,270 --> 00:59:42,270
pas as a serious transget transgression or a forgivable mistake.

1118
00:59:42,580 --> 00:59:42,820
Right.

1119
00:59:42,980 --> 00:59:47,780
Um, and so the mix-up itself is is funny, and then the the audience's mix up about how to

1120
00:59:47,780 --> 00:59:50,020
treat that mix-up is is funny.

1121
00:59:50,580 --> 00:59:55,060
Um so when when the audience clearly devalues you, that's shame.

1122
00:59:55,220 --> 01:00:00,020
But when the audience ambiguously devalues you and struggles to coordinate on whether your

1123
01:00:00,020 --> 01:00:04,810
reputation has been damaged, whether your status has fallen, um, there are different um

1124
01:00:04,810 --> 01:00:07,450
adaptive responses to either of those situations.

1125
01:00:07,690 --> 01:00:13,050
With shame, the best response is just to hide, placate, um, try to conceal whatever it is

1126
01:00:13,050 --> 01:00:15,770
that was uh uh damaging uh to your reputation.

1127
01:00:15,930 --> 01:00:18,410
With embarrassment, that's not necessarily the best strategy.

1128
01:00:18,570 --> 01:00:20,970
Um with embarrassment, you're on this sort of knife edge.

1129
01:00:21,210 --> 01:00:23,290
On your stat on the one hand, your status could fall.

1130
01:00:23,450 --> 01:00:25,850
On the other hand, your status could could stay the same and everyone could have a good

1131
01:00:25,850 --> 01:00:27,050
laugh and and move on.

1132
01:00:27,210 --> 01:00:31,900
And so when you're embarrassed, the the best strategy is to try to tip the scales in favor

1133
01:00:32,140 --> 01:00:33,980
of your status staying the same.

1134
01:00:34,140 --> 01:00:34,300
Right.

1135
01:00:34,540 --> 01:00:34,780
Right.

1136
01:00:35,020 --> 01:00:37,500
Uh and and and there are a number of ways you could try to do that.

1137
01:00:37,660 --> 01:00:41,740
One way is to laugh yourself, to try in hopes that you might elicit other people's

1138
01:00:41,740 --> 01:00:42,060
laughter.

1139
01:00:42,300 --> 01:00:45,500
Because if we're all laughing together, then we're diffusing the costs and the costs aren't

1140
01:00:45,500 --> 01:00:46,220
going to be taken seriously.

1141
01:00:46,300 --> 01:00:50,060
You're not going to be devalued and we can all, you know, move on and and continue uh

1142
01:00:50,060 --> 01:00:51,900
coordinating and cooperating as before.

1143
01:00:52,300 --> 01:00:54,460
Um so I might laugh if I'm embarrassed.

1144
01:00:54,620 --> 01:01:00,150
Um another way to try to tip the scales in favor of my preserved social standing is to

1145
01:01:00,150 --> 01:01:04,550
signal that I am in fact embarrassed, that I understand that I made a faux pas, I

1146
01:01:04,550 --> 01:01:08,790
understand that I was mixed up, and that I'm very uh disinclined to have that happen again.

1147
01:01:08,870 --> 01:01:09,030
Right.

1148
01:01:09,270 --> 01:01:12,790
You can count on me to not blunder into that kind of mistake again.

1149
01:01:13,110 --> 01:01:13,350
Right.

1150
01:01:13,590 --> 01:01:17,190
And you could think of that as a really important cue to others that I shouldn't be

1151
01:01:17,190 --> 01:01:17,990
devalued.

1152
01:01:18,200 --> 01:01:23,480
Because if I if I make a mistake or a mix-up, on the one hand, that could signal that I'm

1153
01:01:23,480 --> 01:01:28,440
the type of person that is constantly blundering into these mix-ups, in which case I'm a

1154
01:01:28,440 --> 01:01:31,160
bad social partner and I should be avoided.

1155
01:01:31,320 --> 01:01:35,800
Um but if I make a mix-up and it's not really representative of of who I am and and my

1156
01:01:35,800 --> 01:01:40,680
ability to smoothly coordinate, then it's actually um it's gonna be costly for my audience

1157
01:01:40,670 --> 01:01:42,270
to uh devalue me, right?

1158
01:01:42,350 --> 01:01:45,390
Because it was just a fluke, it was a one-off thing that it's not gonna happen again.

1159
01:01:45,870 --> 01:01:50,030
And so so when I'm embarrassed, I should be trying to signal to others that I that I am

1160
01:01:50,030 --> 01:01:50,510
embarrassed.

1161
01:01:50,590 --> 01:01:52,990
I understand there was a mix-up, it's not gonna happen again.

1162
01:01:53,230 --> 01:01:58,270
And blushing may serve the function of allowing others to uh allowing everyone to have

1163
01:01:58,270 --> 01:02:00,430
common knowledge of the embarrassment.

1164
01:02:00,590 --> 01:02:06,500
Because when I'm blushing, everyone can see that everyone can see that I'm embarrassed.

1165
01:02:06,820 --> 01:02:09,300
And because blushing is hot, you can feel it yourself.

1166
01:02:09,460 --> 01:02:11,300
So not so I know that I'm embarrassed.

1167
01:02:11,380 --> 01:02:13,380
I know that others know that that I'm embarrassed.

1168
01:02:13,460 --> 01:02:16,980
And I know that others know that others know that I'm embarrassed.

1169
01:02:17,860 --> 01:02:20,980
And so that signals to other people that I'm aware of the faux pas.

1170
01:02:21,140 --> 01:02:22,340
It's not going to happen again.

1171
01:02:22,740 --> 01:02:27,780
And that's another way to sort of tip the scales in favor of preserving my social status.

1172
01:02:28,150 --> 01:02:28,950
That's really interesting.

1173
01:02:29,030 --> 01:02:32,790
And I think like there's this trope, and I think it's right, um, you know, and we have

1174
01:02:32,790 --> 01:02:37,110
younger kids, we haven't dealt with this yet, but this sort of like super chronically

1175
01:02:37,110 --> 01:02:42,710
embarrassed adolescent who's sort of like really afraid to do

1176
01:02:42,710 --> 01:02:47,750
anything and just constantly embarrassed, or like, dad, you're embarrassing me in front of

1177
01:02:47,750 --> 01:02:48,470
my friends.

1178
01:02:48,710 --> 01:02:54,420
Um, and it's exactly when this status um game switches to sort of

1179
01:02:54,420 --> 01:03:00,180
idiosyncratic to your peer group and not and you're kind of completely divorced from like

1180
01:03:00,180 --> 01:03:03,060
the status of the prior generation.

1181
01:03:03,220 --> 01:03:09,060
So I think like um you know, adolescent shyness and embarrassment, that's just

1182
01:03:09,060 --> 01:03:11,620
a really um interesting, interesting thing.

1183
01:03:12,020 --> 01:03:13,150
Yeah, absolutely.

1184
01:03:13,310 --> 01:03:17,070
And then and then we can talk about the other side of this, which is what if you fail?

1185
01:03:17,230 --> 01:03:21,150
What if you fail to tip the scales in favor of preserving your social status?

1186
01:03:21,310 --> 01:03:21,470
Right.

1187
01:03:21,630 --> 01:03:25,070
You know, you maybe maybe you laugh ha ha ha and nobody shares laughter with you.

1188
01:03:25,230 --> 01:03:25,390
Yeah.

1189
01:03:25,550 --> 01:03:26,750
Everyone's stone faced.

1190
01:03:27,150 --> 01:03:30,030
Or um or maybe everyone's uh laughing at you.

1191
01:03:30,190 --> 01:03:30,270
Right.

1192
01:03:30,590 --> 01:03:32,510
Or maybe everyone's mocking you.

1193
01:03:32,800 --> 01:03:37,760
Um, and uh everyone knows that everyone knows that you've really lost social standing, that

1194
01:03:37,760 --> 01:03:39,120
your reputation has been damaged.

1195
01:03:39,280 --> 01:03:43,280
Um in that case, the embarrassment will sour into humiliation.

1196
01:03:43,600 --> 01:03:44,000
Right.

1197
01:03:44,240 --> 01:03:48,480
Uh and you can think of humiliation as just shame, but it's preceded by some kind of

1198
01:03:48,480 --> 01:03:49,120
embarrassment.

1199
01:03:49,360 --> 01:03:49,520
Right.

1200
01:03:49,680 --> 01:03:55,680
Um that it's what happens when the the uh the attempt to signal embarrassment and diffuse

1201
01:03:55,680 --> 01:03:59,600
the costs fails and you're just you just slip right into shame.

1202
01:04:00,000 --> 01:04:00,320
Right.

1203
01:04:00,570 --> 01:04:01,450
That's really interesting.

1204
01:04:01,530 --> 01:04:06,330
And I love that what you talked about a second ago was that it can either be a thing of the

1205
01:04:06,330 --> 01:04:11,130
target of the humor is sort of where the lesson is, or ourselves, like the recipients of

1206
01:04:11,130 --> 01:04:11,290
it.

1207
01:04:11,530 --> 01:04:16,970
And this is where I think like I'm thinking Andy Kaufman is a really great example of doing

1208
01:04:16,970 --> 01:04:17,770
all these things.

1209
01:04:17,930 --> 01:04:23,450
So there's sort of one is where Andy Kaufman gets up and is a really bad

1210
01:04:23,450 --> 01:04:24,410
comedian.

1211
01:04:24,970 --> 01:04:27,210
Um and he's really not funny.

1212
01:04:27,680 --> 01:04:32,640
And it's sort of this thing of, well, he's embarrassing himself, right?

1213
01:04:33,120 --> 01:04:38,880
But um, but he continues to not be funny, and people start laughing at

1214
01:04:38,880 --> 01:04:42,160
him because they're he it's an embarrassing thing.

1215
01:04:42,320 --> 01:04:46,000
He's losing status, and then he's sort of like, Why are you laughing at me?

1216
01:04:46,320 --> 01:04:52,080
You know, and so it becomes this thing of it's this comment of you're actually harming

1217
01:04:52,080 --> 01:04:57,730
a person because they're failing to be funny, And so what he's doing on purpose

1218
01:04:58,050 --> 01:05:03,570
is he's he's pointing out that you're it's really

1219
01:05:04,130 --> 01:05:09,010
hurtful to sort of like you're hurting me by um and it's funny, right?

1220
01:05:09,090 --> 01:05:11,330
Because it's like it's he's supposed to be funny.

1221
01:05:11,490 --> 01:05:17,410
The other example of that is um he'll be on like a a a talk show and he'll just be

1222
01:05:17,410 --> 01:05:22,920
like uh you know, uh, I'm gonna contact or my my dad, my parents are here, and you know,

1223
01:05:23,000 --> 01:05:26,120
and I've never really told them I love them, and I'm just gonna tell them I love them.

1224
01:05:26,360 --> 01:05:32,200
And it's a really genuine, sincere thing he's doing, but it's not funny, right?

1225
01:05:32,440 --> 01:05:37,560
Because he's or it is funny because he's he's not doing, he's not like performing, right?

1226
01:05:37,640 --> 01:05:39,320
He's not doing a bit.

1227
01:05:39,720 --> 01:05:40,040
Yeah.

1228
01:05:40,280 --> 01:05:46,110
And and you feel like, well, he's an oaf, but then he's doing this really useful,

1229
01:05:46,190 --> 01:05:47,870
like important real-world thing.

1230
01:05:47,950 --> 01:05:53,790
And then you sort of think, Oh, um, it's horrible that I have the expectation

1231
01:05:54,270 --> 01:05:58,190
and I'm devaluing him because he's telling his family he loves them.

1232
01:05:58,670 --> 01:06:01,630
You know, and he's and there's all these cues that he knows he's doing it.

1233
01:06:01,710 --> 01:06:05,310
So, you know, when he's a bad comedian, like at the end in some of his bits, he'll like do

1234
01:06:05,310 --> 01:06:06,430
an Elvis impression.

1235
01:06:06,510 --> 01:06:07,950
So it's like it's really hard to do.

1236
01:06:08,110 --> 01:06:12,110
So he's showing you, I know that I'm being bad.

1237
01:06:12,350 --> 01:06:13,880
But some people don't get it, right?

1238
01:06:14,040 --> 01:06:17,320
And so, like people, and so I think it's like Andy Kaufman humor.

1239
01:06:17,480 --> 01:06:23,320
I think your theory explains it in a way where it's sort of like

1240
01:06:23,320 --> 01:06:25,640
the you're it's the humor of humor, right?

1241
01:06:25,720 --> 01:06:29,480
Where like what I I I like that about that.

1242
01:06:29,800 --> 01:06:35,720
Um uh but and I think this is also where I've heard people say that like you can

1243
01:06:35,720 --> 01:06:40,830
kind of couch deep insights in humor in ways that you couldn't otherwise, right?

1244
01:06:40,910 --> 01:06:44,990
Like there's sort of the core jester who can sort of get away with making fun of the

1245
01:06:44,990 --> 01:06:50,110
dictator or the king, and other people can't, um, or like political humor.

1246
01:06:50,350 --> 01:06:52,110
Um have you thought about that?

1247
01:06:52,270 --> 01:06:53,790
Like what's going on with that?

1248
01:06:54,190 --> 01:06:54,750
Yeah.

1249
01:06:55,070 --> 01:07:00,510
So related to this analysis is an emotion that is pretty understudied, which we might call

1250
01:07:00,510 --> 01:07:02,030
mirth or amusement.

1251
01:07:03,230 --> 01:07:08,800
And you can think of mirth as functioning to uh defuse or

1252
01:07:08,800 --> 01:07:11,520
nullify the costs of a mix-up.

1253
01:07:11,840 --> 01:07:15,440
Um, you know, there has to be some machinery in the mind that that performs this function

1254
01:07:15,440 --> 01:07:18,640
of making sure that the costs don't get registered, right?

1255
01:07:18,800 --> 01:07:21,520
They don't get taken quote unquote seriously.

1256
01:07:21,840 --> 01:07:27,520
Um and so in order to perform this adaptive function, MERTH has to deactivate or

1257
01:07:27,520 --> 01:07:31,280
suppress um systems in the head that process costs.

1258
01:07:32,320 --> 01:07:36,430
So it's gonna deactivate anger so you don't get angry at the faux pas.

1259
01:07:36,750 --> 01:07:40,190
It's going to deactivate fear.

1260
01:07:40,350 --> 01:07:43,310
So if you're play wrestling, you know, you're not going to be afraid that the person's

1261
01:07:43,310 --> 01:07:44,190
trying to kill you.

1262
01:07:44,350 --> 01:07:49,230
It's going to deactivate hatred so I don't hold a grudge because you try because you tried

1263
01:07:49,230 --> 01:07:53,390
to, you know, uh fight me or whatever, or you're play fighting with me.

1264
01:07:53,470 --> 01:07:56,430
Um it's going to deactivate uh compassion and guilt.

1265
01:07:56,590 --> 01:08:00,990
If you know I'm not going to feel guilty for the the fake uh punch that I threw at you.

1266
01:08:01,230 --> 01:08:01,550
Right.

1267
01:08:02,030 --> 01:08:06,880
Um and so uh it's gonna deactivate all these different negative

1268
01:08:07,200 --> 01:08:12,480
emotions um in order to prevent the costs of the mix-up from being uh registered.

1269
01:08:12,640 --> 01:08:18,320
And so if that's the function of mirth, then all of a sudden there's uh a huge strategic

1270
01:08:18,320 --> 01:08:21,440
advantage to be gained by exploiting that aspect of mirth.

1271
01:08:22,560 --> 01:08:28,350
Um so political coalitions uh mobilize and coordinate by creating common

1272
01:08:28,350 --> 01:08:29,470
knowledge of costs.

1273
01:08:29,710 --> 01:08:35,470
The costs of the enemy coming and invading us or dominating us or exploiting us, the

1274
01:08:35,470 --> 01:08:41,150
costs of us having low status, the costs of being attacked, the costs of

1275
01:08:41,150 --> 01:08:42,190
unfairness.

1276
01:08:43,390 --> 01:08:45,390
Politics is all about taking things seriously.

1277
01:08:45,550 --> 01:08:50,920
And I I think of seriousness as the as basically the ability to register costs.

1278
01:08:51,080 --> 01:08:56,520
Seriousness is the actual or potential or hypothetical costs that could be inflicted by a

1279
01:08:56,520 --> 01:08:56,920
situation.

1280
01:08:57,080 --> 01:09:00,920
I think of a serious person as someone who can inflict costs on you, someone who can harm

1281
01:09:00,920 --> 01:09:04,440
your reputation, who can physically harm you, who can withhold benefits that are really

1282
01:09:04,440 --> 01:09:10,040
valuable to you, a person whose absence is greatly felt, um, a person with who can

1283
01:09:10,040 --> 01:09:11,560
withhold valuable information to you.

1284
01:09:11,720 --> 01:09:16,930
So in in the show Succession, Logan Roy tells his children uh you're not serious people.

1285
01:09:17,170 --> 01:09:20,770
Uh and and you can see why that would cut so deep.

1286
01:09:20,850 --> 01:09:25,490
It's it's you know, telling his kids that they're incapable of, you know, n bargaining with

1287
01:09:25,490 --> 01:09:29,970
or negotiating with anyone or inflicting any kind of real costs or withholding any kind of

1288
01:09:29,970 --> 01:09:31,090
real benefits from anyone.

1289
01:09:31,330 --> 01:09:31,890
Right.

1290
01:09:32,450 --> 01:09:35,570
Um, so I got launched on a sidetrack there.

1291
01:09:35,650 --> 01:09:37,170
So um seriousness.

1292
01:09:37,420 --> 01:09:39,020
We need seriousness politically.

1293
01:09:39,180 --> 01:09:42,860
Politics is about what we should take seriously as a society, right?

1294
01:09:43,660 --> 01:09:49,660
And um if I come into the middle of a political rally or a political protest and

1295
01:09:49,660 --> 01:09:54,780
I start cracking jokes and activating mirth, right, that's going to throw a huge wrench

1296
01:09:55,020 --> 01:09:56,700
into the political coalition.

1297
01:09:56,780 --> 01:10:00,380
It's going to prevent them from creating common knowledge of these costs that they need to

1298
01:10:00,380 --> 01:10:01,180
take seriously.

1299
01:10:01,420 --> 01:10:04,140
And so mirth is kind of a political weapon.

1300
01:10:04,270 --> 01:10:09,790
Um, it can it can really damage uh one one group's ability to to mobilize.

1301
01:10:10,030 --> 01:10:13,150
Um and so I think that's why humor can be so political.

1302
01:10:13,310 --> 01:10:18,030
We really have to figure out what stuff we should be allowed to laugh at and what stuff we

1303
01:10:18,030 --> 01:10:18,350
shouldn't.

1304
01:10:18,430 --> 01:10:21,550
And if something is really costly and we really need to pay attention to the costs of that

1305
01:10:21,550 --> 01:10:27,060
so that we can mitigate it, then we should be really um reluctant to joke about it because

1306
01:10:27,060 --> 01:10:31,860
we cannot afford to activate mirth and deactivate um the negative emotions that we need to

1307
01:10:31,860 --> 01:10:32,660
deal with it.

1308
01:10:33,140 --> 01:10:38,980
And so mirth is a is a kind of anti-seriousness system that we

1309
01:10:38,980 --> 01:10:44,900
should be really antagonistic to in in serious situations, because it prevents us

1310
01:10:44,900 --> 01:10:47,460
from actually dealing with those serious situations effectively.

1311
01:10:47,860 --> 01:10:48,100
Right.

1312
01:10:48,580 --> 01:10:53,220
So like I'm thinking so like, and this is also where maybe the content of humor comes in

1313
01:10:53,460 --> 01:10:59,130
where um you know, I'm thinking like politic politics where political humor where the

1314
01:10:59,130 --> 01:11:04,650
joke is on our side versus the other side, we're fine with that, but we don't find funny

1315
01:11:04,650 --> 01:11:06,810
where like we're the victims of the humor.

1316
01:11:07,130 --> 01:11:12,970
Um is that sort of similar, or is it just even like across the board humor doesn't because

1317
01:11:13,050 --> 01:11:18,890
I'm thinking, you know, like politicians who are sort of very serious, but then might mock

1318
01:11:18,890 --> 01:11:20,090
the other side, right?

1319
01:11:20,840 --> 01:11:21,160
Yeah.

1320
01:11:21,400 --> 01:11:22,840
So I think that's slightly different.

1321
01:11:23,000 --> 01:11:27,240
I think what what's happening there is when you mock someone, you're you're basically

1322
01:11:27,240 --> 01:11:29,800
trying to frame them as a bad coordination partner.

1323
01:11:30,120 --> 01:11:36,120
Someone who's idiotic, foolish, awkward, inept, clumsy, someone who's

1324
01:11:36,120 --> 01:11:40,520
bad to associate with, who's gonna bring very few, if any, benefits and many costs.

1325
01:11:40,840 --> 01:11:41,160
Right.

1326
01:11:41,400 --> 01:11:44,630
Um so I think that that is the function of mockery.

1327
01:11:44,790 --> 01:11:48,950
So once we have this system online where we're evaluating uh each other's values as uh

1328
01:11:48,950 --> 01:11:53,030
value as a social partner, uh, and in your ability to coordinate smoothly is a really good

1329
01:11:53,030 --> 01:11:57,430
indicator of your value as a social partner, it behooves me to try to make my rivals look

1330
01:11:57,430 --> 01:12:01,670
foolish, to look like they're bad social partners, and to make myself look like a good

1331
01:12:01,670 --> 01:12:03,030
social partner by comparison.

1332
01:12:03,270 --> 01:12:08,440
And so you can think of political competition as attempts to rally people to one side of a

1333
01:12:08,440 --> 01:12:09,240
political conflict.

1334
01:12:09,320 --> 01:12:14,040
And one way to get people on your side is to cast the other side as a set of bad social

1335
01:12:14,040 --> 01:12:14,440
partners.

1336
01:12:14,680 --> 01:12:19,480
So we can do this by making them look mean or cruel or selfish or clumsy or offish or

1337
01:12:19,480 --> 01:12:21,400
stupid or idiotic or foolish.

1338
01:12:21,720 --> 01:12:23,640
And I think that's what a lot of political satire is about.

1339
01:12:23,720 --> 01:12:28,440
It's about pointing out the hypocrisies on the other side, the foolishness, uh the idiocy,

1340
01:12:28,680 --> 01:12:34,600
uh, and the ways that they're constantly failing to get how the world works, to uh get how

1341
01:12:34,600 --> 01:12:38,050
uh language works, um to do things the right ways.

1342
01:12:38,290 --> 01:12:41,490
I think that's uh what a lot of political satire is about.

1343
01:12:41,570 --> 01:12:46,610
Um and you can think of hypocrisy itself as a kind of um dual mix up.

1344
01:12:46,850 --> 01:12:52,130
So um if we're all trying to collaborate to enforce some rule that benefits everyone,

1345
01:12:52,290 --> 01:12:54,290
there's a kind of tempting mix up there.

1346
01:12:54,450 --> 01:12:59,410
I could think the purpose of the rule is to benefit me but not others, and that I am

1347
01:12:59,410 --> 01:13:03,840
supposed to um in uh Enforce the rule but not follow it.

1348
01:13:04,080 --> 01:13:04,400
Right.

1349
01:13:04,560 --> 01:13:05,120
Right.

1350
01:13:05,360 --> 01:13:10,720
Um and if I do that, then that could create another mix-up where you think I'm

1351
01:13:10,720 --> 01:13:15,280
virtuous for enforcing the rule when I'm secretly corrupt for flouting it.

1352
01:13:15,440 --> 01:13:15,600
Right.

1353
01:13:15,760 --> 01:13:18,720
And so we have these dual mix-ups where I'm confusing the purpose of the rule, where I

1354
01:13:18,720 --> 01:13:21,680
think it's it's to selfishly benefit me instead of the wider community.

1355
01:13:22,080 --> 01:13:25,760
And there's a mix-up surrounding my virtue where people think I'm more virtuous than I

1356
01:13:25,760 --> 01:13:28,480
really am because I'm enforcing the rule, but I'm also flouting it.

1357
01:13:28,560 --> 01:13:28,800
Right.

1358
01:13:28,960 --> 01:13:29,360
Right.

1359
01:13:29,670 --> 01:13:33,830
And so a lot of political satire, I think, is about pointing out the hypocrisies of the

1360
01:13:33,830 --> 01:13:38,470
other side and accentuating the the aspect of the hypocrisy that's that's the mix-up.

1361
01:13:38,950 --> 01:13:41,750
Um where they're just fundamentally morally confused.

1362
01:13:42,150 --> 01:13:42,630
That's interesting.

1363
01:13:42,710 --> 01:13:47,750
And that means that if I find something funny and I laugh at it, then I'm sort of by virtue

1364
01:13:47,750 --> 01:13:48,550
of its design.

1365
01:13:48,630 --> 01:13:54,630
And I've heard professional comedians say this, that it's sort of like um uh

1366
01:13:54,950 --> 01:14:00,740
it's humor is sort of like a direct pipeline to insight or like ign accepting

1367
01:14:00,980 --> 01:14:05,380
something you might not want to talk about explicitly because if I laugh at it, I'm sort of

1368
01:14:05,380 --> 01:14:06,100
acknowledging.

1369
01:14:06,260 --> 01:14:10,980
If I if I laugh at the hypocrisy of a politician I like, the fact that I'm laughing at it

1370
01:14:11,140 --> 01:14:15,940
means I'm accepting that the hypocrisy exists, that the mix up is happening.

1371
01:14:16,100 --> 01:14:20,340
And then I even like it's I'm creating and I'm maybe I'm even like creating common

1372
01:14:20,340 --> 01:14:21,380
knowledge about it, right?

1373
01:14:21,540 --> 01:14:21,700
Yeah.

1374
01:14:21,860 --> 01:14:27,710
So it's sort of like this um really it sort of bypasses a lot of the sort of like

1375
01:14:27,870 --> 01:14:33,870
filters of in the the talky parts of our brains sort of you know like where

1376
01:14:33,870 --> 01:14:38,590
we wouldn't want to like as a narrative accept a premise but if we find it funny it's sort

1377
01:14:38,590 --> 01:14:42,030
of like it's really telling what what people find funny.

1378
01:14:42,430 --> 01:14:42,910
Yeah.

1379
01:14:43,150 --> 01:14:43,950
Absolutely.

1380
01:14:44,220 --> 01:14:44,860
Yeah.

1381
01:14:45,260 --> 01:14:49,500
Um, should we talk about comic timing?

1382
01:14:49,820 --> 01:14:50,380
Please.

1383
01:14:51,580 --> 01:14:56,780
I think I I think I think the three has a cool uh way of understanding what comic timing is

1384
01:14:57,020 --> 01:14:59,020
and the art of of comedic acting.

1385
01:14:59,180 --> 01:14:59,500
Yeah.

1386
01:14:59,660 --> 01:15:05,500
Um so um you could think about all the subtle coordination games we play every time we have

1387
01:15:05,500 --> 01:15:06,380
a conversation.

1388
01:15:06,620 --> 01:15:08,310
So there's the volume game.

1389
01:15:08,550 --> 01:15:14,230
I could either talk too loudly and frighten you, or talk too softly and you won't hear me,

1390
01:15:14,630 --> 01:15:19,110
um, or talk at the right volume and we could successfully have a conversation.

1391
01:15:19,270 --> 01:15:19,430
Right.

1392
01:15:19,510 --> 01:15:22,550
And they're there are mix-ups just in terms of the volume of my voice.

1393
01:15:22,950 --> 01:15:24,390
Um and there's the pacing game.

1394
01:15:24,470 --> 01:15:28,310
If I talk too quickly, then you won't understand what I'm saying, you won't follow me.

1395
01:15:28,470 --> 01:15:32,550
If I talk too slowly, I might bore you, uh, I might I might look dim-witted.

1396
01:15:32,630 --> 01:15:36,470
And so there's the sweet spot where I can't talk too fast, can't talk too slow, right?

1397
01:15:36,920 --> 01:15:39,800
Um and then there's the uh the gesture game.

1398
01:15:39,960 --> 01:15:44,600
Um if I just I'm totally motionless and expressionless uh when I'm talking, then you're

1399
01:15:44,760 --> 01:15:47,560
you're going to fail to detect uh what I'm saying.

1400
01:15:47,640 --> 01:15:51,080
Uh you're going to fail to detect the emotional undercurrents, you're going to uh miss what

1401
01:15:51,080 --> 01:15:53,000
I'm referring to if I'm not pointing to it.

1402
01:15:53,240 --> 01:15:58,520
But if I am wildly flailing my arms around, or if I'm like contorting my face in

1403
01:15:58,520 --> 01:16:02,840
exaggerated grimaces, then that's not good either because I could, you know, um overstate

1404
01:16:02,840 --> 01:16:08,510
the magnitude of the emotional undercurrents and mislead you about how excited I am or how

1405
01:16:08,510 --> 01:16:11,310
uh uh uh angry I am or whatever.

1406
01:16:11,550 --> 01:16:14,910
I might, you know, if I'm flailing my arms, I might hit you, and you might mistake that for

1407
01:16:14,910 --> 01:16:15,310
aggression.

1408
01:16:15,390 --> 01:16:19,550
So there are mix-ups involving just uh gesturing and emotional communication and facial

1409
01:16:19,550 --> 01:16:20,350
expressions.

1410
01:16:20,510 --> 01:16:22,990
Um there are mix-ups surrounding proximity.

1411
01:16:23,150 --> 01:16:26,830
If I stand too close to you, you might interpret that as threatening or romantic.

1412
01:16:26,910 --> 01:16:30,720
If I stand too far away, you might think that I'm like grossed out by you or afraid of you.

1413
01:16:30,880 --> 01:16:33,600
And so there's another, there's the sweet spot where I have to be just right.

1414
01:16:33,680 --> 01:16:37,120
And if I get it wrong, then we're going to be you know discoordinated.

1415
01:16:37,280 --> 01:16:39,040
Um there's the the tone game.

1416
01:16:39,120 --> 01:16:43,360
If I speak in an overly monotone way, the emotional undercurrents are going to be lost.

1417
01:16:43,440 --> 01:16:48,480
Um if I speak in an overly sing-song-y way, again, you're going to uh uh it's gonna be

1418
01:16:48,480 --> 01:16:52,560
exaggerate the emotional undercurrents that might distract you from the words themselves.

1419
01:16:52,960 --> 01:16:54,790
Um There's the timing game.

1420
01:16:54,870 --> 01:16:59,190
If I respond too quickly to what you say, I might like accidentally interrupt you and you

1421
01:16:59,190 --> 01:17:00,790
might interpret that as hostile.

1422
01:17:00,950 --> 01:17:01,270
Right.

1423
01:17:01,750 --> 01:17:06,470
If I respond too slowly, I might appear like I'm distracted or I'm I'm dim witted.

1424
01:17:06,710 --> 01:17:07,030
Right.

1425
01:17:07,190 --> 01:17:12,470
And so they're all these really subtle micro coordination games we play every time we have

1426
01:17:12,470 --> 01:17:15,030
any kind of conversation or social interaction.

1427
01:17:15,270 --> 01:17:15,750
Right.

1428
01:17:15,990 --> 01:17:21,670
And these type these micro mix ups, this is the toolkit of the comedic actor,

1429
01:17:21,800 --> 01:17:22,120
right?

1430
01:17:22,280 --> 01:17:27,160
You could think of Jim Carrey, the exaggerated clownishness, how he contorts his face and

1431
01:17:27,160 --> 01:17:28,760
these crazy facial expressions.

1432
01:17:28,840 --> 01:17:34,680
And you know, he he's so physical, and like his his um his gestures are so temptingly

1433
01:17:35,000 --> 01:17:36,760
out of sync with like a normal gesture.

1434
01:17:36,840 --> 01:17:40,280
His facial expressions are just like a little bit too much, you know.

1435
01:17:40,440 --> 01:17:44,970
From uh he uh you know he might be too close, he might like put his arm around the Dalai

1436
01:17:45,050 --> 01:17:47,290
Lama like he's one of the like he's a frat bro, you know.

1437
01:17:47,370 --> 01:17:47,610
Right.

1438
01:17:47,770 --> 01:17:53,450
Uh um or like Charles Groden, who is just like totally monotone in his voice and his

1439
01:17:53,450 --> 01:17:54,170
delivery.

1440
01:17:54,250 --> 01:18:00,250
Um, or or you you might accentuate the punch of a punchline by um sort of

1441
01:18:00,250 --> 01:18:04,410
uh uh being temptingly out of sync with the normal rhythms of a conversation.

1442
01:18:04,650 --> 01:18:09,900
Or you might uh be smoothly in sync with the normal rhythms of a conversation in a way that

1443
01:18:09,900 --> 01:18:13,100
allows a whopping absurdity to casually slip out.

1444
01:18:13,180 --> 01:18:16,780
And that might accentuate, you might might create another mix-up where there's a mix-up

1445
01:18:16,860 --> 01:18:21,180
between the shock of the information that is being delivered and the nonchalance with which

1446
01:18:21,180 --> 01:18:22,460
it is being delivered.

1447
01:18:22,940 --> 01:18:28,460
So I think uh like Saster Sasha uh Baron Cohen, like Oli G would be a good example of that,

1448
01:18:28,540 --> 01:18:30,780
like very smooth, but then saying outrageous stuff.

1449
01:18:30,860 --> 01:18:31,020
Yeah.

1450
01:18:31,420 --> 01:18:32,380
Yeah, exactly.

1451
01:18:32,620 --> 01:18:37,770
And so it really is like there's a lot of comedy just simply in the delivery of the joke,

1452
01:18:37,850 --> 01:18:39,770
um apart from the joke itself.

1453
01:18:40,090 --> 01:18:40,250
Right.

1454
01:18:40,410 --> 01:18:44,010
Um and I and I think the the theory can make really interesting and textured predictions

1455
01:18:44,010 --> 01:18:44,490
about that.

1456
01:18:45,130 --> 01:18:45,530
Yeah.

1457
01:18:45,610 --> 01:18:45,850
Yeah.

1458
01:18:46,010 --> 01:18:47,290
I have nothing to say.

1459
01:18:49,130 --> 01:18:49,610
Yeah.

1460
01:18:49,850 --> 01:18:52,810
Um uh yeah super cool.

1461
01:18:52,970 --> 01:18:53,370
Mm-hmm.

1462
01:18:54,570 --> 01:18:54,970
Cool.

1463
01:18:55,050 --> 01:19:00,360
I mean I think that's that's uh about I mean there's another thing.

1464
01:19:00,520 --> 01:19:01,320
One more thing.

1465
01:19:01,560 --> 01:19:02,440
Yeah, please.

1466
01:19:02,760 --> 01:19:03,800
Evil laughs.

1467
01:19:04,200 --> 01:19:06,600
This is another thing that occurred to me.

1468
01:19:06,920 --> 01:19:09,880
Um the mwahaha of the supervillain.

1469
01:19:10,040 --> 01:19:10,600
Yes, yes.

1470
01:19:10,840 --> 01:19:14,760
Um, there's this horror movie called Smile where it's just all about these people with

1471
01:19:14,760 --> 01:19:15,560
creepy smiles.

1472
01:19:15,640 --> 01:19:15,800
Yeah.

1473
01:19:16,040 --> 01:19:16,120
Right.

1474
01:19:16,280 --> 01:19:17,800
And it's like really scary.

1475
01:19:18,120 --> 01:19:22,120
And and and just like some people really dislike um clowns.

1476
01:19:22,910 --> 01:19:27,310
Um, this is something when we were back at the uh infant lab at Yale, we talked to Kylie

1477
01:19:27,390 --> 01:19:31,950
Hamlin about, and I think she went on a podcast soon after we were and was like somebody

1478
01:19:31,950 --> 01:19:35,390
asked her, because she does the infant morality work, and somebody was asking about like

1479
01:19:35,470 --> 01:19:39,070
why do people dislike um like clowns for some reason?

1480
01:19:39,230 --> 01:19:41,470
And like we had talked about this like a few weeks before.

1481
01:19:41,550 --> 01:19:47,470
But yeah, no, this idea of like you can't predict um, or it's sort of like uh

1482
01:19:47,660 --> 01:19:52,700
it's really like clowns, scary clowns are really scary because there's just like smile

1483
01:19:52,860 --> 01:19:55,500
affixed to this scary agent, right?

1484
01:19:55,580 --> 01:19:57,420
Like that's like extra scary, right?

1485
01:19:57,980 --> 01:19:58,620
Totally.

1486
01:19:58,940 --> 01:20:01,260
But you know, it it's hard to interact with scary.

1487
01:20:01,580 --> 01:20:02,060
No worries, no.

1488
01:20:02,220 --> 01:20:06,540
I mean you can begin to make sense of why clowns are scary and why smiles can in some

1489
01:20:06,540 --> 01:20:10,380
contexts be scary, uh, once you understand the adaptive function of mirth.

1490
01:20:11,830 --> 01:20:17,510
So if the function of mirth is to deactivate emotions that process costs, then if you're in

1491
01:20:17,510 --> 01:20:22,150
a state of mirth, you're gonna be a really menacing and dangerous person.

1492
01:20:22,630 --> 01:20:23,110
Right.

1493
01:20:23,430 --> 01:20:28,550
So it's gonna it may deactivate your fear, causing you or enabling you to attack other

1494
01:20:28,550 --> 01:20:30,390
people without any fear of retaliation.

1495
01:20:30,550 --> 01:20:30,630
Right.

1496
01:20:30,870 --> 01:20:32,150
It may deactivate your empathy.

1497
01:20:32,230 --> 01:20:34,070
So if you hurt someone, you won't feel their pain.

1498
01:20:34,150 --> 01:20:34,230
Right.

1499
01:20:34,390 --> 01:20:35,750
Or you won't feel guilty.

1500
01:20:35,910 --> 01:20:41,840
Um it uh it may um make you impossible to threaten or intimidate or deter because

1501
01:20:41,840 --> 01:20:45,680
you're not going to be able to process the costs that are being threatened.

1502
01:20:45,840 --> 01:20:49,440
Um if someone is angry with you, they won't be able to negotiate with you for better

1503
01:20:49,440 --> 01:20:49,920
treatment.

1504
01:20:50,000 --> 01:20:50,080
Right.

1505
01:20:50,400 --> 01:20:55,200
Because such negotiation requires real or hypothetical costs that that you'll just be

1506
01:20:55,200 --> 01:20:56,080
unable to process.

1507
01:20:56,240 --> 01:21:00,320
You know, like like the Joker, I know Morgan Freeman says in in Batman, you know, the Joker

1508
01:21:00,320 --> 01:21:02,400
cannot be bought, bartered, or negotiated with.

1509
01:21:02,560 --> 01:21:02,720
Yeah.

1510
01:21:02,880 --> 01:21:03,120
Right.

1511
01:21:03,360 --> 01:21:05,280
I think it's because he's in a state of mirth.

1512
01:21:05,370 --> 01:21:06,890
He can't take anything seriously.

1513
01:21:07,050 --> 01:21:11,290
And there's something really scary about that, that you there's nothing you can do to

1514
01:21:11,290 --> 01:21:14,650
negotiate with or deter a mirthful person.

1515
01:21:14,810 --> 01:21:18,970
And they're gonna feel no emotion, they're gonna feel no compunctions about harming you in

1516
01:21:18,970 --> 01:21:19,370
any way.

1517
01:21:19,530 --> 01:21:20,570
It's all a joke.

1518
01:21:20,730 --> 01:21:25,130
Um and so there's something really scary about being someone being with someone in a

1519
01:21:25,130 --> 01:21:29,140
mirthful state that and and when you're not sharing that mercyful state.

1520
01:21:29,460 --> 01:21:30,100
That's really interesting.

1521
01:21:30,180 --> 01:21:34,660
There the uh the Quentin Tarantino and Glorious Bastards, there's a character Christopher

1522
01:21:34,660 --> 01:21:35,700
Waltz did.

1523
01:21:36,180 --> 01:21:41,940
Um the the I think he was an SS uh officer, and he's just sort

1524
01:21:41,940 --> 01:21:45,220
of charming and very funny, right?

1525
01:21:45,620 --> 01:21:51,140
And it's really scary, and it's he's really charismatic, and it's really um

1526
01:21:51,460 --> 01:21:57,110
I I think it's one of the most um insidious characters I've ever seen.

1527
01:21:57,190 --> 01:22:01,990
And I think it's exactly, or or maybe partially at least, because there's sort of a sense

1528
01:22:01,990 --> 01:22:06,870
of humor, and there's so much, there's so much sort of sobriety and so cognizant.

1529
01:22:06,950 --> 01:22:09,910
It's not like you're you're looking at somebody.

1530
01:22:10,070 --> 01:22:13,830
I think like what you're saying is like there's a difference between somebody who's about

1531
01:22:13,830 --> 01:22:19,120
to do something terrible, and you can tell they're fighting it within themselves.

1532
01:22:19,280 --> 01:22:22,960
Like they're like terrified, they're shaking, they're scared.

1533
01:22:23,200 --> 01:22:23,600
Yeah.

1534
01:22:23,840 --> 01:22:28,400
And and but they're about to inflict a cost on somebody versus somebody who is like

1535
01:22:28,400 --> 01:22:32,880
composed, cool to the point of being slick and laughing.

1536
01:22:33,120 --> 01:22:33,440
Right.

1537
01:22:33,760 --> 01:22:38,880
Like if they're doing the same thing and one of the like one of those is much scarier than

1538
01:22:38,880 --> 01:22:39,360
the other.

1539
01:22:39,600 --> 01:22:41,280
Um yeah.

1540
01:22:41,920 --> 01:22:42,800
Totally.

1541
01:22:43,120 --> 01:22:43,760
Yeah.

1542
01:22:44,790 --> 01:22:45,830
So yeah.

1543
01:22:46,070 --> 01:22:47,590
Mirth mirth is menacing.

1544
01:22:47,830 --> 01:22:48,150
Yeah.

1545
01:22:48,390 --> 01:22:50,390
Good good I mean good book to me.

1546
01:22:50,550 --> 01:22:55,190
I mean, I would rather I mean I I think it's way less scary if someone's mad at you, or

1547
01:22:55,190 --> 01:23:00,310
even if they're yelling at you, than if someone is mirthful in a in a hostile way toward

1548
01:23:00,310 --> 01:23:00,390
you.

1549
01:23:00,630 --> 01:23:04,550
Because at least if they're mad, you there's the the possibility of negotiating with them,

1550
01:23:04,630 --> 01:23:07,030
of apologizing, of making amends, right?

1551
01:23:07,350 --> 01:23:09,830
Of of of catering to their demands, of doing something.

1552
01:23:09,990 --> 01:23:12,310
But with a mirthful inter individual, you can't do anything.

1553
01:23:12,480 --> 01:23:12,720
Right.

1554
01:23:12,960 --> 01:23:16,960
They're just this train that's moving towards you that's in insensitive to any costs you

1555
01:23:16,960 --> 01:23:17,920
could inflict on them.

1556
01:23:18,320 --> 01:23:18,560
Yeah.

1557
01:23:18,720 --> 01:23:19,760
It's sort of it's interesting.

1558
01:23:19,840 --> 01:23:23,200
There's sort of a trope of like the crazy person, what are they doing?

1559
01:23:23,360 --> 01:23:23,600
Right.

1560
01:23:23,760 --> 01:23:24,000
Yeah.

1561
01:23:24,160 --> 01:23:25,840
And they're typically laughing.

1562
01:23:26,000 --> 01:23:26,320
Yeah.

1563
01:23:26,480 --> 01:23:27,360
Uncontrollably.

1564
01:23:27,440 --> 01:23:30,080
Like I mean it's a trope and I'm sure it came from somewhere in you.

1565
01:23:30,160 --> 01:23:31,200
But yeah, no, exactly.

1566
01:23:31,280 --> 01:23:37,090
Like there's a um the the kind of uncontrollable laughter or laughing at the wrong

1567
01:23:37,090 --> 01:23:42,930
times yeah or when when somebody is like imposing costs on people like if

1568
01:23:42,930 --> 01:23:47,090
somebody's holding somebody hostage and they're laughing maniacally that's super scary

1569
01:23:47,250 --> 01:23:52,850
right yeah totally yeah um all right so where

1570
01:23:53,090 --> 01:23:59,010
um uh so what's the bottom well one one last question then is that or

1571
01:23:59,010 --> 01:24:04,900
maybe not last but um uh the the idea of humor is

1572
01:24:04,900 --> 01:24:09,940
sort of like people being funny sort of feels like um i'm just imagining like for example

1573
01:24:10,020 --> 01:24:15,300
like scientists who I know who are very serious versus who are very funny.

1574
01:24:15,940 --> 01:24:21,700
And um if I equate them for like, you know, they're are they serious

1575
01:24:21,700 --> 01:24:25,460
scientists in this sense of like they're really good scientists.

1576
01:24:25,700 --> 01:24:31,630
Um but one are one person's funny and one isn't like they're

1577
01:24:31,870 --> 01:24:37,070
some of the best scientists I have ever known are also funny people, and they will like,

1578
01:24:37,150 --> 01:24:40,190
you know, make be funny about things.

1579
01:24:40,510 --> 01:24:46,190
I don't think they're funny about well, I don't know, they're not funny about the science.

1580
01:24:46,510 --> 01:24:52,270
Um, but uh I don't know, but I'm I'm just sort of thinking out loud, like what's the

1581
01:24:52,670 --> 01:24:57,390
um it almost feels like the difference for me of like people who are funny versus not

1582
01:24:57,710 --> 01:25:02,220
they're sort of like they're helping me in a way, or they're affiliative and I just like

1583
01:25:02,220 --> 01:25:05,260
them more than somebody who's very serious.

1584
01:25:05,660 --> 01:25:06,140
Yeah.

1585
01:25:06,380 --> 01:25:06,940
Totally.

1586
01:25:07,100 --> 01:25:07,340
Yeah.

1587
01:25:07,420 --> 01:25:11,420
I mean, well, there are a number of benefits to affiliating with funny people.

1588
01:25:11,500 --> 01:25:15,340
I mean, number one, they're gonna you're gonna have an easier time coordinating with them.

1589
01:25:15,500 --> 01:25:19,420
Number two, they're going to alert you to potentially costly mix-ups that you might have

1590
01:25:19,470 --> 01:25:20,910
otherwise blundered into.

1591
01:25:21,070 --> 01:25:24,590
So they're providing you with useful information, a useful kind of service.

1592
01:25:25,710 --> 01:25:31,470
And number three, they're likely to share a lot of uh cultural and background knowledge

1593
01:25:31,470 --> 01:25:31,870
with you.

1594
01:25:32,030 --> 01:25:36,350
Like if you get their jokes, then you're playing the same status game as them.

1595
01:25:36,510 --> 01:25:42,110
Um you you have the same uh beliefs, uh opinions, norms, values.

1596
01:25:42,190 --> 01:25:47,020
Um, and so that's signaling that they're particularly good uh uh social partner with you

1597
01:25:47,100 --> 01:25:48,540
they're they're particularly sympatico.

1598
01:25:49,100 --> 01:25:52,860
Um so there are a lot of lot of reasons why we're attracted to funny people.

1599
01:25:53,020 --> 01:25:57,740
Um and in even you know in a scientific context, I know we're you know we're gonna have Dan

1600
01:25:57,820 --> 01:26:01,180
Sneezer on um in in a in a future episode.

1601
01:26:01,340 --> 01:26:06,140
There's there's a joke that he tells that I've I can't stop telling this joke where he says

1602
01:26:06,300 --> 01:26:08,950
um Sorry we're about to spoil a little bit.

1603
01:26:09,270 --> 01:26:10,070
We're spoiler your joke.

1604
01:26:10,150 --> 01:26:12,630
Uh but I fully credit him with this with this brilliant joke.

1605
01:26:13,110 --> 01:26:16,950
So every time um there is like a gap in the in the scientific literature or there's

1606
01:26:16,950 --> 01:26:21,830
uncertainty or we need we need to know more, he always says, um, well, uh uh yeah, uh more

1607
01:26:21,910 --> 01:26:22,870
more funding is needed.

1608
01:26:23,110 --> 01:26:23,830
Yes, exactly.

1609
01:26:23,990 --> 01:26:25,350
More funding is yes.

1610
01:26:25,670 --> 01:26:31,320
What's great about this joke is so everyone in academia always uses this phrase, more

1611
01:26:31,480 --> 01:26:32,600
research is needed.

1612
01:26:32,840 --> 01:26:37,800
And it's this really like mealy-mouthed, like passive voice way of saying I need money.

1613
01:26:37,880 --> 01:26:38,200
You know?

1614
01:26:38,360 --> 01:26:38,600
Exactly.

1615
01:26:38,840 --> 01:26:44,680
And what what's funny about the sneezer joke is that he's mixing up the um the overt

1616
01:26:44,920 --> 01:26:47,400
with with the uh the covert, right?

1617
01:26:47,480 --> 01:26:51,560
Like so overtly you say more research is needed, but covertly you really mean I I need more

1618
01:26:51,560 --> 01:26:51,720
money.

1619
01:26:51,880 --> 01:26:55,080
And so what's funny is that Sneezer is mixing up the two, and he's saying more funding is

1620
01:26:55,080 --> 01:26:55,320
needed.

1621
01:26:55,480 --> 01:26:55,720
Yes.

1622
01:26:55,880 --> 01:26:58,010
Uh And uh it's a lovely joke.

1623
01:26:58,090 --> 01:26:59,290
I always say that whenever you're not sure.

1624
01:26:59,450 --> 01:27:00,170
No, it's really funny.

1625
01:27:00,330 --> 01:27:03,770
And it even does it, like even if people do say more funding is needed, they'll often try

1626
01:27:03,770 --> 01:27:08,330
to couch it in a way that's sort of like, oh, and I just backed into the corner of I guess

1627
01:27:08,330 --> 01:27:10,970
it would be good for more funding to exist.

1628
01:27:11,130 --> 01:27:13,450
You know, it's not like it's not opportunistic.

1629
01:27:13,530 --> 01:27:18,090
And Daniel's just like his nonverbals are sort of like, here's another chance for me to say

1630
01:27:18,090 --> 01:27:19,130
more funding is needed.

1631
01:27:19,210 --> 01:27:19,450
Right.

1632
01:27:19,610 --> 01:27:25,120
So it it it fills away the the the pantomime of sort of like, you know, I'm not looking for

1633
01:27:25,120 --> 01:27:27,840
opportunities where I can ask for more resources.

1634
01:27:27,920 --> 01:27:28,320
Yeah.

1635
01:27:28,560 --> 01:27:29,040
Yeah.

1636
01:27:29,360 --> 01:27:34,400
So um but yeah, one one of the many reasons I I like hanging out with uh Sneezer.

1637
01:27:35,040 --> 01:27:35,520
Yeah.

1638
01:27:35,680 --> 01:27:36,560
Uh good.

1639
01:27:36,800 --> 01:27:40,080
Um is there anything I should have asked you, David?

1640
01:27:40,560 --> 01:27:40,880
Oh.

1641
01:27:42,800 --> 01:27:45,770
I think we covered just about everything.

1642
01:27:46,010 --> 01:27:49,450
I mean, we got to m mirth, embarrassment, evil laughs.

1643
01:27:49,610 --> 01:27:51,930
Um oh we absurdism.

1644
01:27:52,010 --> 01:27:53,290
We didn't get to absurdism.

1645
01:27:54,650 --> 01:27:55,610
One final piece.

1646
01:27:55,770 --> 01:28:00,410
I I'm constantly discovering new implications and new w ways of understanding things that I

1647
01:28:00,410 --> 01:28:04,650
hadn't understood before, but I think I'm starting to understand absurdism a little better.

1648
01:28:04,970 --> 01:28:08,730
Um so So this the the urinal is art?

1649
01:28:08,810 --> 01:28:12,020
Is that absurdism or potentially.

1650
01:28:12,820 --> 01:28:18,660
So uh the theory entails that we laugh to sort of diffuse and nullify

1651
01:28:18,660 --> 01:28:21,380
the costs of these of mix-ups that are occurring.

1652
01:28:21,780 --> 01:28:27,620
But the theory doesn't really entail that we always have to pinpoint exactly what was

1653
01:28:27,620 --> 01:28:29,060
mixed up with what.

1654
01:28:29,700 --> 01:28:34,340
Um it's certainly helpful to figure that out, and we often do, but it's not strictly

1655
01:28:34,340 --> 01:28:34,900
necessary.

1656
01:28:35,140 --> 01:28:40,030
All that is necessary is that the costs of the mix-up, whatever their source, whatever the

1657
01:28:40,030 --> 01:28:42,190
cause of them are, are nullified.

1658
01:28:42,350 --> 01:28:46,670
And whoever was mixed up just stops doing whatever foolish thing they were doing.

1659
01:28:46,830 --> 01:28:47,070
Right.

1660
01:28:47,150 --> 01:28:49,230
So we don't need to know exactly the the source of it.

1661
01:28:49,310 --> 01:28:52,030
We just need to know that something someone was mixed up about something.

1662
01:28:52,190 --> 01:28:55,070
We're going to signal that and we're going to try to diffuse the costs so that they stop

1663
01:28:55,150 --> 01:28:56,270
doing that foolish thing.

1664
01:28:56,510 --> 01:29:02,120
Um and you could think of that as um absurdist humor where you know that that the that

1665
01:29:02,120 --> 01:29:05,480
something's off, that they're confused about something you're not quite sure what it is,

1666
01:29:05,640 --> 01:29:10,120
but you know that that there's been a mix-up and you can laugh to signal that a mix-up has

1667
01:29:10,120 --> 01:29:10,840
taken place.

1668
01:29:11,480 --> 01:29:17,080
Um so um there's uh there's a great joke from Arrest Development where the attorney thinks

1669
01:29:17,080 --> 01:29:20,600
that um a husband and wife cannot be accused of the same crime.

1670
01:29:20,920 --> 01:29:21,320
Right.

1671
01:29:21,560 --> 01:29:22,120
That's great.

1672
01:29:22,200 --> 01:29:27,490
I love yeah which is a really really um and so it's actually it's so it's a mix-up with um

1673
01:29:27,490 --> 01:29:30,450
uh a legal term called spousal testimonial privilege.

1674
01:29:31,090 --> 01:29:35,650
So it's where uh a husband cannot be forced to testify against his wife, right?

1675
01:29:35,810 --> 01:29:39,970
Which is sort of temptingly similar to a husband and wife cannot be accused of the same

1676
01:29:39,970 --> 01:29:44,690
crime, but uh very, very different and very costly to make that mistake.

1677
01:29:44,930 --> 01:29:49,620
Um what but what's interesting is that even if if you have never heard of spousal

1678
01:29:49,620 --> 01:29:54,420
testimonial privilege, you can you're you'd still be on solid ground in inferring that the

1679
01:29:54,660 --> 01:29:56,660
the idiotic lawyer was mixed up about something.

1680
01:29:56,900 --> 01:29:56,980
Yeah.

1681
01:29:57,140 --> 01:30:01,940
And you could just appreciate the absurdity of him having this uh ridiculous belief.

1682
01:30:02,340 --> 01:30:07,380
So you don't always need to know exactly what was mixed up with what in order to find the

1683
01:30:07,380 --> 01:30:09,140
absurdity humorous.

1684
01:30:09,380 --> 01:30:09,780
Right.

1685
01:30:10,020 --> 01:30:12,950
Um and so that's that's the idea there.

1686
01:30:13,110 --> 01:30:18,870
Um and my favorite example of absurdity um is from the movie uh naked gun, two and a

1687
01:30:18,870 --> 01:30:19,270
half.

1688
01:30:19,350 --> 01:30:19,590
Okay.

1689
01:30:19,750 --> 01:30:23,030
Uh uh and the title two and a half is itself a kind of absurdity.

1690
01:30:23,110 --> 01:30:25,430
It's like a kind of mix up about how sequel numbers work.

1691
01:30:25,750 --> 01:30:28,470
Like you can't you can't have half of a sequel.

1692
01:30:29,510 --> 01:30:34,860
Um and uh what what's great is that um so it's the opening m credits, and usually the the

1693
01:30:34,860 --> 01:30:37,180
opening credits, the purpose of it is just you know set the tone.

1694
01:30:37,340 --> 01:30:37,420
Right.

1695
01:30:37,660 --> 01:30:40,940
And you know, it starts with like he's driving down the streets and in his police car, and

1696
01:30:40,940 --> 01:30:45,420
there's like jazzy music play playing, and it's like it's setting the tone for a for a noir

1697
01:30:45,740 --> 01:30:45,980
film.

1698
01:30:46,220 --> 01:30:46,460
Right.

1699
01:30:46,540 --> 01:30:52,540
Um and then uh the montage transitions to him uh in his police car driving through a

1700
01:30:52,540 --> 01:30:57,370
bullfighting arena and then bumping into a series of bumper cars and then driving down a

1701
01:30:57,370 --> 01:30:59,210
bowling lane and knocking down the pins.

1702
01:30:59,450 --> 01:31:02,970
And then it concludes with him emerging from a woman's birth canal.

1703
01:31:03,210 --> 01:31:03,850
Right.

1704
01:31:05,370 --> 01:31:10,730
And you you know that like some something is deeply mixed up here.

1705
01:31:11,450 --> 01:31:12,410
They've mixed a lot of things.

1706
01:31:12,490 --> 01:31:12,570
Yeah.

1707
01:31:12,970 --> 01:31:14,730
There's some kind of deep confusion happening.

1708
01:31:14,890 --> 01:31:17,540
Maybe it's about you know the purpose of an opening credit sequence.

1709
01:31:17,860 --> 01:31:22,260
Maybe they're confused about what kind of genre noir is, or where police cars are permitted

1710
01:31:22,260 --> 01:31:24,980
to drive, or how large police cars are, or where they come from.

1711
01:31:25,060 --> 01:31:25,220
Right.

1712
01:31:25,380 --> 01:31:27,140
Like there's there's some deep confusion here.

1713
01:31:27,220 --> 01:31:31,620
You don't need to know necessarily exactly right the source of the confusion to to just to

1714
01:31:31,620 --> 01:31:32,740
get that it's funny and to laugh.

1715
01:31:32,980 --> 01:31:36,020
Yeah, like the Monty Python silly walk would be another example.

1716
01:31:36,180 --> 01:31:37,380
Like it's just absurd.

1717
01:31:37,540 --> 01:31:40,180
I wonder if that's like a category for like there's so much going on.

1718
01:31:40,260 --> 01:31:41,300
I mean, maybe this is what you're saying.

1719
01:31:41,380 --> 01:31:45,810
Like, there's so much going on here that it's this category of like it's overdetermined

1720
01:31:45,810 --> 01:31:47,410
what mix-ups are happening.

1721
01:31:47,730 --> 01:31:48,050
Yeah.

1722
01:31:48,210 --> 01:31:48,370
Right.

1723
01:31:48,610 --> 01:31:49,010
Totally.

1724
01:31:49,250 --> 01:31:49,410
Yeah.

1725
01:31:49,570 --> 01:31:49,890
Yeah.

1726
01:31:50,130 --> 01:31:51,010
Um interesting.

1727
01:31:51,170 --> 01:31:54,450
Um really quickly, so why does some humor a not age well?

1728
01:31:54,530 --> 01:31:59,490
So like old comedy from like the 60s or 70s about race or gender stuff.

1729
01:31:59,730 --> 01:32:02,610
Um, you know, what what's up with that?

1730
01:32:03,170 --> 01:32:03,490
Yeah.

1731
01:32:03,650 --> 01:32:09,570
So um if if humor is about coordination games and mix-ups, um, and culture

1732
01:32:09,570 --> 01:32:14,840
itself uh is just a huge number of coordination games and and equilibria that we have

1733
01:32:14,840 --> 01:32:20,600
coordinated on, well then uh comedy is going to be culturally relative, right?

1734
01:32:21,240 --> 01:32:25,720
What w what counts as a mix-up in one culture is going to be different from what counts as

1735
01:32:25,720 --> 01:32:27,320
a mix-up in another culture.

1736
01:32:27,560 --> 01:32:31,640
What counts as a mix-up in one language is obviously going to be to be different from a

1737
01:32:31,640 --> 01:32:32,520
mix-up in another language.

1738
01:32:32,680 --> 01:32:35,690
And we use different sounds to mean different things, there they're going to be different

1739
01:32:35,690 --> 01:32:37,930
sources of confusion, different sources of mix ups.

1740
01:32:38,010 --> 01:32:38,170
Right.

1741
01:32:38,250 --> 01:32:42,170
If the grammar is different, you might have different, you know, hot spots of confusion

1742
01:32:42,170 --> 01:32:44,810
where you misinterpret the meaning of w of what a person says.

1743
01:32:44,970 --> 01:32:50,650
So linguistically you're going to have different uh y cultural differences, um uh in terms

1744
01:32:50,650 --> 01:32:54,650
of like social status and the status games that are being played in the culture and what is

1745
01:32:54,730 --> 01:32:58,320
what is normative, what is um permitted, what is forbidden.

1746
01:32:58,480 --> 01:33:00,160
These things are gonna vary culturally.

1747
01:33:00,320 --> 01:33:03,040
And you know, the the the politics are gonna vary culturally.

1748
01:33:03,120 --> 01:33:08,800
So what what stuff have we agreed to take seriously and to and to mark as like a no-mirth

1749
01:33:09,040 --> 01:33:09,440
zone?

1750
01:33:09,600 --> 01:33:13,440
And what stuff are we uh permitted to laugh about and to joke about?

1751
01:33:13,600 --> 01:33:17,520
Like that is also culturally relative, and that depends on which political battles are

1752
01:33:17,520 --> 01:33:19,440
being won by by which side.

1753
01:33:19,600 --> 01:33:24,730
Uh and so I don't think it's a coincidence that comedy ages more poorly than drama, because

1754
01:33:24,730 --> 01:33:26,810
drama deals with just basic human conflicts.

1755
01:33:26,890 --> 01:33:32,810
And you know, you can read a a play, you know, from you know uh uh ancient Athens and and

1756
01:33:32,810 --> 01:33:37,610
still you know feel moved by the plight of of you know the the conflicts that are being

1757
01:33:37,610 --> 01:33:38,330
experienced.

1758
01:33:38,490 --> 01:33:44,330
Um but you know a comedy from you know 20 years ago will make you cringe because

1759
01:33:44,330 --> 01:33:46,650
culture culture changes so quickly.

1760
01:33:47,380 --> 01:33:52,820
And so I do think the theory predicts a lot of cultural variation in what is considered

1761
01:33:52,820 --> 01:33:53,140
funny.

1762
01:33:53,220 --> 01:33:56,660
And it predicts that that comedy will age poorly in some cases.

1763
01:33:56,820 --> 01:33:59,940
There are some universal aspects of comedy that you might be able to predict.

1764
01:34:00,020 --> 01:34:05,860
Like every culture has to has different social roles relating to gender and age.

1765
01:34:10,180 --> 01:34:12,660
That's a mix-up that's probably going to be culturally universal.

1766
01:34:12,900 --> 01:34:13,140
Right.

1767
01:34:13,550 --> 01:34:14,350
Or potty humor.

1768
01:34:14,430 --> 01:34:15,150
Yes, catalogs.

1769
01:34:15,390 --> 01:34:15,790
Potty humor.

1770
01:34:15,870 --> 01:34:15,950
Yeah.

1771
01:34:16,110 --> 01:34:16,670
Or sexual.

1772
01:34:17,390 --> 01:34:19,710
Yeah, like kind of discuss like the universal things.

1773
01:34:19,790 --> 01:34:24,910
But the so like what you're saying is like so like the idea that like, you know, the doctor

1774
01:34:24,910 --> 01:34:26,030
is a woman, right?

1775
01:34:26,110 --> 01:34:27,230
Like that's funny, right?

1776
01:34:27,310 --> 01:34:28,830
Like, no, that's not funny at all.

1777
01:34:29,070 --> 01:34:33,630
And so the idea that like somebody thinks that that's funny because it's a mix-up or it

1778
01:34:33,630 --> 01:34:38,920
violates our expectations, it's it's depending on uh a set of

1779
01:34:38,920 --> 01:34:43,320
expectations that we no longer hold, or if somebody held it, we'd be like, dude, that

1780
01:34:43,320 --> 01:34:45,160
person's like an asshole.

1781
01:34:45,400 --> 01:34:48,280
Not not that like that, oh, we're all in on this joke, right?

1782
01:34:48,360 --> 01:34:49,400
So yeah, exactly.

1783
01:34:49,800 --> 01:34:50,040
Okay.

1784
01:34:50,200 --> 01:34:50,520
Yeah.

1785
01:34:50,760 --> 01:34:51,560
Interesting.

1786
01:34:51,800 --> 01:34:54,840
Um and then uh what's up with slapstick?

1787
01:34:55,320 --> 01:34:55,720
Hmm.

1788
01:34:55,960 --> 01:34:57,720
This one I have kind of a hard time with.

1789
01:34:58,440 --> 01:35:00,600
I think I understand most of it.

1790
01:35:00,920 --> 01:35:06,690
Um so uh part of it is just you know, a lot of uh uh physical

1791
01:35:06,690 --> 01:35:09,890
slapstick involves failures of two people coordinating.

1792
01:35:10,210 --> 01:35:12,690
Right, like in the hall bumping into each other or I mean the hall, yeah.

1793
01:35:12,770 --> 01:35:15,890
That's that would be an example of of slapstick where where there's like a physical

1794
01:35:15,890 --> 01:35:17,330
coordination failure between two people.

1795
01:35:17,570 --> 01:35:20,850
You can think of another example where like if we're passing a basketball back and forth

1796
01:35:21,010 --> 01:35:23,890
and you know, we've coordinated on the fact that we're both looking at each other, then I

1797
01:35:23,890 --> 01:35:27,170
get distracted by like a pretty woman in the bleachers and this hall hits me in the face.

1798
01:35:27,330 --> 01:35:28,210
And hits me in the face.

1799
01:35:28,290 --> 01:35:31,820
Like that would be a slapstick where we've failed to coordinate on what we're supposed to

1800
01:35:31,820 --> 01:35:32,780
be doing when we're passing the ball.

1801
01:35:33,180 --> 01:35:34,140
Especially if you don't get hurt.

1802
01:35:34,300 --> 01:35:37,100
Like I think if you like sprouted sp sprouted blood.

1803
01:35:37,500 --> 01:35:40,780
I mean, I think there's like the extreme version where it's like the Monty Python holy

1804
01:35:40,780 --> 01:35:45,420
grail thing where like blood is spurting, but it's sort of due to like something like a

1805
01:35:45,420 --> 01:35:46,300
rabbit, you know.

1806
01:35:46,460 --> 01:35:47,020
I don't know.

1807
01:35:47,100 --> 01:35:48,860
But but anyway, I'll let yeah, yeah.

1808
01:35:49,100 --> 01:35:49,260
Yeah.

1809
01:35:49,340 --> 01:35:50,940
So there's like another disconnect.

1810
01:35:51,260 --> 01:35:56,940
There's sort of a disconnect between um the infliction and the um

1811
01:35:57,340 --> 01:36:02,830
uh like what you would expect, you know, like your slapstick where so yeah, well sorry, I'm

1812
01:36:03,070 --> 01:36:06,830
kind of getting ahead, but like, you know, for slapstick is the idea that like it's a mix

1813
01:36:06,910 --> 01:36:10,350
up like you think the person might be hurt but they're really not, or they make a mistake

1814
01:36:10,350 --> 01:36:11,870
physically but they're still okay.

1815
01:36:12,030 --> 01:36:13,790
So it's sort of a lower class thing.

1816
01:36:13,870 --> 01:36:14,030
Yeah.

1817
01:36:14,430 --> 01:36:18,190
I think that's that's my hunch about what's going on with slapstick.

1818
01:36:18,270 --> 01:36:24,160
I my hunch is that the funniest kinds of slapstick will be things that uh

1819
01:36:24,480 --> 01:36:27,520
really look like the person got seriously hurt.

1820
01:36:27,600 --> 01:36:32,000
And like you're really tempted to think that they like really hurt themselves, but then you

1821
01:36:32,000 --> 01:36:33,280
quickly realize that they're okay.

1822
01:36:33,520 --> 01:36:33,840
Right.

1823
01:36:34,080 --> 01:36:34,320
Right.

1824
01:36:34,400 --> 01:36:38,320
And so there's like this this really strong potential for a mix up of you know

1825
01:36:38,480 --> 01:36:43,040
overestimating how seriously the person was injured and like rushing in to like, you know,

1826
01:36:43,200 --> 01:36:47,120
saw off their their their leg or whatever to amputate and they're they're totally fine.

1827
01:36:47,360 --> 01:36:51,450
Like so that's a core so every time someone gets injured, we all have to coordinate on how

1828
01:36:51,450 --> 01:36:55,450
seriously to take this injury and like how severe the injury was, what its magnitude was,

1829
01:36:55,610 --> 01:36:56,250
what we should do.

1830
01:36:56,410 --> 01:37:00,570
And there you could imagine coordination failures surrounding how seriously to take an

1831
01:37:00,570 --> 01:37:02,490
injury or how badly someone was injured.

1832
01:37:02,810 --> 01:37:08,810
So if someone suddenly drops to the floor very quickly, in most cases, that's that's

1833
01:37:08,810 --> 01:37:10,010
because something terrible has happened.

1834
01:37:10,170 --> 01:37:14,260
Maybe they got maybe they got shot, maybe they they got hit by a projectile, maybe they had

1835
01:37:14,260 --> 01:37:15,780
like a heart attack, whatever.

1836
01:37:15,860 --> 01:37:17,860
Like m in most cases it's gonna be really bad.

1837
01:37:18,180 --> 01:37:20,340
But if you then you see that it was just a banana peel.

1838
01:37:20,500 --> 01:37:20,580
Right.

1839
01:37:20,820 --> 01:37:24,580
Then all of a sudden the mix-up is resolved and you can have a good laugh about it.

1840
01:37:24,660 --> 01:37:25,300
They're okay.

1841
01:37:26,500 --> 01:37:28,980
And so that that might be what's going on.

1842
01:37:29,140 --> 01:37:29,300
Yeah.

1843
01:37:29,540 --> 01:37:34,740
Another part of it was alluded to in um how the mind works, Stephen Pinker's book, where it

1844
01:37:34,740 --> 01:37:39,810
might be that we're um we're coordinating on like what categories to to place people in,

1845
01:37:40,210 --> 01:37:46,130
and then we could either think of a person as like a locus of thoughts and feelings and and

1846
01:37:46,130 --> 01:37:48,290
desires, like a locus of consciousness.

1847
01:37:48,530 --> 01:37:48,610
Right.

1848
01:37:48,850 --> 01:37:51,410
Um we could we could use our our theory of mind system.

1849
01:37:51,570 --> 01:37:55,730
We've talked about theory of mind a lot, or we could just see them as a hunk of matter

1850
01:37:55,730 --> 01:37:57,010
obeying the laws of physics.

1851
01:37:57,250 --> 01:37:57,410
Right.

1852
01:37:57,730 --> 01:37:58,050
Right.

1853
01:37:58,450 --> 01:38:04,420
Um and it may be that um when a person like slips on a banana peel, the the

1854
01:38:04,420 --> 01:38:09,060
frame shifts from viewing them as a locus of of consciousness to a physical object, to a

1855
01:38:09,300 --> 01:38:10,020
hunk of matter.

1856
01:38:10,100 --> 01:38:10,260
Right.

1857
01:38:10,420 --> 01:38:12,100
You know, that that's obeying the law of gravity.

1858
01:38:12,340 --> 01:38:17,540
Yeah, and the switch between those two frames could elicit a kind of you know mix up uh

1859
01:38:17,540 --> 01:38:17,940
detection.

1860
01:38:18,500 --> 01:38:18,820
Exactly.

1861
01:38:18,980 --> 01:38:22,420
So if your wife walked in right now and started treating you like a bookshelf where she

1862
01:38:22,420 --> 01:38:26,820
just started piling books on you and we were still trying to still have a conversation, it

1863
01:38:26,820 --> 01:38:31,730
would kind of be funny because this juxtaposition of like treating you like a a a device to

1864
01:38:31,730 --> 01:38:37,010
hold books versus you know a sentient talking human being.

1865
01:38:37,090 --> 01:38:37,410
Yeah.

1866
01:38:37,890 --> 01:38:38,050
Right.

1867
01:38:38,210 --> 01:38:41,810
Or if I'm on the on the floor like you know uh wiping something up and she puts her feet on

1868
01:38:41,810 --> 01:38:42,930
me like I'm a foot rest, you know.

1869
01:38:43,330 --> 01:38:43,650
Exactly.

1870
01:38:43,730 --> 01:38:43,810
Yes.

1871
01:38:44,050 --> 01:38:44,370
Uh yeah.

1872
01:38:44,610 --> 01:38:48,770
So there there's humor there about like how how what frame how we should treat a person as

1873
01:38:48,770 --> 01:38:51,410
like a physical object or you know, a a human being.

1874
01:38:51,570 --> 01:38:54,400
Um and so that could also be what's what's going on.

1875
01:38:54,560 --> 01:38:56,320
So I think there could be multiple things going on.

1876
01:38:56,560 --> 01:38:56,640
Yeah.

1877
01:38:56,720 --> 01:39:00,320
And there's also the Looney Tune trope of sort of like, you know, you're like, there's like

1878
01:39:00,320 --> 01:39:05,520
really aggressive violence, but then it's sort of like silly consequences, right?

1879
01:39:05,600 --> 01:39:09,840
So it's sort of like you hit them with a you hit somebody over the head with like a mallet,

1880
01:39:10,080 --> 01:39:13,680
and there's just like little like a bump comes up and like little birds.

1881
01:39:13,890 --> 01:39:14,130
Right.

1882
01:39:14,370 --> 01:39:15,970
And the person just shakes it off.

1883
01:39:16,290 --> 01:39:21,010
And I don't know if that's like funny, or maybe it like, you know, but there's this um,

1884
01:39:21,490 --> 01:39:27,010
yeah, it's sort of funny, or like at least it's sort of treated as like puerile or like

1885
01:39:27,170 --> 01:39:29,010
infantile or young humor.

1886
01:39:29,170 --> 01:39:34,610
Like there's an old Simpsons episode where they make um films, and like I think

1887
01:39:34,610 --> 01:39:38,210
Krusty the Clown, who's sort of you know the clown who's supposed to he makes like a really

1888
01:39:38,210 --> 01:39:44,180
heartfelt movie, like short film, and then it gets edited over to throwing a football

1889
01:39:44,180 --> 01:39:45,780
into somebody's groin, you know?

1890
01:39:46,020 --> 01:39:48,100
And everybody's laughing about the football.

1891
01:39:48,180 --> 01:39:51,460
And it's sort of this take on uh people's sense of humor.

1892
01:39:51,540 --> 01:39:54,180
People it's just the lowest common lowbrow humor, right?

1893
01:39:54,260 --> 01:39:56,100
Like slaps the lowbrow.

1894
01:39:56,340 --> 01:39:58,740
Um and totally uh yeah.

1895
01:39:58,980 --> 01:39:59,380
I don't know.

1896
01:39:59,460 --> 01:40:00,260
What do you think about that?

1897
01:40:00,340 --> 01:40:01,700
Or like Yeah, it's interesting.

1898
01:40:01,780 --> 01:40:06,340
I mean, it reminds me of uh the the joke from Idiocracy, which is a really funny movie I

1899
01:40:06,340 --> 01:40:07,060
recommend.

1900
01:40:07,220 --> 01:40:11,530
Um, where uh you know it's a future dystopia where everyone's stupid.

1901
01:40:11,690 --> 01:40:17,050
Um and like the highest grossing movie is called ass and it's just

1902
01:40:18,650 --> 01:40:21,930
and it's just two hours of an ass that occasionally farts.

1903
01:40:23,850 --> 01:40:28,570
And like and and and like the best the like most popular show is called Ow My Balls.

1904
01:40:29,060 --> 01:40:29,460
Exactly.

1905
01:40:29,620 --> 01:40:32,340
No, that's exactly right, exactly.

1906
01:40:32,420 --> 01:40:33,780
And that's just like a tagline.

1907
01:40:33,940 --> 01:40:34,180
Yeah.

1908
01:40:34,340 --> 01:40:34,980
Yeah.

1909
01:40:35,380 --> 01:40:36,980
You just go through your day.

1910
01:40:37,380 --> 01:40:38,020
Yes.

1911
01:40:38,980 --> 01:40:39,860
But it is funny.

1912
01:40:39,940 --> 01:40:40,340
Like, right?

1913
01:40:40,500 --> 01:40:40,900
It is funny.

1914
01:40:41,540 --> 01:40:43,380
Farts are funny, getting hit in the balls is funny.

1915
01:40:43,460 --> 01:40:43,540
Yeah.

1916
01:40:43,700 --> 01:40:46,500
And it's also like there's but it's also funny to find that funny.

1917
01:40:46,580 --> 01:40:49,460
It's like you're mixed up about what you what you should be laughing at, what you should be

1918
01:40:49,460 --> 01:40:49,940
finding funny.

1919
01:40:50,260 --> 01:40:50,420
You know?

1920
01:40:50,580 --> 01:40:52,550
So there's like a mix up layered on top of it.

1921
01:40:52,790 --> 01:40:53,030
Yes.

1922
01:40:53,430 --> 01:40:54,230
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

1923
01:40:54,390 --> 01:40:54,550
Yeah.

1924
01:40:54,950 --> 01:40:58,710
It's very human to find uh find slapstick hu humor.

1925
01:40:58,870 --> 01:41:04,470
But I do think your theory explains it more than, for example, like I don't think the um

1926
01:41:04,630 --> 01:41:08,950
the cryptic theory of humor would explain the slapstick as well.

1927
01:41:09,190 --> 01:41:12,950
Um like I think the mix-up is better um at doing that.

1928
01:41:13,190 --> 01:41:13,430
Yeah.

1929
01:41:13,640 --> 01:41:13,880
Yeah.

1930
01:41:14,120 --> 01:41:14,360
Yeah.

1931
01:41:14,520 --> 01:41:17,160
And and part of it might be with you know the comic timing element.

1932
01:41:17,400 --> 01:41:21,880
So like um, you know, just moving your body in a rhythmically funny way.

1933
01:41:22,040 --> 01:41:26,040
You know, it could just be it's subtly violating people's expectations about how your body

1934
01:41:26,040 --> 01:41:28,840
should be moving or how you should be gesturing.

1935
01:41:29,080 --> 01:41:31,480
Um there there could be mix-ups surrounding that.

1936
01:41:31,560 --> 01:41:34,680
Um I'm uh or even just like music or dancing.

1937
01:41:34,760 --> 01:41:36,290
Like dancing is a coordination game.

1938
01:41:36,370 --> 01:41:39,570
You have to coordinate with the musicians to dance on the beat that they're they're setting

1939
01:41:39,570 --> 01:41:39,730
for you.

1940
01:41:40,130 --> 01:41:41,490
So Elaine Bennis, yeah, exactly.

1941
01:41:41,730 --> 01:41:45,490
Yes, the Elaine Bennis, yeah, spasmodic dancing is very funny.

1942
01:41:45,810 --> 01:41:46,610
It's really funny.

1943
01:41:46,770 --> 01:41:47,010
Yeah.

1944
01:41:47,410 --> 01:41:48,530
She's like almost dancing.

1945
01:41:48,610 --> 01:41:52,370
She's like sort of doing some of the things that dancing entails.

1946
01:41:53,170 --> 01:41:57,090
But uh but getting some things wildly wrong, and it's very funny.

1947
01:41:57,330 --> 01:41:57,570
Yes.

1948
01:41:57,650 --> 01:42:01,410
I have to say I'm kind of like reluctant to convey this, but I think I should because I

1949
01:42:01,500 --> 01:42:05,980
remember I was once sitting in a talk of somebody who was conveying the cryptic theory of

1950
01:42:05,980 --> 01:42:06,620
humor.

1951
01:42:06,940 --> 01:42:11,980
And somebody like very like earnestly and like seriously was like, you know, well, what

1952
01:42:11,980 --> 01:42:13,340
about slapstick?

1953
01:42:13,900 --> 01:42:17,820
And, you know, the person thought about it for a second and they were like, That's not

1954
01:42:17,820 --> 01:42:18,460
humor.

1955
01:42:20,220 --> 01:42:22,940
And and we thought that was kind of actually a funny response, right?

1956
01:42:23,020 --> 01:42:26,620
Like at least they were, but like the the idea was like, you know, that's slapstick isn't

1957
01:42:26,620 --> 01:42:26,860
funny.

1958
01:42:26,940 --> 01:42:27,820
I mean, so yeah.

1959
01:42:28,470 --> 01:42:29,510
That is itself funny.

1960
01:42:29,990 --> 01:42:30,390
Exactly.

1961
01:42:30,470 --> 01:42:30,630
Yes.

1962
01:42:30,790 --> 01:42:31,030
Exactly.

1963
01:42:31,430 --> 01:42:32,310
The overconfidence.

1964
01:42:32,470 --> 01:42:32,630
Yes.

1965
01:42:34,150 --> 01:42:34,550
But um.

1966
01:42:35,270 --> 01:42:37,430
But anyway, well, David, uh, thank you.

1967
01:42:37,510 --> 01:42:40,070
I hope this was a uh um a mirth.

1968
01:42:40,390 --> 01:42:40,950
I feel better.

1969
01:42:41,030 --> 01:42:42,950
I feel better after the conversation.

1970
01:42:43,430 --> 01:42:48,150
Whatever whatever cocktail of hormones are caused by talking about or laughing a bit, this

1971
01:42:48,230 --> 01:42:48,790
this was great.

1972
01:42:48,950 --> 01:42:49,190
Yeah.

1973
01:42:49,430 --> 01:42:49,830
Totally.

1974
01:42:50,070 --> 01:42:50,310
Thank you.

1975
01:42:50,630 --> 01:42:50,950
Awesome.

1976
01:42:51,030 --> 01:42:51,110
Yeah.

1977
01:42:51,270 --> 01:42:51,990
I had a great time.

1978
01:42:52,310 --> 01:42:52,950
Uh yeah.

1979
01:42:53,110 --> 01:42:56,390
So um stay tuned for the next um

1980
01:42:58,240 --> 01:42:59,920
non-funny episode.

1981
01:43:00,320 --> 01:43:00,560
Yeah.

1982
01:43:00,720 --> 01:43:03,120
Or hopefully we'll be a little bit funny at at times.

1983
01:43:03,280 --> 01:43:05,200
We'll we'll maybe make some bad dad jokes.

1984
01:43:05,520 --> 01:43:11,520
Or we can just talk about uh I'm not even gonna talk about how my balls that's that's we'll

1985
01:43:11,520 --> 01:43:12,160
cut that out.

1986
01:43:12,320 --> 01:43:15,120
So all right David, thank you so much.

1987
01:43:15,360 --> 01:43:15,840
That was great.

1988
01:43:16,240 --> 01:43:16,800
Yep.

1989
01:43:17,120 --> 01:43:17,440
Okay.

1990
01:43:18,640 --> 01:43:24,480
But uh David, we just finished up uh an episode where um you talked for a while so

1991
01:43:24,480 --> 01:43:28,850
I'll give you a break and say that if you're listening, please subscribe.

1992
01:43:29,010 --> 01:43:30,450
Please leave a review.

1993
01:43:30,930 --> 01:43:32,530
We may start reading our reviews.

1994
01:43:32,690 --> 01:43:37,810
Also, if you have a suggestion about what we should talk about or who we should have on,

1995
01:43:38,770 --> 01:43:41,330
we will either take that advice or not.

1996
01:43:41,730 --> 01:43:47,620
But you know, it it only hurts if you only get uh you

1997
01:43:47,620 --> 01:43:50,820
get zero percent of the things you don't ask for.

1998
01:43:50,980 --> 01:43:55,220
I don't know if that's the correct way to say that, but that is a coherent way to say it.

1999
01:43:55,380 --> 01:43:57,060
Is there a different way to say that?

2000
01:43:57,860 --> 01:44:01,620
Um ask not and ye shall not receive.

2001
01:44:02,100 --> 01:44:03,700
Uh that was a double negative.

2002
01:44:03,860 --> 01:44:09,850
But isn't there something like you only get you only get you know, you you get

2003
01:44:10,250 --> 01:44:12,730
you don't you you miss the shots you don't take.

2004
01:44:13,450 --> 01:44:14,010
Yeah.

2005
01:44:14,250 --> 01:44:20,170
I hate qu can I just say like there's just this whole category of like really tepid vanilla

2006
01:44:20,170 --> 01:44:21,690
quotes I just hate.

2007
01:44:22,170 --> 01:44:22,730
Uh yeah.

2008
01:44:22,810 --> 01:44:26,410
We should do an episode on quotes where we just read quotes from quotes.com.

2009
01:44:26,730 --> 01:44:26,890
Yeah.

2010
01:44:27,130 --> 01:44:29,850
I do just talk about how why is it so lame?

2011
01:44:29,930 --> 01:44:32,010
I think the evolutionary psychology of quotes.

2012
01:44:32,090 --> 01:44:33,050
Maybe we should have a whole episode.

2013
01:44:33,370 --> 01:44:34,170
Yeah, that's great.

2014
01:44:34,480 --> 01:44:40,160
Why did we why did our cavemen ancestors evolve to take quotes from other people?

2015
01:44:40,480 --> 01:44:46,160
Well, because if you if you're painting on a cave, you uh it's takes a really long time to

2016
01:44:46,160 --> 01:44:52,160
write out something longer, but a short quote gives you enough time to go forage and hunt

2017
01:44:52,320 --> 01:44:58,160
and you know make sure you're you're not away so long and uh and

2018
01:44:58,160 --> 01:45:01,520
quotes are sexy and you might get some reproductive success.

2019
01:45:01,990 --> 01:45:02,550
Nailed it.

2020
01:45:02,630 --> 01:45:02,710
Yeah.

2021
01:45:03,030 --> 01:45:03,110
Science.

2022
01:45:03,430 --> 01:45:09,430
And you can also sharpen your stick for poking at critters uh by

2023
01:45:09,590 --> 01:45:12,790
you know the charcoal you're writing your poem with.

2024
01:45:13,750 --> 01:45:14,310
Beautiful.

2025
01:45:14,550 --> 01:45:14,790
Yeah.

2026
01:45:14,950 --> 01:45:15,270
Thanks.

2027
01:45:15,350 --> 01:45:16,870
I'll be here all day.

2028
01:45:17,030 --> 01:45:19,430
Um yeah, and yeah.

2029
01:45:21,110 --> 01:45:21,590
Good.

2030
01:45:21,750 --> 01:45:22,150
All right.

2031
01:45:22,390 --> 01:45:26,390
Well, anyway, on that on that note, um uh we're doing good ebb psych.

2032
01:45:26,710 --> 01:45:29,190
And that was a joke in case nobody's clear about it.

2033
01:45:29,300 --> 01:45:30,180
we were kidding.

2034
01:45:30,500 --> 01:45:32,900
That's not good at evolutionary psychology.

2035
01:45:33,220 --> 01:45:34,100
Yeah, yeah.

2036
01:45:34,340 --> 01:45:36,980
So although seriously, I would love to shoot on some quotes.

2037
01:45:37,220 --> 01:45:37,620
Okay, sure.

2038
01:45:37,700 --> 01:45:38,420
Well let's do that.

2039
01:45:38,580 --> 01:45:38,900
Okay.

2040
01:45:39,060 --> 01:45:39,460
All right.

2041
01:45:39,700 --> 01:45:40,660
Thanks for listening.

2042
01:45:40,740 --> 01:45:43,700
Uh we'll have the next episode next Tuesday.