The Evolutionary Psychology of Humor
2025-09-02 12:00:00.000 +00:00

Um, do you want to start or do you want me to start? Uh why don't you start? Okay. Uh let me think. You for did you forget your lines? Uh no, I'm trying to think of uh you know, there's one time there was one time in one of our short intro introductions where uh you thought there was a long space, and then I was kind of like quietly said it, and you're like, oh that's a different vibe, sort of like, you know, and I like it was because I literally forgot what I was gonna say and I didn't admit, but I like couldn't I couldn't remember my line for the short intro. So you couldn't remember the line I'm Dave Petrozowski. No, I think it I think it was I think it was um by evolutionary by actual evolution I

couldn't remember the line by actual evolutionary psychologists. So I sort of you were like so by by evolutionary psychology actuaries. Yeah. No, no, no. So it was actual evolutionary psychology and then dot dot dot. And I couldn't think of by actual evolutionary psychologists. So so I just waited longer and longer. And then I kind of quietly said it because I like remembered it, but didn't want to say that I had forgotten. Um I don't think we ever used that take, but but maybe we can use this. So Okay. Well uh without further ado, this is Evolutionary Psychology, the podcast. Where I will remember to say, um well yeah, you can you can say that part. Actual evolutionary psychology. By actual evolutionary psychologists.

I can't believe that. We nailed it. I couldn't think of that. Nailed it. So yeah. Excellent. Okay. So David, today we have uh a special guest, David Pinsoff. Have you ever heard of him? I've never heard of him. I don't know who he is. Well it's about the the thing that that was was something called a joke. And what he's gonna talk about is how humor is sort of about making mistakes and why um that was sort of funny. Okay. Well, I hope he explains why that was funny and gets to the the bottom of it because uh I find it pretty puzzling. Yeah, it may not have been that funny, but um it was medium. Ma maybe he'll explain why it wasn't funny. Why it wasn't funny, exactly. Okay. Okay. Well, uh, but no, for real, this is uh a really cool episode where David explains his um in

in still a hot not even hot off the presses, like preprint version of the theory of humor, which I think is really, uh, really amazing. Um, and I I certainly feel like I understand humor uh post uh digested by David. Um, you know, the world is a different place for me now that I've heard this theory of humor than before. So um I hope everybody um finds it useful and informative and slightly funny. Yeah, I'm really excited about it. It's lovely to hear you s hear you say that, Dave. That's high praise. Uh yeah. So enjoy uh the mix up theory of humor. Sounds good. You can pay me uh once the uh music starts. David, um today it's you and I and not uh anyone else. I know it's been a long time since we've had one of these.

I know. And so I just can hear everybody hanging up their phone. Well, I guess you don't hear it when people turn their so um if you're looking for a guest, um, we're sorry to disappoint you. We can just we should just cut all of this because it's a terrible way to start. So today we're gonna talk about um Today we're going to talk about humor. And uh and usually when there's a talk about humor, I'm always expecting my first thought is like this talk better be funny. Um or uh and typically they're not. Um, but you did you've been presenting on this. So can you tell me a little bit? So you have this idea about humor, and we'll talk about it in a second. Um number one, uh, what is the what's the how did this uh

tell me of the the growth of this idea and where did it come from and is this something you thought of like you know a year ago or 10 years ago um and and then we'll talk about what the idea is and then we'll um and then maybe I would love to sort of talk about how um I think this idea explains a lot of humor that yeah uh I had sort of had a running tally. I think for me at least humor was sort of one of the big question marks. And I feel like your your theory nails it. And then I would love to hear people's thoughts, you know, after we post this about things that might not cover, just to really push on this idea. But I really think um to be um, you know um biased but i really do think this is probably the best idea about what humor is that i've heard so but yeah how

did you um uh how did you um birth this idea um well uh like you i was frustrated that there was not a good evolutionary theory of humor uh when i see a a juicy Darwinian mystery, something that's unexplained, something that uh when people ask me about, I just draw a blank. Like that really, really motivates me. Um, so I had always known that like this was the big uh blank, the big gap in our evolutionary understanding of human nature that had been unfilled for a very long time. Uh, and because I'm kind of an ambitious person, I had always just wanted, I was just really hungry to solve this thing, uh, to figure it out. Um, and I wasn't actively working on it. It was like always in the back of my mind like, what is going on with this huge part of the

human experience? There's there's gotta be a good Darwinian explanation for this. I just can't figure it out. And so uh Can I interrupt really quick? Yeah, yeah. I think just for everybody listening, and not to sort of like pull rank at all, but like I think you in the Venn diagram of people to figure out at least the next best idea, you are both, in a sense, you are a professional comedian and a professional evolutionary psychologist. I mean you you literally are a professional in both of these domains. It's true. It was a great Venn diagram of both of my interests. So I I work on comedy, I work for Cards Against Humanity. I do you know data science, like literally figuring out which combinations of cards uh make

people laugh. Right. Um and I've you know analyzed that data and uh and so I'm steeped in comedy both in my professional and in my academic life. Right. And so that was another impetus for really you know, goading me to figure this out. Like if if I can't figure this out, then this will be a good idea. Yeah, you know, like I'm I'm the person to figure this out. Um I don't know. May maybe that's arrogant of me, but uh it's you know, so you gotta try, you know. I I at least I gave it a try. Yeah. Um actually not even that act. So it wasn't that I was like I sat down to figure it out and I found the solution. It was like I was reading something else. And that just I see yeah triggered the idea in me.

So I at the time I forget why I was just like reading about coordination games and and and common knowledge. Light reading, light reading. Yeah. Well I so I I know that's what we read. I know, yeah. Like uh light reading or sorry, heavy reading, but important reading. Um and that I think coordination games are one of the biggest, most underrated topic uh topics in evolutionary psychology. I think uh there's far uh there's not enough uh work on coordination at all. And coordination, just because I mean, obviously we've talked about it before, but it's such a simple but also sort of abstract idea. Can you just sort of clarify what coordination is? Because it's gonna be really important for this whole conversation.

So I think it'll be really good to just clarify how you think about it. Yeah. So you can f uh mathematically formalize it as um you know. Oh we just lost we just lost 10 more listeners. Okay. So all right. And we've maybe one person was like, oh yes, give it to me in mathematical formalism. Yes, I'm kidding. Okay. Uh uh no this is going to be as simple as possible. I promise you'll be able to follow it. So let's just start with like a really simple coordination game where I have two options and you have two options. And if we both pick option one, we gain a benefit. And if we both pick option two, we gain a benefit. But if we're mixed up and I go with one and you go with two, or vice versa, we pay a cost.

That's that's it. That's the simplest way of describing a coordination game. I see. So like driving on the side of the road, it doesn't matter which side of the road we drive on, as long as we are both uh, for lack of a better word, coordinated will be fine. The problem is when we we neither of us is coordinated to the point where we're both occupying the same lane going in different directions, then we're in trouble. That's right. And so in the case of driving on the same side of the road, uh you would say that there are are two different equilibria in game theory. An equilibrium is is sort of uh a an outcome where no player can deviate from the equilibrium or do something different and gain an advantage.

So it sort of stays in that stable state because no player can benefit by deviating from it. And so uh there are two equilibria with driving on one on the left side or the right side. Um coordination games sometimes have multiple equilibria, sometimes they have one equilibrium. Um it doesn't really matter. The basic most important part of it is that we both benefit by aligning our behavior in some way. And I should emphasize that it doesn't necessarily mean that we're doing the same thing. Um so if we're both talking at the same time, that's bad. You could think of that as a coordination failure. If we're both listening at the same time and sitting in awkward silence, that's also bad. So coordination.

I know that's I mean we're we're very bad. I feel very targeted. Yeah. We're very bad coordination partners. Uh but no coordination is really hard. It's it's hard to carry on a a a smooth conversation with someone. Uh and we often like subtly evaluate like how valuable this person is as a social partner based on how smooth the conversation is and how uh not awkward it is. And we can get into awkwardness later. I think awkwardness is tied in with this concept of coordination. Um yeah, I'm sure everybody has had this experience of like you just talk to somebody and then afterwards like, oh, that went really, really well, or like you're just having a conversation with somebody and then there's just awkward silence, and you're just like,

This is you know, and especially like in a dating context, that's even amplified. But I think even just regular life, it's sort of some people you just kind of you just kind of, as the kids say, you kind of vibe with, and then some people are like, What is this? Yeah. Yeah, you you can I think vibing is a way of conveying what it's like to effectively coordinate with someone for mutual benefit. Maybe we should write a paper called A Theory of Vibing, but I think that's basically it. You know, like we're mutually benefiting and just getting each other and understanding each other, and we're just working together really smoothly. There's no awkwardness, there's no confusion. I think that's ultimately what vibing is like.

You know, we're we're part of the same in-group, we get the same references and in inside jokes. Um, so that's that's coordination. And you know, so as as I said before, you know, sometimes it means, you know, doing the same thing as others, like driving on the same side of the road, but oftentimes it it's it's doing a complimentary thing. So, you know, uh talking while the other listens, listening while the other talks, leading while the other follows, following while the other leads. Uh it it doesn't matter so much that the actions are the same. What matters is that um that they produce a mutual benefit. Right. And so this is different from other kinds of games in that they're non zero sum or they're

they're positive some. So uh you cannot beat me at uh passing me in the hallway, for example. Sounds like a challenge. Yeah. You you cannot uh beat the other cars on the road by driving in the wrong lane, right? Either all the cars benefit from a safer driving environment or all the cars lose from a more dangerous driving environment. Either we both benefit from having a smooth conversation where we transmit useful information to each other, or we both lose by wasting our time and not communicating anything of value and, you know, uh and and and bungling the interaction. Right. So we're we're either winning or losing together. That's another important feature of coordination games. And the other uh really important feature of coordination games is that they often require

common knowledge. Um, so common knowledge is uh a hugely important term in game theory. Uh I'm grateful that uh the great Stephen Pinker is writing a book on common knowledge, it should be awesome. Uh, I think it's a really understudied and hugely important topic. Roughly, common knowledge in the game theoretic sense means that everyone knows that everyone knows something. So if we're going to coordinate for mutual benefit, uh, I need to know what to do in order to gain the mutual benefit, right? But I also need to know that you know what to do. Otherwise, I shouldn't do it because you might not do the same thing, right? Or do the complimentary thing. Uh, which means that um I need to know that you know that I know what to do, because then I

can't count on you to uh coordinate with me. So we basically we need to know that the other one knows, that the other one knows, and so on, what to do in order to work together and and smoothly coordinate. Right. The episode with Michael Moncrief. Uh Michael Moncrief. Hey Michael, um is uh was a lovely example of that. We're in the um east, east of the um the Berlin Wall. Um was it in Poland or something? It doesn't, the details don't really matter. But it was this radio free um Europe was on, and it was they told people to flicker their lights in this small village if they're listening and they're sort of not happy with the current regime. And all of a sudden, all these lights were flickering.

And Michael conveyed that, you know, a couple of days later was you know the beginning of the end of that uh of the iron curtain, basically. And the idea was that there were lots of people, maybe who knew other people who were not happy. Maybe they were not happy too, but it became a thing of everyone could see that everyone else could see. And so this function of sort of I know that you know that I know. It sounds jargony, but it's this difference between um understanding, as you put it, that we'll both be we both represent that each other are we're all we're both a team and we're gonna work together versus just knowing that we might be just sort of ships maybe usually passing the night but we just happen to be going in the same direction but I

don't know that you know that I'm doing the same thing. So I can't rely on you to sort of be my partner, quote unquote. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So with with the Moncrief example, uh we might all have private knowledge that the regime sucks. And we might have private knowledge that other people are are unhappy with the regime. But we might not know that other people know that that the regime sucks or that we hate the regime. We might not know that other people know that that we are dissatisfied. We might not know that they know that we know that they know that they're dissatisfied. And if we want to mount an effective rebellion or resistance, we need common knowledge. We need to know that if we're going to resist or overthrow the regime, that other people

are going to have our backs. And in order to rally that kind of movement, you need common knowledge. Yeah. Um, really quick, really quick, sorry to interrupt, but I also wonder just as another callback to a different episode, um, I also wonder if the loneliness, feeling people feeling lonely is a a lack of co feeling like there's common knowledge. Um that would be a really interesting thing to look at, I think. Like just sort of to what extent do you feel like there's common knowledge uh in especially in a mass uh media environment, you're really not getting cues of common knowledge that nobody knows what I think, or nobody cares what I think. Um, I wonder if a lot of social media or just weird stuff people do online is this sort of

weird klugey attempt to sort of create common knowledge, given that we're sort of getting super stimuli of one-sided, we're getting a lot of inundation about epistemic or information cues, but we're not getting um you're not being seen and you're not getting cues of common knowledge. Yeah. No, that's a really interesting hypothesis. I I buy that completely. And and I I think it it also ties into your work with groups. I think you need group you need common knowledge to have a group. Because we all need to know that everyone knows that everyone knows that we're in this group and these people are not in this group. Without that common knowledge, the whole concept of a group shatters. You cannot maintain a group without common knowledge that that there is the group.

It's a it's a construction of our of our minds. Um, this group. I mean, there there's no in intrinsic difference between, say, you know, the the Mets and the Yankees or whatever. It's you know, we've all agreed and agreed that everyone else agrees that these are two different groups. Right. Um it's like money. It's just a court. Yeah, it's just yeah. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, that's right. And so a lot of weird, even like moral outrage stuff and probably a lot of the the the terrible things people do online, it might be a weird attempt to sort of create that. So if you had if the the the emotion of lack of sort of um uh common knowledge might be a really interesting research topic.

Yeah, no, I I fully agree. That would be cool to look at. Sorry, digression done. So we've got coordination, common knowledge under our belts into this idea of humor. Okay. Um so i you really cannot overstate the importance of coordination to the human experience. It's the water we swim in uh and we ought it's often invisible to us. So like what we're doing right now is playing a coordination game. Language itself is a massive coordination game where we have all agreed on which sounds correspond to which things in the world. It's kind of an unbelievably complicated coordination game that we're all playing and playing really well. It's it's phenomenal, like how smoothly we can communicate with each other and transmit

subtle, complex ideas and representations from one head to another. It's miraculous when you think about how it works. But it is just a bunch of coordination games. Each word in our language is a coordination game. We have all coordinated on the fact that this word means this thing. Dog means the four-legged furry thing with the tail that's cute, right? Um, and so it's it's in in even, you know, culture, conventions, norms, even social status, I think, is ultimately uh in large part a coordination game. We all have to agree on who is high status and who's low status. And everyone has to know that everyone knows who's high status and who's low status. If I'm discoordinated with other people and I don't know who's high status and who's low

status, and I suck up to and praise someone who's an incom a nincompoop or a social pariah, um, or if I insult and you know casually diss someone who's you know widely respected and venerated, that's gonna be really bad for me and my my social well-being. So I need to coordinate with everyone else on who's at the top, who's at the bottom, who's a good person, who's a bad person. If I'm mixed up with other people, that's gonna impose huge costs on me. Right. So that's a good segue into this idea of a mix-up. Um so uh if we're if coordination is the water we swim in, um, there is a difference between doing it well and doing it poorly. And one of the easiest ways to uh fail to coordinate is to be mixed up

about something. And so the simplest example of this is when we look at the coordination game of language. So we've all agreed that you know these sounds correspond to these things, but what about the case of a homonym where you have a word that's, you know, two words that sound identical and yet mean different things? That those kinds of words are really dangerous. You could think of them as kind of hot spots where where mix-ups are likely to occur because it's really they're really easy to confuse. Um uh it's really easy to to bungle up these these these two meanings. Um so that's one example. So I might, you know, uh uh say one version of a homonym, and you might hear a different version, and that might cause us to catastrophically miscommunicate in some way.

And so you could imagine that being a really strong selection pressure on our communicating collaborative ancestors to avoid those kinds of catastrophic uh miscommunications and to have mental machinery that can detect them and avoid them and signal when they've occurred so that we can diffuse their costs and continue uh collaborating in a mutually beneficial way. Um so homonyms would be one case of a mix up. You could mix up a high status person with a low status person as I discussed earlier. You could uh mix up, you know, uh the purpose of the rule. You could, you know, confuse the letter of the law for its spirit or the spirit of the law for its letter. You could mix up people. You know, a lot of comedy involves impersonating someone, making it easy to confuse them

with the person they're impersonating. Shakespeare played a lot with mistaken identities and the hilarious consequences that can flow from mistaken identities. I mean, virtually any domain of human endeavor where we coordinate with one another, there's always the possibility of some kind of mix-up. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. So uh trying to pass each other in the hallway is one of the simplest coordination games we could play. We could either, you know, uh uh we we each have the the two choices of either going left or right. And if we go in the same direction, we bump into each other, and if we uh uh move in opposite directions, we pass each other and we gain a benefit. Um, and often when when we struggle to do that and we dance back and forth trying to pass

each other, we laugh. And I think that especially if it's going on for a while. Yeah. Yeah. The the longer it goes on, the the more costly it is, and the more the more potentially costly it is. If we misinterpret this as a kind of hostile or romantic interaction, that could potentially be very costly. And so we need to signal we shouldn't take this seriously. This is just a misunderstanding. And so that's what laughter is signaling. It's diffusing these potential costs and these anticipated costs that could emerge from this failure to coordinate. So we can think about mix-ups in two ways. We can rank them based on how confusable they are, or how tempting they are, or how easy they are to fall prey to.

It's it's it we don't really have an intuitive way we don't of describing this, but I do think it's really important, like how tempting the mistake is. So um to give the easiest example, um homonyms will have higher confusibility than any other random pair of words you take from the English lexicon. Right. Um so on the continuum of how uh e easy it is to fall prey to this mix-up. Homonyms would be at one extreme end of the continuum, and you know, couch and saxophone would be at another extreme end of the continuum. You're never gonna mix up couch and saxophone. Right. Right. Um and then there's an example here of uh, I'm not gonna name who it is, but somebody who is trying to speak a different language uh was describing that um they learned the word for

hot, and uh um and in the language they were learning, um, hot. There's two versions of hot, and one means sort of temperature hot, the other one means horny. And so this person was like going to taxi cabs in this country and just sort of being like, How are you doing? And they were very proud of themselves. They were like getting on the taxi cam and they were just saying, like, um, you know, I'm okay, but you know, I'm really horny today, right? Uh, because uh, you know, they it was a hot day, right? So very, very proudly um uh and also another linguistic um uh mix-up was somebody was um and both of these are are true stories was um somebody was uh learning Italian, um she was German, and she was very proud of

ordering um fish at a counter, but she was uh insistently saying, I am a tuna, um, instead of saying I'd like a tuna. So so examples of mix-up linguistically that are actually pretty funny. Yeah. Yeah. No, the example I use uh uh is um I had a uh a friend in college who spoke English as a second language and he thought that the phrase hook up with uh meant meet up with, which is kind of an understandable and tempting mix up. You could almost pull that off if you had enough context clues. Yeah. Right. But then when you say like I hooked up with a bunch of guys at Taco Bell last night, um that could that could potentially be funny. Yeah. Yeah. I mean and you know you could think about it like, you know, it's a it's kind of an

understandable mix up. It's kinda tempting. And it's also really costly. Like it would severely damage my reputation if you thought that I had sex with a bunch of men at Taco Bell, right? Uh randomly. So um or not. May maybe maybe it would uh you know increase my standing. It would but it's a mix up, yeah, for sure. Nevertheless, it is a mix up. Um and and you could imagine um costs resulting from it. And you would expect natural selection to favor systems for detecting, anticipating, avoiding, and signaling these kinds of mix-ups because they're everywhere and the potential for them is everywhere. So confusability or temptingness, that's one dimension by which we could look at mix-ups. Mix-ups that are kind of tempting and understandable are going to, I think, be funnier than

mix-ups that are not at all confusable or tempting, right? The more tempting they are, the more similar the two interpretations are, the two words are, the two roles are, the two people are, the two substances are, whatever, um, the funnier it's going to be. Yeah. And I think like good humorists then are people who actually will see confusability where people hadn't before. So, like an example I love is uh in the American version of the office, Steve Carell at a certain point, he's having financial troubles. Um, and he just like turns to the camera and he shouts, I declare bankruptcy. Uh right. And it's it's uh he declare, you know, he thought it was literally like you just yell bankruptcy. And and that that's the process of declaring bankruptcy, right?

And so it's confusing declare for this, you know, bureaucratic, you know, um explaining the the humor, which is less funny, which which is actually interesting. Um but but yeah, but I I love that example of just like I shouting, I declare bankruptcy. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's that's a wonderful example. Um I so I'm going I'm in the process of trying to test some of these ideas empirically, and I'm trying to gather like short um jokes that I can like measure people's um you know perceptions of funniness. Right. I've been looking through old Mitch Hedberg stuff because I love Mitch Hedberg. Mitch Hedberg was so funny. Yeah. The the problem with him though is that um a lot of his jokes have multiple mix-ups layered

into them, including mix-ups about the nature of comedy itself and like what the purpose of a joke is and what comedy should be. Which is really good. And we can get into because I think one thing I love about your theory and we I don't want to get too far ahead, but it also explains Andy Kaufman, which I don't think any theory of humor that I had heard of had had encountered. And even I I would argue the variability in people thinking Andy Kaufman isn't funny and is funny. Yeah. Yeah. So um I was I was looking at Mitch Hedberg, and I think also part of it um is is just his delivery. And we can talk about what you know what what what comic timing is and and uh and why comic timing can accentuate or uh uh the punchline of a joke.

But I I remember I I came across one Mitch Headburg joke that just it had me laughing. Maybe late to some Mitch Headberg head headburgh, yes. Um so I I uh I can I can do my best impersonation. Yeah, it's hard to do yeah, it's hard to do this in uh I I think soccer is a combination no sorry I already screwed it up. Take two, take two. Take two. I think foosball is a combination of soccer and shish kebabs. He's like he's something about, you know, I play tennis and I'm pretty good at it, but I'll never be as good as a wall. Yes, that's another great one. That thing is relentless. Unbelievably funny. Uh and trying to like deconstruct why it's funny, like they're just so damn tempting, and you never would have thought, like, once you s think about foosball as soccer and shish

kebabs, like you cannot unsee that. It's like such a tempting way and such a wrong way of understanding the game of foosball. But like you're just pulled so strongly in that direction once he makes that connection. And the same thing with you know uh with tennis. Like it's it's it's a really tempting mistake to think of a wall as being good at tennis because it is good at tennis. Yes, exactly. Yeah. It's absurd it's such a huge error. Such a huge mistake. To be like depressed that you're never gonna be able to do that. That actually that's really funny, right? Like that's actually if you were just like and we reveal the world's best tennis player and there's a wall, right? Like that's funny. Yeah.

So to test this empirically, I'm I'm trying to use jokes like that and measure two components. So we already talked about the first component, which was confusability or temptingness. I'm still looking for the best word to describe it because it's kind of unintuitive. Um so there's there's that, and then the second component, um, I think is uh costliness or uh the the size of the mix-up. Right. Um and the way I'm starting to think about this is as the kind of as the discrepancy between the two things that are mixed up, um, how far apart they are in conceptual space, how misaligned are the two people in their understanding of reality. Right. Um So um that's sort of how I'm thinking about the costliness of how how the mind would

estimate how costly a mix-up is. It seems like a good rule of thumb might be that you know, the further apart the two things that are being mixed up are, um, the more costly it it should expect be expected to be. Yeah. So if if I confuse pretty big with very big, that's not going to be a very costly mix-up in most cases. Right. But if I confuse very big with very small, that could be a very costly mix-up. Right. And so I think there's costliness. Yeah. I mean, and just to like an example of that, like I think and I'll I'll tread carefully with this one. But like I think one probably the funniest thing I've ever seen, and and this is part partially because of like what I study, um, is uh Dave Chappelle has a skit,

uh, I think it was on the uh Chappelle show, where it's a blind um black man who's a white supremacist, right? Yeah, and it's it's super funny. Um and uh and and I think it's exactly because you can't imagine a higher cost fix right than being not being aware of what you are. He actually I I listened to a video Dave Chappelle actually mentioned that that can his idea came from a family member of his who was actually lighter skinned and passed as white. And actually, I think it was his uncle or somebody. And so that idea of sort of mixing up your racial identity and the high cost social consequences that follow, you know, that struck him as funny. And I think that validated, I mean, that's that's um that's a really nice example of the

the the intensity of the humor is driven by the costliness. And I think people sort of like professional comedians kind of intuitively get this. So yeah, totally. You cannot imagine a more costly mix up than mixing up an in group member for an out group member, particularly when they're violently. Yes, exactly. And you're like going to the meetings, right? Yeah. Totally. Yeah, exactly. That's is like, yeah, you cannot imagine, as you said, a more um a higher cost mix up. Yeah. Yeah. Um, another good example of a costly mix-up um is from the movie Rat Race. I don't know if you've seen it. No. Um so in the movie, uh so John Lovitz plays um a Jewish father with his Jewish family, um, and uh he's trying to race to get to the the the money, I guess the

premise of the movie. They're all racing to get to this this you know bag of money. Uh and uh his daughter is getting increasingly petulant and really wants to, you know, pull over and do something, and she sees a sign for the Barbie Museum. She goes, please, please, can we go to the Bar Museum? And finally, you know, he caves, okay, we'll go to the Barbie Museum. And they and they go in, and this is the first of many mix-ups where uh the Barbie Museum is not about the doll, but about the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Uh which is a really catastrophic mix-up for a Jewish family. And it turns out to be an anti-Semitic museum, and there are like neo-Nazi thugs there trying to sniff them out.

Exactly. Yeah. Um and then so they uh but this is just the first of of many mix-ups. So they so they they flee the museum in like one of the cars. Um they just get in the car and like flee the museum. And uh it turns out that it's um uh implausibly uh none other than Hitler's car. Right. They discover it as they're on the road. Exactly. Uh and then they're and then the husband and wife are bickering over whether or not it's appropriate for her to like put on Ava Braun's lipstick because it was in the glove compartment, and they're like fighting over whether they should she should put on the lipstick and then the dark lipstick gets smeared on the top of the steering wheel. Right. And then and then the the the Nazi thugs catch up with them and there's a car chase and

they've you know he veers off the road and crashes into this like outdoor convention and the cigarette lighter flies into his throat and it's caught in his throat and he slams his face on the steering wheel. Of course. And and and the lipstick Yep. Of course. Yep. Uh long long walk to that. A dark a dark impression on his lip. Yeah. Where the dark light look reminiscent of a Hitler mustache. So he gets out of the car and he finds a podium and he starts like slamming the podium and like but but but because the cigarette lighter is still on his throat, he can't talk, and so like what's coming out of his mouth is like a garbled gibberish that that's it's like vaguely reminiscent of a German accent.

And he's like pounding the podium like tree. And then the camera zooms out and it's a convention for World War II veterans. Yeah, no, exactly. So yeah, that's just yeah, bumbling through costly mess after costly. Like this I I think of this as like a supernormal stimulus. Yeah. Like you know, you could not like in ancestral environments, you could not have engineered a situation like this a mix up this costly and like this tempting. Like um so it's i I I think of it as analogous to like fast food. Yeah. Um that's great. Yeah, yeah. You would be like if aliens were like, I don't know what makes the humans laugh, this would describe it, right? Yeah. Yeah, totally. Like at the maximum temptingness, like he looks just like Hitler.

He's got the mustache, he's pounding the podium, he's got Hitler's car right behind him, and then you'll uh maximum costliness. He's at a convention for elderly World War II veterans. One of them even like takes out a gun and aims it at uh and then they flee again in another vehicle. And like the movie is full of these kinds of really implausible but hilarious, you know, mix-ups of extreme magnitude. I remember um I saw the movie in a packed theater, um, and the the the John Lovitz Hitler mix-up elicited the by far the loudest laughter I had ever witnessed in a movie going audience. Like the entire theater was just uh absolutely uproarious. Yeah. Um so um I don't know if the if the movie has aged well or not.

And we could talk about you know why comedy doesn't age as well as other genres of art. Yeah, that's a really interesting thing. Yeah, watching stand up from like the 60s or 70s. I mean, some of it is evergreen, and I think people some people were explicitly like trying to be evergreen. Um, but yeah, some stuff does not hold up for sure. And that's an interesting maybe yeah, we can circle back to that. So costliness, confusability. Um, yeah. Yeah. So I'm in the middle of trying to um test to just basically see if we can predict funniness by measuring the costliness and measuring the confusability. Um and and so far, um just from some preliminary data, it's looking like just temptingness alone is explaining a good chunk of the variance in funness.

It's like twenty to thirty percent of the variance just from the measuring how tempting the the mix up is. So I think I think we're on the right track and now I gotta figure out how to measure costliness. Um but uh yeah, that's that would be the next step. Cool. And then um, so that's that part. But then what is hum why humor? Like what's the selection pressure for it? So those are the two things. Yeah. Um, what's what's up with the why does that exist? Um, why would there be selection for it? Or is it a byproduct of some like what is it? Yeah. Yeah, no, so I think it's an adaptation. I think there were strong selection pressures for to develop a sense of humor because the benefits of it were so great in our highly socially interdependent uh

cooperative species. Um and so you can think about those two components, confusability and costliness, as basically just combining to map out to the expected costs of failing to coordinate with others. Right. So, you know, the confusibility you could think of as the likelihood of the cost being uh incurred, and the cost is just the magnitude of the cost incurred. And so it's pretty straightforward logic. You know, the the bigger those two things are, the bigger the benefit from avoiding it. Right. The bigger the benefit from anticipating it in advance and avoiding it. Um, and uh the bigger the benefit of signaling it to other people uh and creating common knowledge of it to uh diffuse the costs of it if and when it does.

Signaling and common knowledge of the mixability. So it's it's so it's the the selection pressures or the lack of coordination or the mistake that you would make, um, the mix the mixing something up, and then the point of doing this thing of finding something funny and producing whatever we do, this weird thing we do, um that that's a signal of can you unpack that a little bit? Sure. So I I so uh the way I map it out is by dividing it into two parts. So I think the first part of the evolution of humor is just the the evolution of the sense of humor, just the ability to detect and anticipate and avoid mix-ups. That's just the sense part. You can think of that leave laughter out of the picture.

It's just it's straightforwardly uh adaptive, beneficial, fitness enhancing to be able to detect, avoid, uh, and anticipate mix-ups. I see. So like it's sort of intrinsically pleasurable. You know, just to make sure I understand it. So the idea is almost like it's in in the same way it's intrinsically pleasurable to sort of like discover uh something that might be fitness promoting like a new friendship or a group that you never knew existed or like a lovely place to visit or like your home is nicer than you expected. Um you get the idea is that to see confusibility, costly mis discordination or confusability ahead of time, because doing that avoids the the error. It's sort of like a caution tape around a hidden hole.

It's intrinsically pleasurable because exactly it's it's a rewarding thing because it's a a signal of you've avoided a a cost. Exactly. Exactly. That's a great way of putting it. Um so that's the first stage. And so so I've I tried to model this mathematically. And so um so straightforwardly you can just show that you know ha having the ability to uh uh detect and avoid these mix-ups helps you um you know avoid the costs of coordination failure, reap the benefits of better coordination, um, and and these costs and benefits will loom larger when they're when interactions are longer, and the and the potential to continue reaping those benefits or continue incurring those costs uh is larger. So if we spend a longer time dancing back and forth in the hallway, then we're gonna reap

we're gonna incur more costs if we fail to detect the mix-up. Um and uh if if we we interact with each other a lot and it's really important that we understand what we're what we're thinking and feeling, then the the the benefits of coordinating are gonna be higher. So the first part is just evolving that sense. And I really do think it's analogous to a sense like seeing or hearing. Um I think we're scanning the social world for coordination opportunities and uh we're we're picking up on on these hot spots, these these tempting, confusable areas that could potentially be costly for us uh socially. And so the first part is sensing. And the second part is even if you're the best humor sensor in the world and you never get

into mix-ups, you're always anticipating them in advance, or or i if a mix-up does occur, you immediately spot it and you and you switch to whatever the the alternative uh behavior was. So if we're mixing up our meanings of the phrase hook up with and I say, you know, I hooked up with a bunch of guys at Taco Bell and I and I uh see that a weird expression on your face and I instantly realize that, oh, there was a mix up involving this meaning. I'm gonna switch to the other meaning of hook up with. Now I know what it means and we'll continue coordinating successfully. Even if I have sensed it and have avoided it in future interactions with you, there's still that initial cost that I paid, or that we paid, because you uh mistook what I did,

right? You you you thought that I had sex with random people. Um so um, even if I avoid that mix-up and subsequent interactions with you, that initial cost is still going to be there. And so that uh brings us to the second stage of of the evolution of humor, which is laughter. So, how do we erase that initial cost? How do we create common knowledge that you're no longer you're no longer going to view me as a weirdo who has sex with random guys in public places, right? Uh how do we establish common knowledge that we know, uh that the other knows, that the other knows, that uh this was just a misunderstanding. Uh we're not going to take this communication seriously, Um, we're not going to treat it as

actual communication and we're going to just forget about it, no harm, no foul, and move on. So you're telling me that that you know that it was a mix-up and that you see that there was a cost, and I know it was a mix-up, and I know there was a cost. And we're getting into the logic of how laughter allows both of us to have common knowledge that we both represent that there was a mix up and there was a cost. Exactly. And and um it needs to be shared too. Because if I'm laughing at it and you're not laughing with me, then that's a problem. You might not know that there was a mix up. So we need to be laughing together to establish common knowledge. Right. Um so we both So if I didn't laugh, it would and and the and and we'll keep going.

But like, yeah, that means something to you. And it means something about what I am changing about my representation of you. Right. Yes. Exactly. Interesting. And if you don't share the laughter, I might think that you think that I'm a weirdo. And then that lowers the benefits of of uh cooperating with you, you know, for me. Right. Right. Or I think hooking up is is uh means meeting up with people, right? Right. Yeah, but there's some inference about why I'm not laughing. Or uh or yeah, or like I'm your enemy. And so I don't I reject the the laughter because the work that the laughter is doing is reparative for you. Hmm yeah. Yeah that's a great point. Yeah you might not want to defuse those costs.

If you're my rival, you might enjoy me being embarrassed or devalued by others and you might try to resist the laughter. Right. Um Yeah, I think one of the way people one of the ways people show a low status, low power person is somebody who laughs a lot. Um, and the people around them are not laughing with them. Yeah. It's a person who thinks that they're, you know, constantly struggling to coordinate with people or is aware that they're struggling to coordinate with people. And they're trying to repair those failures. And people just aren't accepting the bid to repair those failures. Right. Because they're just seen as a low value part. And I think if you do look at people um like I think people even kind of intuitively know

this. So, like, I've seen people just sort of act, like if you get an actor, for example, who's pretty good and just pretends to be like lower status or meek or whatever, it's this kind of like constant l laughter. Um, and it's a different kind than I mean, obviously, there's sort of taxonomies of there can be biting humor where people are very they're using it in a way that's the opposite, where it's sort of like attacking other people's status. But there is this version of sort of you're lo you're exactly right of like kind of laughing at themselves. Yeah, totally. Um, and this is a good way to segue into what I think is the third part of the model, which is um identifying others' sense of humor.

Mm-hmm. Uh and preferentially uh affiliating with people with better senses of humor, um, who get your jokes, um, who laugh at the things that you laugh, We laugh at the same things, right? Who you you laugh with instead of at. Right. So if you have a really good sense of humor, if you're good at telling jokes, which signals that you're good at spotting and anticipating and avoiding mix-ups, well, that means that the benefits of coordinating with you are going to be higher than coordinating with some other buffoon, right? Because you're going to be better able to avoid those mix-ups. We're going to cooperate more smoothly. We're going to vibe more. And so you're a better coordination partner if you have a better sense of humor.

Whereas if you're a a a buffoon, a fool, an idiot, uh, we're gonna get into so many different kinds of misunderstandings. We're gonna struggle to vibe and to work together. And that's just a very low-value social partner for me. And I should want to avoid them and preferentially affiliate with the smooth, funny, witty people who are good at coordinating and good at getting the prevailing social norms and conventions. Um, and so I think that is what is involved in the art of joke telling or being a funny person, why we find funny people attractive. It shows that they're really good at coordinating. They understand the the culture that they live in. They're good at culture. They're good at communication.

And we want to coordinate with those people because the long run payoffs of coordinating with them are going to be higher with fewer mix-ups over time than with than than coordinating with someone else. Right. That's really interesting. I wonder too, like, you know, people often talk about, you know, in their friends or in their mates, they want somebody who's funny and smart. Um, and I wonder, like, if part of that, it's two things. One is that um there's sort of like right at what's on the edge of your conf thinking or confusability. Um, and so if somebody is discovering confusibility that you hadn't thought of, um it's it's it's a con it's sort of there's an arms race where there's always somebody who's

sort of um it's showing that they're in this competitive thing of sort of um I'm not being very articulate about it, but but basically it's it's a um there's there's never enough um uh so like what's something if you found something very easily confusable to the point that it's trivial, yeah. If you might not find that funny, but if I do, it sort of means that we're whatever quote unquote, like you know, intelligence means, which is just a difference, it's not like a mechanism, it's not you know, but um, but it kind of it kind of it it teases apart. Oh, if somebody is like picking out stuff that I hadn't thought of, that's they're spending time, they're valuable, there's sort of some cognitive resource there that's interesting.

It also though um shows like what you care about and what your interests are, and to whatever extent, like everybody is sort of like occupying different status games, right? Or like you're just uh pursuing a thing. So if I make a joke of I don't know about sports for you, David, you know, and uh like you know, I sit down and I'm like, well, you know, this thing, and it involves like a confusion about sports, you might like not laugh. And the fact that I think it was the right joke to tell you, you'd just be like, Well, you don't know me, I don't care about sports. And so it's sort of a way to sort of filter people. Humor attempts are a way to filter people by like what um what status game we're all gonna

coordinate on. And so that that would be another like I think those would be two two things. Um and there's a lot of use of humor, right? Like I mean people are trying people are using humor all the time. Um So that was uh um really not funny two points, but that that's my two points. Yeah. No, no, I totally buy that. So this ties into um uh Flamson and Barrett's uh encryption theory of humor, which is really complementary with my approach. And the the idea there is basically what you were getting at, which is when you tell a joke, what you're doing is you're encrypting um a piece of information that can only be decrypted by uh people who share your background knowledge and your and your cultural

knowledge. So if I'm going to, you know, tell a story about a mix-up or you know, simulate or role-play a mix-up in a in a specific kind of coordination game, the only people who are going to pick up on that are going to be the people who are playing that same coordination game or who share my knowledge about what it means to be uh mixed up. And so that's going to be a great way of differentiating people who are in my subculture from people who are not. And what's great about it is that I can do it covertly. So if I tell a joke and you get it, um, but someone else doesn't. Um, that allows us to affiliate with one another and exclude that third person without overtly telling the third person, I don't like you, go away.

Right. Um, which could potentially be costly because then that could develop, you know, animosity, resentment, and so forth. Right. And so it it evolves us, it allows us to sort of exclude people and hobnob with other like minded people without making it overt um or or offensive or common knowledge. Right. Like a lame example of this, like let's imagine, and apologies to anybody named Josh, but um maybe I'll choose a different because we should have Josh Timeron. But let's assume like somebody named Josh is a jerk and we both know Josh is a jerk. And then like somebody comes up and and I basically am like, oh Josh, you know, like I I just say basically Josh, right? And it's a signal to you that this person's a jerk.

Um but the person doesn't know. You know, like you could imagine um, you know, it's kind of ki it's sort of sophomoric, but like I think a lot of times, even just thinking about like when I was like in my teens, uh groups of kids, you just sort of like allude to past things. Like you would even just words, you would just sort of say like stupid nonsense words, but you would just sort of repeat them when it was roughly appropriate and and kids would just laugh, right? Like just the funny made up word you made, you know. Um and uh and so it's almost like it's picking out this point of coordination that other people wouldn't know. But somehow it's amusing. I don't know if it reaches the point of funny, but yeah.

Um yeah, no that's interesting. Um yeah the the gibberish words that's an interesting case. It could be that sometimes the humor comes from its similarity to another word. Right. Um or or or even another another word that you maybe shouldn't say. Right. Um, that could be part of it. Another part of it is just there's such a strong expectation that when we open our mouths and put phonemes together, yeah, that we're going to be providing valuable information. We're going to be communicating something of relevance. And and the and the more we we violate that social convention and are mixed up about the purpose of opening our mouths and putting phonemes together, the more costly that that could be.

Confusing the purpose of talking with you know flapping our mouths is a kind of tempting mix up. If you, you know, if you don't speak a language, it might seem like they're just flapping their mouths. And when you try to imitate that, that could be a pretty costly and and tempting mix up. So maybe that's what's going on there. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like even just because you know I have a pre sch or you know a preschool age uh at home and like uh and like even just like on the playground, just like kids running around just like yelling like something like donk, right? Like I'm just making up a word. But you know, and the fact that they're they all start doing it and they just laugh when they're doing it, like they're playing with language, right?

Yeah. I mean, the other thing that's to the costly thing is like, you know, uh, you know, around this age, um, things like that are related to like disgust, like poop, are really just intrinsically funny, right? Like the funniest thing is like pretending like this ball I'm gonna throw at you is like poop and it's just hilarious, right? Oh yeah. Yeah. No, I think I mean there there's really interesting yeah. Yeah, scatological and there's really interesting developmental hypotheses you could make. So I would expect, you know, toddlers who are learning how to potty train and learning the the norms and conventions surrounding uh poop and bodily waste, like it's really important that they're learning this stuff and they learn it really well.

And these are all coordination games we're playing about how to deal with poop, how to talk about it. Um and uh in the critical period, the developmental period where we're learning about this stuff, um, we should find mix-ups uh relating to it especially valuable and rewarding. Right. Right. Because we're we're we're gaining important pieces of pieces of information about what not to do, how not to deal with with poop. Right. Right. Yeah. Um there's a really oh sorry, go yeah, there's a really interesting thing too that's funny. Um because we discordinated. Um there's a uh we haven't had Daniel Schnitzer on yet either, but like the idea of self conscious emotions. Um, like David, we're both parents and I like I'm really aware of um the the self

conscious emotions being things like guilt, shame, pride, where it's sort of my emotions are an anticipation of how others will think of me. Right. So if I do something, um, you know, like if I walk around and I've got toilet paper stuck to my pants and I'm walking around work, you know, that's not actually that costly personally for me. Like, you know, I'm like less aerodynamic, but like who cares? But um, you know, but but um, but people will look at it and think, oh, that's gross, or like think I'm weird. And so the emotional reaction isn't about the consequences for you, but it's an anticipation of how others will respond to you. And there's a really interesting developmental thing too, where sort of, you know, some

self-conscious emotions sort of come online, or what counts as costly, you know, like nobody's gonna laugh at a baby for pooping, right? And like babies don't care that they have poop all over them, right? Yeah. But like, but that's very different by the time you are an adult. And somewhere in between that, different content is becoming entrained into or turned on into what it what are the relevant self-conscious emotional contents, right? And I think that that also I think would make predictions about if if humor what what what humor content should be should be related to these um self-conscious emotions too, because the self-conscious emotions are about the costs and benefits of if something if you do something um and you lose status uh or people think worse of you.

Yeah. No, that's that's a good way to transition into embarrassment. So I think the theory um has some really interesting implications on on what embarrassment is and what its adaptive function is. So I think of embarrassment as a close cousin of shame. So shame is is very simple. You know, Dan Schneezer has has studied this, and we're gonna have him on soon. I'm excited to talk to him. But um shame is just when when you're devalued by others, when when others think you're a bad social partner, you're mean, you're disgusting, you're selfish, you're dumb, whatever, you're ugly. When you perceive that, you feel shame and you feel motivated to um hide that part of yourself and mitigate those costs.

Maybe it causes you to defer to other people and and try to placate them, to hide, to, to fear other other people excluding you, or or whatever. You can think of shame as as uh mobilizing a response to being devalued by other people, um, particularly other you other people that you you care about. Um so embarrassment is not shame. Um it's not as clearly negative. Sometimes embarrassment can be kind of funny and kind of positive, depending on how it how it plays out. So uh so I think what embarrassment is, is a kind of mix-up in the audience uh that you're that you're in, or the audience that's observing you, and they are struggling to coordinate on whether or not your status has fallen. Oh, interesting.

Yeah. A really interesting example, just to plug in. Yeah. Uh one thing that people find really difficult, because I've worked in like, you know, working with infants. And when you work with infants, you, you know, you do like baby talk, we're like, hi, you know, look at this. And it's like very weird to do that with adults. And so people feel embarrassed to do to show um what how to interact with an infant to adults, right? And so it's this thing of like, I'm supposed to do this, but there's part of me that's like, well, this is going to be costly to um to these people. And you kind of feel embarrassed for the people who are doing it sometimes. I mean you can push this even harder where like, you know, if you watch like a YouTube

video for kids and the adults is like really infant directed, you're kind of like, I feel bad, like I'm embarrassed for you, you know. Like and it's yeah, the guy in the Barney costume who's doing offish dance. Yeah, it's kind of embarrassing. Yeah. Um, yeah. And I think what makes it embarrassing is that it's you're not quite sure whether the person has lost status or whether other people think that the person has lost status, or whether you should start devaluing that person or whether you think other people are going to devalue that person. Right. Um, it's kind of ambiguous. Like, yeah, they're kinda doing something kind of silly and and and oafish, but does that mean that they're stupid? Does uh it's not quite obvious.

Right. Um, or like if you have the toilet paper on on on your foot, like, yeah, it's kind of gross, but like, you know, uh anyone could have done that. It's kind of an honest mistake. Yeah. Like, does that mean that, you know, Dave is gr is gross and and and incompetent, or is it just a a mistake that any of us could have made? Like it's it's kind of ambiguous. It's tempting. Like, you know, you you could imagine us making one of two errors. We could we could all um think that everyone else thinks that your status has fallen, or um, you know, we could uh think that your status has stayed the same and everyone else thinks that your status has fallen in when you either way it's going to be costly because

we're going to have disagreement about what your status is in the wake of this embarrassing situation. Right. Um and often you can have two mix ups where you can have one person who has a a mix up or a faux pas, and then that causes the audience to be mixed up about whether to treat that faux pas as a serious transget transgression or a forgivable mistake. Right. Um, and so the mix-up itself is is funny, and then the the audience's mix up about how to treat that mix-up is is funny. Um so when when the audience clearly devalues you, that's shame. But when the audience ambiguously devalues you and struggles to coordinate on whether your reputation has been damaged, whether your status has fallen, um, there are different um

adaptive responses to either of those situations. With shame, the best response is just to hide, placate, um, try to conceal whatever it is that was uh uh damaging uh to your reputation. With embarrassment, that's not necessarily the best strategy. Um with embarrassment, you're on this sort of knife edge. On your stat on the one hand, your status could fall. On the other hand, your status could could stay the same and everyone could have a good laugh and and move on. And so when you're embarrassed, the the best strategy is to try to tip the scales in favor of your status staying the same. Right. Right. Uh and and and there are a number of ways you could try to do that. One way is to laugh yourself, to try in hopes that you might elicit other people's

laughter. Because if we're all laughing together, then we're diffusing the costs and the costs aren't going to be taken seriously. You're not going to be devalued and we can all, you know, move on and and continue uh coordinating and cooperating as before. Um so I might laugh if I'm embarrassed. Um another way to try to tip the scales in favor of my preserved social standing is to signal that I am in fact embarrassed, that I understand that I made a faux pas, I understand that I was mixed up, and that I'm very uh disinclined to have that happen again. Right. You can count on me to not blunder into that kind of mistake again. Right. And you could think of that as a really important cue to others that I shouldn't be

devalued. Because if I if I make a mistake or a mix-up, on the one hand, that could signal that I'm the type of person that is constantly blundering into these mix-ups, in which case I'm a bad social partner and I should be avoided. Um but if I make a mix-up and it's not really representative of of who I am and and my ability to smoothly coordinate, then it's actually um it's gonna be costly for my audience to uh devalue me, right? Because it was just a fluke, it was a one-off thing that it's not gonna happen again. And so so when I'm embarrassed, I should be trying to signal to others that I that I am embarrassed. I understand there was a mix-up, it's not gonna happen again. And blushing may serve the function of allowing others to uh allowing everyone to have

common knowledge of the embarrassment. Because when I'm blushing, everyone can see that everyone can see that I'm embarrassed. And because blushing is hot, you can feel it yourself. So not so I know that I'm embarrassed. I know that others know that that I'm embarrassed. And I know that others know that others know that I'm embarrassed. And so that signals to other people that I'm aware of the faux pas. It's not going to happen again. And that's another way to sort of tip the scales in favor of preserving my social status. That's really interesting. And I think like there's this trope, and I think it's right, um, you know, and we have younger kids, we haven't dealt with this yet, but this sort of like super chronically

embarrassed adolescent who's sort of like really afraid to do anything and just constantly embarrassed, or like, dad, you're embarrassing me in front of my friends. Um, and it's exactly when this status um game switches to sort of idiosyncratic to your peer group and not and you're kind of completely divorced from like the status of the prior generation. So I think like um you know, adolescent shyness and embarrassment, that's just a really um interesting, interesting thing. Yeah, absolutely. And then and then we can talk about the other side of this, which is what if you fail? What if you fail to tip the scales in favor of preserving your social status? Right. You know, you maybe maybe you laugh ha ha ha and nobody shares laughter with you.

Yeah. Everyone's stone faced. Or um or maybe everyone's uh laughing at you. Right. Or maybe everyone's mocking you. Um, and uh everyone knows that everyone knows that you've really lost social standing, that your reputation has been damaged. Um in that case, the embarrassment will sour into humiliation. Right. Uh and you can think of humiliation as just shame, but it's preceded by some kind of embarrassment. Right. Um that it's what happens when the the uh the attempt to signal embarrassment and diffuse the costs fails and you're just you just slip right into shame. Right. That's really interesting. And I love that what you talked about a second ago was that it can either be a thing of the target of the humor is sort of where the lesson is, or ourselves, like the recipients of

it. And this is where I think like I'm thinking Andy Kaufman is a really great example of doing all these things. So there's sort of one is where Andy Kaufman gets up and is a really bad comedian. Um and he's really not funny. And it's sort of this thing of, well, he's embarrassing himself, right? But um, but he continues to not be funny, and people start laughing at him because they're he it's an embarrassing thing. He's losing status, and then he's sort of like, Why are you laughing at me? You know, and so it becomes this thing of it's this comment of you're actually harming a person because they're failing to be funny, And so what he's doing on purpose is he's he's pointing out that you're it's really

hurtful to sort of like you're hurting me by um and it's funny, right? Because it's like it's he's supposed to be funny. The other example of that is um he'll be on like a a a talk show and he'll just be like uh you know, uh, I'm gonna contact or my my dad, my parents are here, and you know, and I've never really told them I love them, and I'm just gonna tell them I love them. And it's a really genuine, sincere thing he's doing, but it's not funny, right? Because he's or it is funny because he's he's not doing, he's not like performing, right? He's not doing a bit. Yeah. And and you feel like, well, he's an oaf, but then he's doing this really useful, like important real-world thing. And then you sort of think, Oh, um, it's horrible that I have the expectation

and I'm devaluing him because he's telling his family he loves them. You know, and he's and there's all these cues that he knows he's doing it. So, you know, when he's a bad comedian, like at the end in some of his bits, he'll like do an Elvis impression. So it's like it's really hard to do. So he's showing you, I know that I'm being bad. But some people don't get it, right? And so, like people, and so I think it's like Andy Kaufman humor. I think your theory explains it in a way where it's sort of like the you're it's the humor of humor, right? Where like what I I I like that about that. Um uh but and I think this is also where I've heard people say that like you can kind of couch deep insights in humor in ways that you couldn't otherwise, right?

Like there's sort of the core jester who can sort of get away with making fun of the dictator or the king, and other people can't, um, or like political humor. Um have you thought about that? Like what's going on with that? Yeah. So related to this analysis is an emotion that is pretty understudied, which we might call mirth or amusement. And you can think of mirth as functioning to uh defuse or nullify the costs of a mix-up. Um, you know, there has to be some machinery in the mind that that performs this function of making sure that the costs don't get registered, right? They don't get taken quote unquote seriously. Um and so in order to perform this adaptive function, MERTH has to deactivate or

suppress um systems in the head that process costs. So it's gonna deactivate anger so you don't get angry at the faux pas. It's going to deactivate fear. So if you're play wrestling, you know, you're not going to be afraid that the person's trying to kill you. It's going to deactivate hatred so I don't hold a grudge because you try because you tried to, you know, uh fight me or whatever, or you're play fighting with me. Um it's going to deactivate uh compassion and guilt. If you know I'm not going to feel guilty for the the fake uh punch that I threw at you. Right. Um and so uh it's gonna deactivate all these different negative emotions um in order to prevent the costs of the mix-up from being uh registered.

And so if that's the function of mirth, then all of a sudden there's uh a huge strategic advantage to be gained by exploiting that aspect of mirth. Um so political coalitions uh mobilize and coordinate by creating common knowledge of costs. The costs of the enemy coming and invading us or dominating us or exploiting us, the costs of us having low status, the costs of being attacked, the costs of unfairness. Politics is all about taking things seriously. And I I think of seriousness as the as basically the ability to register costs. Seriousness is the actual or potential or hypothetical costs that could be inflicted by a situation. I think of a serious person as someone who can inflict costs on you, someone who can harm

your reputation, who can physically harm you, who can withhold benefits that are really valuable to you, a person whose absence is greatly felt, um, a person with who can withhold valuable information to you. So in in the show Succession, Logan Roy tells his children uh you're not serious people. Uh and and you can see why that would cut so deep. It's it's you know, telling his kids that they're incapable of, you know, n bargaining with or negotiating with anyone or inflicting any kind of real costs or withholding any kind of real benefits from anyone. Right. Um, so I got launched on a sidetrack there. So um seriousness. We need seriousness politically. Politics is about what we should take seriously as a society, right?

And um if I come into the middle of a political rally or a political protest and I start cracking jokes and activating mirth, right, that's going to throw a huge wrench into the political coalition. It's going to prevent them from creating common knowledge of these costs that they need to take seriously. And so mirth is kind of a political weapon. Um, it can it can really damage uh one one group's ability to to mobilize. Um and so I think that's why humor can be so political. We really have to figure out what stuff we should be allowed to laugh at and what stuff we shouldn't. And if something is really costly and we really need to pay attention to the costs of that so that we can mitigate it, then we should be really um reluctant to joke about it because

we cannot afford to activate mirth and deactivate um the negative emotions that we need to deal with it. And so mirth is a is a kind of anti-seriousness system that we should be really antagonistic to in in serious situations, because it prevents us from actually dealing with those serious situations effectively. Right. So like I'm thinking so like, and this is also where maybe the content of humor comes in where um you know, I'm thinking like politic politics where political humor where the joke is on our side versus the other side, we're fine with that, but we don't find funny where like we're the victims of the humor. Um is that sort of similar, or is it just even like across the board humor doesn't because

I'm thinking, you know, like politicians who are sort of very serious, but then might mock the other side, right? Yeah. So I think that's slightly different. I think what what's happening there is when you mock someone, you're you're basically trying to frame them as a bad coordination partner. Someone who's idiotic, foolish, awkward, inept, clumsy, someone who's bad to associate with, who's gonna bring very few, if any, benefits and many costs. Right. Um so I think that that is the function of mockery. So once we have this system online where we're evaluating uh each other's values as uh value as a social partner, uh, and in your ability to coordinate smoothly is a really good indicator of your value as a social partner, it behooves me to try to make my rivals look

foolish, to look like they're bad social partners, and to make myself look like a good social partner by comparison. And so you can think of political competition as attempts to rally people to one side of a political conflict. And one way to get people on your side is to cast the other side as a set of bad social partners. So we can do this by making them look mean or cruel or selfish or clumsy or offish or stupid or idiotic or foolish. And I think that's what a lot of political satire is about. It's about pointing out the hypocrisies on the other side, the foolishness, uh the idiocy, uh, and the ways that they're constantly failing to get how the world works, to uh get how uh language works, um to do things the right ways.

I think that's uh what a lot of political satire is about. Um and you can think of hypocrisy itself as a kind of um dual mix up. So um if we're all trying to collaborate to enforce some rule that benefits everyone, there's a kind of tempting mix up there. I could think the purpose of the rule is to benefit me but not others, and that I am supposed to um in uh Enforce the rule but not follow it. Right. Right. Um and if I do that, then that could create another mix-up where you think I'm virtuous for enforcing the rule when I'm secretly corrupt for flouting it. Right. And so we have these dual mix-ups where I'm confusing the purpose of the rule, where I think it's it's to selfishly benefit me instead of the wider community.

And there's a mix-up surrounding my virtue where people think I'm more virtuous than I really am because I'm enforcing the rule, but I'm also flouting it. Right. Right. And so a lot of political satire, I think, is about pointing out the hypocrisies of the other side and accentuating the the aspect of the hypocrisy that's that's the mix-up. Um where they're just fundamentally morally confused. That's interesting. And that means that if I find something funny and I laugh at it, then I'm sort of by virtue of its design. And I've heard professional comedians say this, that it's sort of like um uh it's humor is sort of like a direct pipeline to insight or like ign accepting something you might not want to talk about explicitly because if I laugh at it, I'm sort of

acknowledging. If I if I laugh at the hypocrisy of a politician I like, the fact that I'm laughing at it means I'm accepting that the hypocrisy exists, that the mix up is happening. And then I even like it's I'm creating and I'm maybe I'm even like creating common knowledge about it, right? Yeah. So it's sort of like this um really it sort of bypasses a lot of the sort of like filters of in the the talky parts of our brains sort of you know like where we wouldn't want to like as a narrative accept a premise but if we find it funny it's sort of like it's really telling what what people find funny. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Um, should we talk about comic timing? Please. I think I I think I think the three has a cool uh way of understanding what comic timing is

and the art of of comedic acting. Yeah. Um so um you could think about all the subtle coordination games we play every time we have a conversation. So there's the volume game. I could either talk too loudly and frighten you, or talk too softly and you won't hear me, um, or talk at the right volume and we could successfully have a conversation. Right. And they're there are mix-ups just in terms of the volume of my voice. Um and there's the pacing game. If I talk too quickly, then you won't understand what I'm saying, you won't follow me. If I talk too slowly, I might bore you, uh, I might I might look dim-witted. And so there's the sweet spot where I can't talk too fast, can't talk too slow, right?

Um and then there's the uh the gesture game. Um if I just I'm totally motionless and expressionless uh when I'm talking, then you're you're going to fail to detect uh what I'm saying. Uh you're going to fail to detect the emotional undercurrents, you're going to uh miss what I'm referring to if I'm not pointing to it. But if I am wildly flailing my arms around, or if I'm like contorting my face in exaggerated grimaces, then that's not good either because I could, you know, um overstate the magnitude of the emotional undercurrents and mislead you about how excited I am or how uh uh uh angry I am or whatever. I might, you know, if I'm flailing my arms, I might hit you, and you might mistake that for

aggression. So there are mix-ups involving just uh gesturing and emotional communication and facial expressions. Um there are mix-ups surrounding proximity. If I stand too close to you, you might interpret that as threatening or romantic. If I stand too far away, you might think that I'm like grossed out by you or afraid of you. And so there's another, there's the sweet spot where I have to be just right. And if I get it wrong, then we're going to be you know discoordinated. Um there's the the tone game. If I speak in an overly monotone way, the emotional undercurrents are going to be lost. Um if I speak in an overly sing-song-y way, again, you're going to uh uh it's gonna be exaggerate the emotional undercurrents that might distract you from the words themselves.

Um There's the timing game. If I respond too quickly to what you say, I might like accidentally interrupt you and you might interpret that as hostile. Right. If I respond too slowly, I might appear like I'm distracted or I'm I'm dim witted. Right. And so they're all these really subtle micro coordination games we play every time we have any kind of conversation or social interaction. Right. And these type these micro mix ups, this is the toolkit of the comedic actor, right? You could think of Jim Carrey, the exaggerated clownishness, how he contorts his face and these crazy facial expressions. And you know, he he's so physical, and like his his um his gestures are so temptingly out of sync with like a normal gesture.

His facial expressions are just like a little bit too much, you know. From uh he uh you know he might be too close, he might like put his arm around the Dalai Lama like he's one of the like he's a frat bro, you know. Right. Uh um or like Charles Groden, who is just like totally monotone in his voice and his delivery. Um, or or you you might accentuate the punch of a punchline by um sort of uh uh being temptingly out of sync with the normal rhythms of a conversation. Or you might uh be smoothly in sync with the normal rhythms of a conversation in a way that allows a whopping absurdity to casually slip out. And that might accentuate, you might might create another mix-up where there's a mix-up between the shock of the information that is being delivered and the nonchalance with which

it is being delivered. So I think uh like Saster Sasha uh Baron Cohen, like Oli G would be a good example of that, like very smooth, but then saying outrageous stuff. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so it really is like there's a lot of comedy just simply in the delivery of the joke, um apart from the joke itself. Right. Um and I and I think the the theory can make really interesting and textured predictions about that. Yeah. Yeah. I have nothing to say. Yeah. Um uh yeah super cool. Mm-hmm. Cool. I mean I think that's that's uh about I mean there's another thing. One more thing. Yeah, please. Evil laughs. This is another thing that occurred to me. Um the mwahaha of the supervillain. Yes, yes. Um, there's this horror movie called Smile where it's just all about these people with

creepy smiles. Yeah. Right. And it's like really scary. And and and just like some people really dislike um clowns. Um, this is something when we were back at the uh infant lab at Yale, we talked to Kylie Hamlin about, and I think she went on a podcast soon after we were and was like somebody asked her, because she does the infant morality work, and somebody was asking about like why do people dislike um like clowns for some reason? And like we had talked about this like a few weeks before. But yeah, no, this idea of like you can't predict um, or it's sort of like uh it's really like clowns, scary clowns are really scary because there's just like smile affixed to this scary agent, right? Like that's like extra scary, right?

Totally. But you know, it it's hard to interact with scary. No worries, no. I mean you can begin to make sense of why clowns are scary and why smiles can in some contexts be scary, uh, once you understand the adaptive function of mirth. So if the function of mirth is to deactivate emotions that process costs, then if you're in a state of mirth, you're gonna be a really menacing and dangerous person. Right. So it's gonna it may deactivate your fear, causing you or enabling you to attack other people without any fear of retaliation. Right. It may deactivate your empathy. So if you hurt someone, you won't feel their pain. Right. Or you won't feel guilty. Um it uh it may um make you impossible to threaten or intimidate or deter because

you're not going to be able to process the costs that are being threatened. Um if someone is angry with you, they won't be able to negotiate with you for better treatment. Right. Because such negotiation requires real or hypothetical costs that that you'll just be unable to process. You know, like like the Joker, I know Morgan Freeman says in in Batman, you know, the Joker cannot be bought, bartered, or negotiated with. Yeah. Right. I think it's because he's in a state of mirth. He can't take anything seriously. And there's something really scary about that, that you there's nothing you can do to negotiate with or deter a mirthful person. And they're gonna feel no emotion, they're gonna feel no compunctions about harming you in

any way. It's all a joke. Um and so there's something really scary about being someone being with someone in a mirthful state that and and when you're not sharing that mercyful state. That's really interesting. There the uh the Quentin Tarantino and Glorious Bastards, there's a character Christopher Waltz did. Um the the I think he was an SS uh officer, and he's just sort of charming and very funny, right? And it's really scary, and it's he's really charismatic, and it's really um I I think it's one of the most um insidious characters I've ever seen. And I think it's exactly, or or maybe partially at least, because there's sort of a sense of humor, and there's so much, there's so much sort of sobriety and so cognizant.

It's not like you're you're looking at somebody. I think like what you're saying is like there's a difference between somebody who's about to do something terrible, and you can tell they're fighting it within themselves. Like they're like terrified, they're shaking, they're scared. Yeah. And and but they're about to inflict a cost on somebody versus somebody who is like composed, cool to the point of being slick and laughing. Right. Like if they're doing the same thing and one of the like one of those is much scarier than the other. Um yeah. Totally. Yeah. So yeah. Mirth mirth is menacing. Yeah. Good good I mean good book to me. I mean, I would rather I mean I I think it's way less scary if someone's mad at you, or

even if they're yelling at you, than if someone is mirthful in a in a hostile way toward you. Because at least if they're mad, you there's the the possibility of negotiating with them, of apologizing, of making amends, right? Of of of catering to their demands, of doing something. But with a mirthful inter individual, you can't do anything. Right. They're just this train that's moving towards you that's in insensitive to any costs you could inflict on them. Yeah. It's sort of it's interesting. There's sort of a trope of like the crazy person, what are they doing? Right. Yeah. And they're typically laughing. Yeah. Uncontrollably. Like I mean it's a trope and I'm sure it came from somewhere in you.

But yeah, no, exactly. Like there's a um the the kind of uncontrollable laughter or laughing at the wrong times yeah or when when somebody is like imposing costs on people like if somebody's holding somebody hostage and they're laughing maniacally that's super scary right yeah totally yeah um all right so where um uh so what's the bottom well one one last question then is that or maybe not last but um uh the the idea of humor is sort of like people being funny sort of feels like um i'm just imagining like for example like scientists who I know who are very serious versus who are very funny. And um if I equate them for like, you know, they're are they serious scientists in this sense of like they're really good scientists.

Um but one are one person's funny and one isn't like they're some of the best scientists I have ever known are also funny people, and they will like, you know, make be funny about things. I don't think they're funny about well, I don't know, they're not funny about the science. Um, but uh I don't know, but I'm I'm just sort of thinking out loud, like what's the um it almost feels like the difference for me of like people who are funny versus not they're sort of like they're helping me in a way, or they're affiliative and I just like them more than somebody who's very serious. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. I mean, well, there are a number of benefits to affiliating with funny people. I mean, number one, they're gonna you're gonna have an easier time coordinating with them.

Number two, they're going to alert you to potentially costly mix-ups that you might have otherwise blundered into. So they're providing you with useful information, a useful kind of service. And number three, they're likely to share a lot of uh cultural and background knowledge with you. Like if you get their jokes, then you're playing the same status game as them. Um you you have the same uh beliefs, uh opinions, norms, values. Um, and so that's signaling that they're particularly good uh uh social partner with you they're they're particularly sympatico. Um so there are a lot of lot of reasons why we're attracted to funny people. Um and in even you know in a scientific context, I know we're you know we're gonna have Dan

Sneezer on um in in a in a future episode. There's there's a joke that he tells that I've I can't stop telling this joke where he says um Sorry we're about to spoil a little bit. We're spoiler your joke. Uh but I fully credit him with this with this brilliant joke. So every time um there is like a gap in the in the scientific literature or there's uncertainty or we need we need to know more, he always says, um, well, uh uh yeah, uh more more funding is needed. Yes, exactly. More funding is yes. What's great about this joke is so everyone in academia always uses this phrase, more research is needed. And it's this really like mealy-mouthed, like passive voice way of saying I need money. You know?

Exactly. And what what's funny about the sneezer joke is that he's mixing up the um the overt with with the uh the covert, right? Like so overtly you say more research is needed, but covertly you really mean I I need more money. And so what's funny is that Sneezer is mixing up the two, and he's saying more funding is needed. Yes. Uh And uh it's a lovely joke. I always say that whenever you're not sure. No, it's really funny. And it even does it, like even if people do say more funding is needed, they'll often try to couch it in a way that's sort of like, oh, and I just backed into the corner of I guess it would be good for more funding to exist. You know, it's not like it's not opportunistic.

And Daniel's just like his nonverbals are sort of like, here's another chance for me to say more funding is needed. Right. So it it it fills away the the the pantomime of sort of like, you know, I'm not looking for opportunities where I can ask for more resources. Yeah. Yeah. So um but yeah, one one of the many reasons I I like hanging out with uh Sneezer. Yeah. Uh good. Um is there anything I should have asked you, David? Oh. I think we covered just about everything. I mean, we got to m mirth, embarrassment, evil laughs. Um oh we absurdism. We didn't get to absurdism. One final piece. I I'm constantly discovering new implications and new w ways of understanding things that I hadn't understood before, but I think I'm starting to understand absurdism a little better.

Um so So this the the urinal is art? Is that absurdism or potentially. So uh the theory entails that we laugh to sort of diffuse and nullify the costs of these of mix-ups that are occurring. But the theory doesn't really entail that we always have to pinpoint exactly what was mixed up with what. Um it's certainly helpful to figure that out, and we often do, but it's not strictly necessary. All that is necessary is that the costs of the mix-up, whatever their source, whatever the cause of them are, are nullified. And whoever was mixed up just stops doing whatever foolish thing they were doing. Right. So we don't need to know exactly the the source of it. We just need to know that something someone was mixed up about something.

We're going to signal that and we're going to try to diffuse the costs so that they stop doing that foolish thing. Um and you could think of that as um absurdist humor where you know that that the that something's off, that they're confused about something you're not quite sure what it is, but you know that that there's been a mix-up and you can laugh to signal that a mix-up has taken place. Um so um there's uh there's a great joke from Arrest Development where the attorney thinks that um a husband and wife cannot be accused of the same crime. Right. That's great. I love yeah which is a really really um and so it's actually it's so it's a mix-up with um uh a legal term called spousal testimonial privilege.

So it's where uh a husband cannot be forced to testify against his wife, right? Which is sort of temptingly similar to a husband and wife cannot be accused of the same crime, but uh very, very different and very costly to make that mistake. Um what but what's interesting is that even if if you have never heard of spousal testimonial privilege, you can you're you'd still be on solid ground in inferring that the the idiotic lawyer was mixed up about something. Yeah. And you could just appreciate the absurdity of him having this uh ridiculous belief. So you don't always need to know exactly what was mixed up with what in order to find the absurdity humorous. Right. Um and so that's that's the idea there.

Um and my favorite example of absurdity um is from the movie uh naked gun, two and a half. Okay. Uh uh and the title two and a half is itself a kind of absurdity. It's like a kind of mix up about how sequel numbers work. Like you can't you can't have half of a sequel. Um and uh what what's great is that um so it's the opening m credits, and usually the the opening credits, the purpose of it is just you know set the tone. Right. And you know, it starts with like he's driving down the streets and in his police car, and there's like jazzy music play playing, and it's like it's setting the tone for a for a noir film. Right. Um and then uh the montage transitions to him uh in his police car driving through a

bullfighting arena and then bumping into a series of bumper cars and then driving down a bowling lane and knocking down the pins. And then it concludes with him emerging from a woman's birth canal. Right. And you you know that like some something is deeply mixed up here. They've mixed a lot of things. Yeah. There's some kind of deep confusion happening. Maybe it's about you know the purpose of an opening credit sequence. Maybe they're confused about what kind of genre noir is, or where police cars are permitted to drive, or how large police cars are, or where they come from. Right. Like there's there's some deep confusion here. You don't need to know necessarily exactly right the source of the confusion to to just to

get that it's funny and to laugh. Yeah, like the Monty Python silly walk would be another example. Like it's just absurd. I wonder if that's like a category for like there's so much going on. I mean, maybe this is what you're saying. Like, there's so much going on here that it's this category of like it's overdetermined what mix-ups are happening. Yeah. Right. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Um interesting. Um really quickly, so why does some humor a not age well? So like old comedy from like the 60s or 70s about race or gender stuff. Um, you know, what what's up with that? Yeah. So um if if humor is about coordination games and mix-ups, um, and culture itself uh is just a huge number of coordination games and and equilibria that we have

coordinated on, well then uh comedy is going to be culturally relative, right? What w what counts as a mix-up in one culture is going to be different from what counts as a mix-up in another culture. What counts as a mix-up in one language is obviously going to be to be different from a mix-up in another language. And we use different sounds to mean different things, there they're going to be different sources of confusion, different sources of mix ups. Right. If the grammar is different, you might have different, you know, hot spots of confusion where you misinterpret the meaning of w of what a person says. So linguistically you're going to have different uh y cultural differences, um uh in terms

of like social status and the status games that are being played in the culture and what is what is normative, what is um permitted, what is forbidden. These things are gonna vary culturally. And you know, the the the politics are gonna vary culturally. So what what stuff have we agreed to take seriously and to and to mark as like a no-mirth zone? And what stuff are we uh permitted to laugh about and to joke about? Like that is also culturally relative, and that depends on which political battles are being won by by which side. Uh and so I don't think it's a coincidence that comedy ages more poorly than drama, because drama deals with just basic human conflicts. And you know, you can read a a play, you know, from you know uh uh ancient Athens and and

still you know feel moved by the plight of of you know the the conflicts that are being experienced. Um but you know a comedy from you know 20 years ago will make you cringe because culture culture changes so quickly. And so I do think the theory predicts a lot of cultural variation in what is considered funny. And it predicts that that comedy will age poorly in some cases. There are some universal aspects of comedy that you might be able to predict. Like every culture has to has different social roles relating to gender and age. That's a mix-up that's probably going to be culturally universal. Right. Or potty humor. Yes, catalogs. Potty humor. Yeah. Or sexual. Yeah, like kind of discuss like the universal things.

But the so like what you're saying is like so like the idea that like, you know, the doctor is a woman, right? Like that's funny, right? Like, no, that's not funny at all. And so the idea that like somebody thinks that that's funny because it's a mix-up or it violates our expectations, it's it's depending on uh a set of expectations that we no longer hold, or if somebody held it, we'd be like, dude, that person's like an asshole. Not not that like that, oh, we're all in on this joke, right? So yeah, exactly. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. Um and then uh what's up with slapstick? Hmm. This one I have kind of a hard time with. I think I understand most of it. Um so uh part of it is just you know, a lot of uh uh physical

slapstick involves failures of two people coordinating. Right, like in the hall bumping into each other or I mean the hall, yeah. That's that would be an example of of slapstick where where there's like a physical coordination failure between two people. You can think of another example where like if we're passing a basketball back and forth and you know, we've coordinated on the fact that we're both looking at each other, then I get distracted by like a pretty woman in the bleachers and this hall hits me in the face. And hits me in the face. Like that would be a slapstick where we've failed to coordinate on what we're supposed to be doing when we're passing the ball. Especially if you don't get hurt.

Like I think if you like sprouted sp sprouted blood. I mean, I think there's like the extreme version where it's like the Monty Python holy grail thing where like blood is spurting, but it's sort of due to like something like a rabbit, you know. I don't know. But but anyway, I'll let yeah, yeah. Yeah. So there's like another disconnect. There's sort of a disconnect between um the infliction and the um uh like what you would expect, you know, like your slapstick where so yeah, well sorry, I'm kind of getting ahead, but like, you know, for slapstick is the idea that like it's a mix up like you think the person might be hurt but they're really not, or they make a mistake physically but they're still okay.

So it's sort of a lower class thing. Yeah. I think that's that's my hunch about what's going on with slapstick. I my hunch is that the funniest kinds of slapstick will be things that uh really look like the person got seriously hurt. And like you're really tempted to think that they like really hurt themselves, but then you quickly realize that they're okay. Right. Right. And so there's like this this really strong potential for a mix up of you know overestimating how seriously the person was injured and like rushing in to like, you know, saw off their their their leg or whatever to amputate and they're they're totally fine. Like so that's a core so every time someone gets injured, we all have to coordinate on how

seriously to take this injury and like how severe the injury was, what its magnitude was, what we should do. And there you could imagine coordination failures surrounding how seriously to take an injury or how badly someone was injured. So if someone suddenly drops to the floor very quickly, in most cases, that's that's because something terrible has happened. Maybe they got maybe they got shot, maybe they they got hit by a projectile, maybe they had like a heart attack, whatever. Like m in most cases it's gonna be really bad. But if you then you see that it was just a banana peel. Right. Then all of a sudden the mix-up is resolved and you can have a good laugh about it. They're okay. And so that that might be what's going on.

Yeah. Another part of it was alluded to in um how the mind works, Stephen Pinker's book, where it might be that we're um we're coordinating on like what categories to to place people in, and then we could either think of a person as like a locus of thoughts and feelings and and desires, like a locus of consciousness. Right. Um we could we could use our our theory of mind system. We've talked about theory of mind a lot, or we could just see them as a hunk of matter obeying the laws of physics. Right. Right. Um and it may be that um when a person like slips on a banana peel, the the frame shifts from viewing them as a locus of of consciousness to a physical object, to a hunk of matter. Right. You know, that that's obeying the law of gravity.

Yeah, and the switch between those two frames could elicit a kind of you know mix up uh detection. Exactly. So if your wife walked in right now and started treating you like a bookshelf where she just started piling books on you and we were still trying to still have a conversation, it would kind of be funny because this juxtaposition of like treating you like a a a device to hold books versus you know a sentient talking human being. Yeah. Right. Or if I'm on the on the floor like you know uh wiping something up and she puts her feet on me like I'm a foot rest, you know. Exactly. Yes. Uh yeah. So there there's humor there about like how how what frame how we should treat a person as like a physical object or you know, a a human being.

Um and so that could also be what's what's going on. So I think there could be multiple things going on. Yeah. And there's also the Looney Tune trope of sort of like, you know, you're like, there's like really aggressive violence, but then it's sort of like silly consequences, right? So it's sort of like you hit them with a you hit somebody over the head with like a mallet, and there's just like little like a bump comes up and like little birds. Right. And the person just shakes it off. And I don't know if that's like funny, or maybe it like, you know, but there's this um, yeah, it's sort of funny, or like at least it's sort of treated as like puerile or like infantile or young humor. Like there's an old Simpsons episode where they make um films, and like I think

Krusty the Clown, who's sort of you know the clown who's supposed to he makes like a really heartfelt movie, like short film, and then it gets edited over to throwing a football into somebody's groin, you know? And everybody's laughing about the football. And it's sort of this take on uh people's sense of humor. People it's just the lowest common lowbrow humor, right? Like slaps the lowbrow. Um and totally uh yeah. I don't know. What do you think about that? Or like Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, it reminds me of uh the the joke from Idiocracy, which is a really funny movie I recommend. Um, where uh you know it's a future dystopia where everyone's stupid. Um and like the highest grossing movie is called ass and it's just

and it's just two hours of an ass that occasionally farts. And like and and and like the best the like most popular show is called Ow My Balls. Exactly. No, that's exactly right, exactly. And that's just like a tagline. Yeah. Yeah. You just go through your day. Yes. But it is funny. Like, right? It is funny. Farts are funny, getting hit in the balls is funny. Yeah. And it's also like there's but it's also funny to find that funny. It's like you're mixed up about what you what you should be laughing at, what you should be finding funny. You know? So there's like a mix up layered on top of it. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's very human to find uh find slapstick hu humor. But I do think your theory explains it more than, for example, like I don't think the um

the cryptic theory of humor would explain the slapstick as well. Um like I think the mix-up is better um at doing that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and part of it might be with you know the comic timing element. So like um, you know, just moving your body in a rhythmically funny way. You know, it could just be it's subtly violating people's expectations about how your body should be moving or how you should be gesturing. Um there there could be mix-ups surrounding that. Um I'm uh or even just like music or dancing. Like dancing is a coordination game. You have to coordinate with the musicians to dance on the beat that they're they're setting for you. So Elaine Bennis, yeah, exactly. Yes, the Elaine Bennis, yeah, spasmodic dancing is very funny.

It's really funny. Yeah. She's like almost dancing. She's like sort of doing some of the things that dancing entails. But uh but getting some things wildly wrong, and it's very funny. Yes. I have to say I'm kind of like reluctant to convey this, but I think I should because I remember I was once sitting in a talk of somebody who was conveying the cryptic theory of humor. And somebody like very like earnestly and like seriously was like, you know, well, what about slapstick? And, you know, the person thought about it for a second and they were like, That's not humor. And and we thought that was kind of actually a funny response, right? Like at least they were, but like the the idea was like, you know, that's slapstick isn't

funny. I mean, so yeah. That is itself funny. Exactly. Yes. Exactly. The overconfidence. Yes. But um. But anyway, well, David, uh, thank you. I hope this was a uh um a mirth. I feel better. I feel better after the conversation. Whatever whatever cocktail of hormones are caused by talking about or laughing a bit, this this was great. Yeah. Totally. Thank you. Awesome. Yeah. I had a great time. Uh yeah. So um stay tuned for the next um non-funny episode. Yeah. Or hopefully we'll be a little bit funny at at times. We'll we'll maybe make some bad dad jokes. Or we can just talk about uh I'm not even gonna talk about how my balls that's that's we'll cut that out. So all right David, thank you so much.

That was great. Yep. Okay. But uh David, we just finished up uh an episode where um you talked for a while so I'll give you a break and say that if you're listening, please subscribe. Please leave a review. We may start reading our reviews. Also, if you have a suggestion about what we should talk about or who we should have on, we will either take that advice or not. But you know, it it only hurts if you only get uh you get zero percent of the things you don't ask for. I don't know if that's the correct way to say that, but that is a coherent way to say it. Is there a different way to say that? Um ask not and ye shall not receive. Uh that was a double negative. But isn't there something like you only get you only get you know, you you get

you don't you you miss the shots you don't take. Yeah. I hate qu can I just say like there's just this whole category of like really tepid vanilla quotes I just hate. Uh yeah. We should do an episode on quotes where we just read quotes from quotes.com. Yeah. I do just talk about how why is it so lame? I think the evolutionary psychology of quotes. Maybe we should have a whole episode. Yeah, that's great. Why did we why did our cavemen ancestors evolve to take quotes from other people? Well, because if you if you're painting on a cave, you uh it's takes a really long time to write out something longer, but a short quote gives you enough time to go forage and hunt and you know make sure you're you're not away so long and uh and

quotes are sexy and you might get some reproductive success. Nailed it. Yeah. Science. And you can also sharpen your stick for poking at critters uh by you know the charcoal you're writing your poem with. Beautiful. Yeah. Thanks. I'll be here all day. Um yeah, and yeah. Good. All right. Well, anyway, on that on that note, um uh we're doing good ebb psych. And that was a joke in case nobody's clear about it. we were kidding. That's not good at evolutionary psychology. Yeah, yeah. So although seriously, I would love to shoot on some quotes. Okay, sure. Well let's do that. Okay. All right. Thanks for listening. Uh we'll have the next episode next Tuesday.