WEBVTT

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

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Uh why don't you start?

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Okay.

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Uh let me think.

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You for did you forget your lines?

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

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

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

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

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

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intro.

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

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

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couldn't remember the line by actual evolutionary psychologists.

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

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Yeah.

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No, no, no.

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

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

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So so I just waited longer and longer.

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

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that I had forgotten.

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

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So Okay.

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

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

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Actual evolutionary psychology.

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By actual evolutionary psychologists.

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I can't believe that.

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We nailed it.

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I couldn't think of that.

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Nailed it.

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So yeah.

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Excellent.

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Okay.

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

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Have you ever heard of him?

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I've never heard of him.

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I don't know who he is.

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

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

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making mistakes and why um that was sort of funny.

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Okay.

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

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find it pretty puzzling.

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

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

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Why it wasn't funny, exactly.

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Okay.

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Okay.

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

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

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which I think is really, uh, really amazing.

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

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digested by David.

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

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humor than before.

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

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Yeah, I'm really excited about it.

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

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That's high praise.

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Uh yeah.

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So enjoy uh the mix up theory of humor.

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Sounds good.

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You can pay me uh once the uh music starts.

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

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else.

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

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I know.

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

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

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um, we're sorry to disappoint you.

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

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

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

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my first thought is like this talk better be funny.

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Um or uh and typically they're not.

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

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So can you tell me a little bit?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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sort of had a running tally.

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

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And I feel like your your theory nails it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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draw a blank.

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Like that really, really motivates me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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human experience?

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

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I just can't figure it out.

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And so uh Can I interrupt really quick?

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Yeah, yeah.

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

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

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

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psychologist.

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

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It's true.

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

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

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

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people laugh.

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Right.

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

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professional and in my academic life.

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Right.

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

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

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

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Um I don't know.

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

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I I at least I gave it a try.

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Yeah.

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Um actually not even that act.

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

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It was like I was reading something else.

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

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

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common knowledge.

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Light reading, light reading.

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Yeah.

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

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I know, yeah.

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

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

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topics in evolutionary psychology.

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

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

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such a simple but also sort of abstract idea.

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Can you just sort of clarify what coordination is?

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

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

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Yeah.

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So you can f uh mathematically formalize it as um you

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know.

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Oh we just lost we just lost 10 more listeners.

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Okay.

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So all right.

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

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Yes, I'm kidding.

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Okay.

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

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I promise you'll be able to follow it.

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

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and you have two options.

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

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

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

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That's that's it.

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

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I see.

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

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

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fine.

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

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

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That's right.

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

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are two different equilibria in game theory.

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

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equilibrium or do something different and gain an advantage.

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

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it.

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

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

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equilibrium.

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Um it doesn't really matter.

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

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some way.

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

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

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You could think of that as a coordination failure.

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

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So coordination.

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

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I feel very targeted.

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Yeah.

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We're very bad coordination partners.

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Uh but no coordination is really hard.

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

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

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

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And we can get into awkwardness later.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Yeah.

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

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effectively coordinate with someone for mutual benefit.

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

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

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

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

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I think that's ultimately what vibing is like.

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

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jokes.

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Um, so that's that's coordination.

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

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

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it's doing a complimentary thing.

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

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while the other follows, following while the other leads.

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

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

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Right.

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

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they're positive some.

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

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Sounds like a challenge.

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Yeah.

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

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

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more dangerous driving environment.

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

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

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

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Right.

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

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That's another important feature of coordination games.

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

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common knowledge.

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

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

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should be awesome.

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Uh, I think it's a really understudied and hugely important topic.

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

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everyone knows something.

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So if we're going to coordinate for mutual benefit, uh, I need to know what to

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do in order to gain the mutual benefit, right?

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But I also need to know that you know what to do.

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Otherwise, I shouldn't do it because you might not do the same thing, right?

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Or do the complimentary thing.

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Uh, which means that um I need to know that you know that I know what to do, because then I

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can't count on you to uh coordinate with me.

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So we basically we need to know that the other one knows, that the other one knows, and so

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on, what to do in order to work together and and smoothly coordinate.

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Right.

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The episode with Michael Moncrief.

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Uh Michael Moncrief.

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Hey Michael, um is uh was a lovely example of that.

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We're in the um east, east of the um the Berlin Wall.

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Um was it in Poland or something?

00:14:07.770 --> 00:14:09.130
It doesn't, the details don't really matter.

00:14:09.210 --> 00:14:15.050
But it was this radio free um Europe was on, and it was they told people to flicker

00:14:15.210 --> 00:14:19.850
their lights in this small village if they're listening and they're sort of not happy with

00:14:19.850 --> 00:14:20.970
the current regime.

00:14:21.130 --> 00:14:23.050
And all of a sudden, all these lights were flickering.

00:14:23.290 --> 00:14:28.810
And Michael conveyed that, you know, a couple of days later was you know the beginning of

00:14:28.810 --> 00:14:31.700
the end of that uh of the iron curtain, basically.

00:14:31.780 --> 00:14:37.380
And the idea was that there were lots of people, maybe who knew other people who were not

00:14:37.380 --> 00:14:37.860
happy.

00:14:38.100 --> 00:14:42.900
Maybe they were not happy too, but it became a thing of everyone could see that everyone

00:14:42.900 --> 00:14:43.780
else could see.

00:14:44.020 --> 00:14:49.700
And so this function of sort of I know that you know that I know.

00:14:49.860 --> 00:14:55.780
It sounds jargony, but it's this difference between um understanding, as you

00:14:55.780 --> 00:15:01.590
put it, that we'll both be we both represent that each other are we're all we're both a

00:15:01.590 --> 00:15:05.830
team and we're gonna work together versus just knowing that we might be just sort of ships

00:15:05.990 --> 00:15:09.830
maybe usually passing the night but we just happen to be going in the same direction but I

00:15:09.830 --> 00:15:12.150
don't know that you know that I'm doing the same thing.

00:15:12.310 --> 00:15:16.790
So I can't rely on you to sort of be my partner, quote unquote.

00:15:16.950 --> 00:15:17.350
Yeah.

00:15:17.670 --> 00:15:17.910
Right.

00:15:17.990 --> 00:15:18.230
Yeah.

00:15:18.310 --> 00:15:23.430
So with with the Moncrief example, uh we might all have private knowledge that the regime

00:15:23.430 --> 00:15:23.910
sucks.

00:15:24.070 --> 00:15:28.380
And we might have private knowledge that other people are are unhappy with the regime.

00:15:28.860 --> 00:15:34.460
But we might not know that other people know that that the regime sucks or that we hate the

00:15:34.460 --> 00:15:34.700
regime.

00:15:34.780 --> 00:15:37.660
We might not know that other people know that that we are dissatisfied.

00:15:37.820 --> 00:15:43.020
We might not know that they know that we know that they know that they're dissatisfied.

00:15:43.180 --> 00:15:47.020
And if we want to mount an effective rebellion or resistance, we need common knowledge.

00:15:47.100 --> 00:15:51.260
We need to know that if we're going to resist or overthrow the regime, that other people

00:15:51.260 --> 00:15:52.940
are going to have our backs.

00:15:53.500 --> 00:15:57.430
And in order to rally that kind of movement, you need common knowledge.

00:15:57.590 --> 00:15:57.750
Yeah.

00:15:57.830 --> 00:16:02.390
Um, really quick, really quick, sorry to interrupt, but I also wonder just as another

00:16:02.390 --> 00:16:07.270
callback to a different episode, um, I also wonder if the loneliness, feeling people

00:16:07.270 --> 00:16:11.110
feeling lonely is a a lack of co feeling like there's common knowledge.

00:16:11.350 --> 00:16:14.390
Um that would be a really interesting thing to look at, I think.

00:16:14.470 --> 00:16:19.520
Like just sort of to what extent do you feel like there's common knowledge uh in especially

00:16:19.520 --> 00:16:25.280
in a mass uh media environment, you're really not getting cues of common knowledge that

00:16:25.360 --> 00:16:28.880
nobody knows what I think, or nobody cares what I think.

00:16:29.040 --> 00:16:35.040
Um, I wonder if a lot of social media or just weird stuff people do online is this sort of

00:16:35.040 --> 00:16:40.320
weird klugey attempt to sort of create common knowledge, given that we're sort of getting

00:16:40.320 --> 00:16:46.150
super stimuli of one-sided, we're getting a lot of inundation about epistemic

00:16:46.150 --> 00:16:52.150
or information cues, but we're not getting um you're not being seen and you're

00:16:52.150 --> 00:16:54.070
not getting cues of common knowledge.

00:16:54.470 --> 00:16:54.710
Yeah.

00:16:54.790 --> 00:16:56.550
No, that's a really interesting hypothesis.

00:16:56.630 --> 00:16:58.070
I I buy that completely.

00:16:58.150 --> 00:17:01.190
And and I I think it it also ties into your work with groups.

00:17:01.350 --> 00:17:04.400
I think you need group you need common knowledge to have a group.

00:17:04.560 --> 00:17:07.680
Because we all need to know that everyone knows that everyone knows that we're in this

00:17:07.680 --> 00:17:09.520
group and these people are not in this group.

00:17:09.680 --> 00:17:13.120
Without that common knowledge, the whole concept of a group shatters.

00:17:13.440 --> 00:17:17.520
You cannot maintain a group without common knowledge that that there is the group.

00:17:17.600 --> 00:17:20.080
It's a it's a construction of our of our minds.

00:17:20.160 --> 00:17:21.040
Um, this group.

00:17:21.200 --> 00:17:25.840
I mean, there there's no in intrinsic difference between, say, you know, the the Mets and

00:17:25.840 --> 00:17:27.600
the Yankees or whatever.

00:17:27.760 --> 00:17:31.440
It's you know, we've all agreed and agreed that everyone else agrees that these are two

00:17:31.440 --> 00:17:32.480
different groups.

00:17:32.720 --> 00:17:32.960
Right.

00:17:33.040 --> 00:17:34.290
Um it's like money.

00:17:34.450 --> 00:17:35.170
It's just a court.

00:17:35.330 --> 00:17:36.290
Yeah, it's just yeah.

00:17:36.770 --> 00:17:37.010
Exactly.

00:17:37.250 --> 00:17:37.650
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:17:37.810 --> 00:17:37.970
Yeah.

00:17:38.050 --> 00:17:38.610
No, that's right.

00:17:38.690 --> 00:17:42.930
And so a lot of weird, even like moral outrage stuff and probably a lot of the the the

00:17:42.930 --> 00:17:47.650
terrible things people do online, it might be a weird attempt to sort of create that.

00:17:47.810 --> 00:17:53.490
So if you had if the the the emotion of lack of sort of um uh common

00:17:53.490 --> 00:17:56.530
knowledge might be a really interesting research topic.

00:17:56.900 --> 00:17:58.020
Yeah, no, I I fully agree.

00:17:58.100 --> 00:17:58.980
That would be cool to look at.

00:17:59.780 --> 00:18:01.060
Sorry, digression done.

00:18:01.140 --> 00:18:06.420
So we've got coordination, common knowledge under our belts into this idea of humor.

00:18:06.820 --> 00:18:07.140
Okay.

00:18:07.460 --> 00:18:13.380
Um so i you really cannot overstate the importance of coordination to the

00:18:13.380 --> 00:18:14.420
human experience.

00:18:14.660 --> 00:18:18.420
It's the water we swim in uh and we ought it's often invisible to us.

00:18:18.580 --> 00:18:21.700
So like what we're doing right now is playing a coordination game.

00:18:21.940 --> 00:18:27.890
Language itself is a massive coordination game where we have all agreed on which

00:18:27.890 --> 00:18:31.090
sounds correspond to which things in the world.

00:18:31.330 --> 00:18:35.970
It's kind of an unbelievably complicated coordination game that we're all playing and

00:18:35.970 --> 00:18:36.930
playing really well.

00:18:37.010 --> 00:18:42.450
It's it's phenomenal, like how smoothly we can communicate with each other and transmit

00:18:42.610 --> 00:18:47.180
subtle, complex ideas and representations from one head to another.

00:18:47.340 --> 00:18:50.220
It's miraculous when you think about how it works.

00:18:50.380 --> 00:18:53.340
But it is just a bunch of coordination games.

00:18:53.500 --> 00:18:57.100
Each word in our language is a coordination game.

00:18:57.260 --> 00:19:00.780
We have all coordinated on the fact that this word means this thing.

00:19:01.180 --> 00:19:05.420
Dog means the four-legged furry thing with the tail that's cute, right?

00:19:06.350 --> 00:19:12.350
Um, and so it's it's in in even, you know, culture, conventions, norms, even social

00:19:12.430 --> 00:19:16.350
status, I think, is ultimately uh in large part a coordination game.

00:19:16.510 --> 00:19:20.430
We all have to agree on who is high status and who's low status.

00:19:20.590 --> 00:19:24.510
And everyone has to know that everyone knows who's high status and who's low status.

00:19:24.590 --> 00:19:28.750
If I'm discoordinated with other people and I don't know who's high status and who's low

00:19:28.750 --> 00:19:34.270
status, and I suck up to and praise someone who's an incom a nincompoop or a social

00:19:34.510 --> 00:19:40.400
pariah, um, or if I insult and you know casually diss someone who's you know widely

00:19:40.400 --> 00:19:45.440
respected and venerated, that's gonna be really bad for me and my my social well-being.

00:19:45.520 --> 00:19:49.360
So I need to coordinate with everyone else on who's at the top, who's at the bottom, who's

00:19:49.360 --> 00:19:50.800
a good person, who's a bad person.

00:19:50.960 --> 00:19:54.960
If I'm mixed up with other people, that's gonna impose huge costs on me.

00:19:55.200 --> 00:19:55.760
Right.

00:19:56.160 --> 00:20:00.510
So that's a good segue into this idea of a mix-up.

00:20:01.310 --> 00:20:07.310
Um so uh if we're if coordination is the water we swim in, um, there is a

00:20:07.310 --> 00:20:09.950
difference between doing it well and doing it poorly.

00:20:10.190 --> 00:20:16.110
And one of the easiest ways to uh fail to coordinate is to be mixed up

00:20:16.110 --> 00:20:16.830
about something.

00:20:16.990 --> 00:20:22.190
And so the simplest example of this is when we look at the coordination game of language.

00:20:22.350 --> 00:20:26.750
So we've all agreed that you know these sounds correspond to these things, but what about

00:20:26.750 --> 00:20:31.560
the case of a homonym where you have a word that's, you know, two words that sound

00:20:31.800 --> 00:20:35.160
identical and yet mean different things?

00:20:35.720 --> 00:20:38.280
That those kinds of words are really dangerous.

00:20:38.440 --> 00:20:42.920
You could think of them as kind of hot spots where where mix-ups are likely to occur

00:20:43.080 --> 00:20:45.640
because it's really they're really easy to confuse.

00:20:45.880 --> 00:20:50.200
Um uh it's really easy to to bungle up these these these two meanings.

00:20:50.440 --> 00:20:52.360
Um so that's one example.

00:20:52.520 --> 00:20:57.950
So I might, you know, uh uh say one version of a homonym, and you might hear a different

00:20:57.950 --> 00:21:01.870
version, and that might cause us to catastrophically miscommunicate in some way.

00:21:02.030 --> 00:21:06.510
And so you could imagine that being a really strong selection pressure on our communicating

00:21:06.590 --> 00:21:12.030
collaborative ancestors to avoid those kinds of catastrophic uh miscommunications and to

00:21:12.030 --> 00:21:16.190
have mental machinery that can detect them and avoid them and signal when they've occurred

00:21:16.270 --> 00:21:21.550
so that we can diffuse their costs and continue uh collaborating in a mutually beneficial

00:21:21.550 --> 00:21:21.790
way.

00:21:22.030 --> 00:21:25.180
Um so homonyms would be one case of a mix up.

00:21:25.420 --> 00:21:30.620
You could mix up a high status person with a low status person as I discussed earlier.

00:21:31.180 --> 00:21:35.500
You could uh mix up, you know, uh the purpose of the rule.

00:21:35.980 --> 00:21:40.140
You could, you know, confuse the letter of the law for its spirit or the spirit of the law

00:21:40.140 --> 00:21:41.100
for its letter.

00:21:41.660 --> 00:21:43.180
You could mix up people.

00:21:43.370 --> 00:21:47.850
You know, a lot of comedy involves impersonating someone, making it easy to confuse them

00:21:47.850 --> 00:21:49.610
with the person they're impersonating.

00:21:49.930 --> 00:21:55.770
Shakespeare played a lot with mistaken identities and the hilarious

00:21:55.770 --> 00:21:59.290
consequences that can flow from mistaken identities.

00:22:00.490 --> 00:22:05.210
I mean, virtually any domain of human endeavor where we coordinate with one another,

00:22:05.290 --> 00:22:07.690
there's always the possibility of some kind of mix-up.

00:22:13.260 --> 00:22:13.660
Yeah, exactly.

00:22:13.740 --> 00:22:14.140
Yeah, yeah.

00:22:14.460 --> 00:22:18.540
So uh trying to pass each other in the hallway is one of the simplest coordination games we

00:22:18.540 --> 00:22:18.940
could play.

00:22:19.260 --> 00:22:23.500
We could either, you know, uh uh we we each have the the two choices of either going left

00:22:23.500 --> 00:22:23.900
or right.

00:22:24.060 --> 00:22:28.060
And if we go in the same direction, we bump into each other, and if we uh uh move in

00:22:28.060 --> 00:22:31.350
opposite directions, we pass each other and we gain a benefit.

00:22:31.510 --> 00:22:35.430
Um, and often when when we struggle to do that and we dance back and forth trying to pass

00:22:35.430 --> 00:22:36.550
each other, we laugh.

00:22:36.950 --> 00:22:39.750
And I think that especially if it's going on for a while.

00:22:39.830 --> 00:22:39.990
Yeah.

00:22:40.230 --> 00:22:40.390
Yeah.

00:22:40.470 --> 00:22:43.750
The the longer it goes on, the the more costly it is, and the more the more potentially

00:22:43.750 --> 00:22:44.390
costly it is.

00:22:44.470 --> 00:22:49.910
If we misinterpret this as a kind of hostile or romantic interaction, that could

00:22:49.910 --> 00:22:51.110
potentially be very costly.

00:22:51.190 --> 00:22:53.430
And so we need to signal we shouldn't take this seriously.

00:22:53.510 --> 00:22:55.110
This is just a misunderstanding.

00:22:55.600 --> 00:22:57.280
And so that's what laughter is signaling.

00:22:57.360 --> 00:23:02.080
It's diffusing these potential costs and these anticipated costs that could emerge from

00:23:02.080 --> 00:23:04.080
this failure to coordinate.

00:23:05.440 --> 00:23:07.920
So we can think about mix-ups in two ways.

00:23:08.080 --> 00:23:13.920
We can rank them based on how confusable they are, or how tempting they are, or how easy

00:23:13.920 --> 00:23:15.280
they are to fall prey to.

00:23:15.680 --> 00:23:20.290
It's it's it we don't really have an intuitive way we don't of describing this, but I do

00:23:20.290 --> 00:23:23.330
think it's really important, like how tempting the mistake is.

00:23:23.650 --> 00:23:29.330
So um to give the easiest example, um homonyms will have higher

00:23:29.330 --> 00:23:34.370
confusibility than any other random pair of words you take from the English lexicon.

00:23:34.610 --> 00:23:34.770
Right.

00:23:34.930 --> 00:23:39.600
Um so on the continuum of how uh e easy it is to fall prey to this mix-up.

00:23:39.840 --> 00:23:44.960
Homonyms would be at one extreme end of the continuum, and you know, couch and saxophone

00:23:44.960 --> 00:23:47.120
would be at another extreme end of the continuum.

00:23:47.200 --> 00:23:49.040
You're never gonna mix up couch and saxophone.

00:23:49.200 --> 00:23:49.280
Right.

00:23:49.520 --> 00:23:49.680
Right.

00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:55.440
Um and then there's an example here of uh, I'm not gonna name who it is, but somebody who

00:23:55.440 --> 00:24:01.360
is trying to speak a different language uh was describing that um they learned the word for

00:24:01.360 --> 00:24:06.720
hot, and uh um and in the language they were learning, um,

00:24:07.150 --> 00:24:07.390
hot.

00:24:07.710 --> 00:24:11.150
There's two versions of hot, and one means sort of temperature hot, the other one means

00:24:11.150 --> 00:24:11.790
horny.

00:24:12.190 --> 00:24:17.470
And so this person was like going to taxi cabs in this country and just sort of being like,

00:24:17.550 --> 00:24:18.270
How are you doing?

00:24:18.430 --> 00:24:20.030
And they were very proud of themselves.

00:24:20.270 --> 00:24:23.790
They were like getting on the taxi cam and they were just saying, like, um, you know, I'm

00:24:23.790 --> 00:24:26.750
okay, but you know, I'm really horny today, right?

00:24:26.990 --> 00:24:30.510
Uh, because uh, you know, they it was a hot day, right?

00:24:30.670 --> 00:24:36.160
So very, very proudly um uh and also another linguistic um uh

00:24:36.320 --> 00:24:42.160
mix-up was somebody was um and both of these are are true stories was um

00:24:42.400 --> 00:24:48.080
somebody was uh learning Italian, um she was German, and she was very proud of

00:24:48.080 --> 00:24:53.920
ordering um fish at a counter, but she was uh insistently saying, I am a tuna, um,

00:24:54.080 --> 00:24:56.080
instead of saying I'd like a tuna.

00:24:56.240 --> 00:24:59.760
So so examples of mix-up linguistically that are actually pretty funny.

00:24:59.840 --> 00:25:00.080
Yeah.

00:25:00.430 --> 00:25:00.590
Yeah.

00:25:00.830 --> 00:25:06.430
No, the example I use uh uh is um I had a uh a friend in college who spoke English as a

00:25:06.430 --> 00:25:11.630
second language and he thought that the phrase hook up with uh meant meet up with, which is

00:25:11.630 --> 00:25:13.470
kind of an understandable and tempting mix up.

00:25:14.670 --> 00:25:17.790
You could almost pull that off if you had enough context clues.

00:25:17.870 --> 00:25:17.950
Yeah.

00:25:18.270 --> 00:25:18.430
Right.

00:25:18.510 --> 00:25:21.950
But then when you say like I hooked up with a bunch of guys at Taco Bell last night, um

00:25:22.190 --> 00:25:23.950
that could that could potentially be funny.

00:25:24.100 --> 00:25:24.180
Yeah.

00:25:24.340 --> 00:25:24.500
Yeah.

00:25:24.580 --> 00:25:27.540
I mean and you know you could think about it like, you know, it's a it's kind of an

00:25:27.540 --> 00:25:28.340
understandable mix up.

00:25:28.420 --> 00:25:29.060
It's kinda tempting.

00:25:29.140 --> 00:25:30.260
And it's also really costly.

00:25:30.340 --> 00:25:34.820
Like it would severely damage my reputation if you thought that I had sex with a bunch of

00:25:34.820 --> 00:25:36.500
men at Taco Bell, right?

00:25:36.660 --> 00:25:37.220
Uh randomly.

00:25:37.700 --> 00:25:38.500
So um or not.

00:25:38.580 --> 00:25:40.980
May maybe maybe it would uh you know increase my standing.

00:25:41.380 --> 00:25:42.820
It would but it's a mix up, yeah, for sure.

00:25:43.780 --> 00:25:45.060
Nevertheless, it is a mix up.

00:25:45.380 --> 00:25:48.970
Um and and you could imagine um costs resulting from it.

00:25:49.130 --> 00:25:54.330
And you would expect natural selection to favor systems for detecting, anticipating,

00:25:54.490 --> 00:25:58.810
avoiding, and signaling these kinds of mix-ups because they're everywhere and the potential

00:25:58.810 --> 00:26:00.250
for them is everywhere.

00:26:01.370 --> 00:26:06.890
So confusability or temptingness, that's one dimension by which we could look at mix-ups.

00:26:07.690 --> 00:26:13.060
Mix-ups that are kind of tempting and understandable are going to, I think, be funnier than

00:26:13.060 --> 00:26:15.780
mix-ups that are not at all confusable or tempting, right?

00:26:16.740 --> 00:26:20.660
The more tempting they are, the more similar the two interpretations are, the two words

00:26:20.660 --> 00:26:25.540
are, the two roles are, the two people are, the two substances are, whatever, um, the

00:26:25.540 --> 00:26:26.420
funnier it's going to be.

00:26:26.660 --> 00:26:26.820
Yeah.

00:26:26.900 --> 00:26:32.740
And I think like good humorists then are people who actually will see confusability where

00:26:32.740 --> 00:26:33.620
people hadn't before.

00:26:33.700 --> 00:26:39.590
So, like an example I love is uh in the American version of the office, Steve Carell

00:26:39.830 --> 00:26:42.550
at a certain point, he's having financial troubles.

00:26:42.710 --> 00:26:48.630
Um, and he just like turns to the camera and he shouts, I declare bankruptcy.

00:26:49.110 --> 00:26:49.830
Uh right.

00:26:49.990 --> 00:26:55.190
And it's it's uh he declare, you know, he thought it was literally like you just yell

00:26:55.350 --> 00:26:56.310
bankruptcy.

00:26:56.470 --> 00:27:00.860
And and that that's the process of declaring bankruptcy, right?

00:27:00.940 --> 00:27:06.380
And so it's confusing declare for this, you know, bureaucratic, you know, um explaining the

00:27:06.380 --> 00:27:09.180
the humor, which is less funny, which which is actually interesting.

00:27:09.340 --> 00:27:14.380
Um but but yeah, but I I love that example of just like I shouting, I declare bankruptcy.

00:27:14.460 --> 00:27:14.780
Yeah.

00:27:15.180 --> 00:27:15.340
Yeah.

00:27:15.500 --> 00:27:16.780
No, that's that's a wonderful example.

00:27:16.940 --> 00:27:20.300
Um I so I'm going I'm in the process of trying to test some of these ideas empirically, and

00:27:20.300 --> 00:27:26.130
I'm trying to gather like short um jokes that I can like measure people's um you know

00:27:26.290 --> 00:27:27.330
perceptions of funniness.

00:27:27.410 --> 00:27:27.570
Right.

00:27:27.730 --> 00:27:31.250
I've been looking through old Mitch Hedberg stuff because I love Mitch Hedberg.

00:27:31.490 --> 00:27:33.490
Mitch Hedberg was so funny.

00:27:33.730 --> 00:27:33.890
Yeah.

00:27:34.210 --> 00:27:39.810
The the problem with him though is that um a lot of his jokes have multiple mix-ups layered

00:27:39.810 --> 00:27:44.210
into them, including mix-ups about the nature of comedy itself and like what the purpose of

00:27:44.210 --> 00:27:45.730
a joke is and what comedy should be.

00:27:46.130 --> 00:27:46.690
Which is really good.

00:27:46.770 --> 00:27:50.210
And we can get into because I think one thing I love about your theory and we I don't want

00:27:50.210 --> 00:27:54.840
to get too far ahead, but it also explains Andy Kaufman, which I don't think any theory of

00:27:54.840 --> 00:27:57.240
humor that I had heard of had had encountered.

00:27:57.320 --> 00:28:02.120
And even I I would argue the variability in people thinking Andy Kaufman isn't funny and is

00:28:02.120 --> 00:28:02.440
funny.

00:28:02.600 --> 00:28:02.840
Yeah.

00:28:03.240 --> 00:28:03.640
Yeah.

00:28:03.880 --> 00:28:08.200
So um I was I was looking at Mitch Hedberg, and I think also part of it um is is just his

00:28:08.200 --> 00:28:08.600
delivery.

00:28:08.760 --> 00:28:14.040
And we can talk about what you know what what what comic timing is and and uh and why comic

00:28:14.040 --> 00:28:17.560
timing can accentuate or uh uh the punchline of a joke.

00:28:17.800 --> 00:28:22.040
But I I remember I I came across one Mitch Headburg joke that just it had me laughing.

00:28:23.630 --> 00:28:26.430
Maybe late to some Mitch Headberg head headburgh, yes.

00:28:26.670 --> 00:28:29.230
Um so I I uh I can I can do my best impersonation.

00:28:29.630 --> 00:28:35.550
Yeah, it's hard to do yeah, it's hard to do this in uh I I think soccer is a combination no

00:28:35.630 --> 00:28:37.390
sorry I already screwed it up.

00:28:38.350 --> 00:28:39.390
Take two, take two.

00:28:39.630 --> 00:28:39.950
Take two.

00:28:40.110 --> 00:28:45.070
I think foosball is a combination of soccer and shish kebabs.

00:28:47.800 --> 00:28:53.400
He's like he's something about, you know, I play tennis and I'm pretty good at it, but I'll

00:28:53.400 --> 00:28:55.000
never be as good as a wall.

00:28:55.400 --> 00:28:56.760
Yes, that's another great one.

00:28:57.080 --> 00:28:58.840
That thing is relentless.

00:28:59.320 --> 00:29:00.440
Unbelievably funny.

00:29:00.600 --> 00:29:06.120
Uh and trying to like deconstruct why it's funny, like they're just so damn tempting, and

00:29:06.120 --> 00:29:10.770
you never would have thought, like, once you s think about foosball as soccer and shish

00:29:10.850 --> 00:29:12.450
kebabs, like you cannot unsee that.

00:29:12.530 --> 00:29:17.890
It's like such a tempting way and such a wrong way of understanding the game of foosball.

00:29:17.970 --> 00:29:21.650
But like you're just pulled so strongly in that direction once he makes that connection.

00:29:21.890 --> 00:29:23.890
And the same thing with you know uh with tennis.

00:29:23.970 --> 00:29:28.610
Like it's it's it's a really tempting mistake to think of a wall as being good at tennis

00:29:28.770 --> 00:29:30.130
because it is good at tennis.

00:29:31.010 --> 00:29:32.210
Yes, exactly.

00:29:32.440 --> 00:29:32.680
Yeah.

00:29:32.760 --> 00:29:35.640
It's absurd it's such a huge error.

00:29:35.960 --> 00:29:37.160
Such a huge mistake.

00:29:38.360 --> 00:29:40.040
To be like depressed that you're never gonna be able to do that.

00:29:41.960 --> 00:29:43.640
That actually that's really funny, right?

00:29:43.800 --> 00:29:48.200
Like that's actually if you were just like and we reveal the world's best tennis player and

00:29:48.200 --> 00:29:49.240
there's a wall, right?

00:29:49.320 --> 00:29:50.280
Like that's funny.

00:29:50.360 --> 00:29:50.840
Yeah.

00:29:51.480 --> 00:29:56.570
So to test this empirically, I'm I'm trying to use jokes like that and measure two

00:29:56.570 --> 00:29:57.050
components.

00:29:57.130 --> 00:30:00.570
So we already talked about the first component, which was confusability or temptingness.

00:30:00.650 --> 00:30:04.490
I'm still looking for the best word to describe it because it's kind of unintuitive.

00:30:04.650 --> 00:30:09.690
Um so there's there's that, and then the second component, um, I think is uh

00:30:09.850 --> 00:30:14.410
costliness or uh the the size of the mix-up.

00:30:14.730 --> 00:30:14.810
Right.

00:30:14.970 --> 00:30:19.770
Um and the way I'm starting to think about this is as the kind of as the discrepancy

00:30:19.770 --> 00:30:25.160
between the two things that are mixed up, um, how far apart they are in conceptual space,

00:30:25.480 --> 00:30:30.040
how misaligned are the two people in their understanding of reality.

00:30:30.360 --> 00:30:30.680
Right.

00:30:30.920 --> 00:30:36.760
Um So um that's sort of how I'm thinking about the costliness of how how the mind would

00:30:36.760 --> 00:30:38.280
estimate how costly a mix-up is.

00:30:38.440 --> 00:30:43.240
It seems like a good rule of thumb might be that you know, the further apart the two things

00:30:43.240 --> 00:30:48.450
that are being mixed up are, um, the more costly it it should expect be expected to be.

00:30:48.610 --> 00:30:48.770
Yeah.

00:30:49.090 --> 00:30:53.650
So if if I confuse pretty big with very big, that's not going to be a very costly mix-up in

00:30:53.650 --> 00:30:54.290
most cases.

00:30:54.450 --> 00:30:54.850
Right.

00:30:55.090 --> 00:30:59.250
But if I confuse very big with very small, that could be a very costly mix-up.

00:30:59.490 --> 00:31:00.050
Right.

00:31:01.490 --> 00:31:05.170
And so I think there's costliness.

00:31:05.330 --> 00:31:05.410
Yeah.

00:31:05.490 --> 00:31:09.730
I mean, and just to like an example of that, like I think and I'll I'll tread carefully

00:31:09.730 --> 00:31:10.130
with this one.

00:31:10.290 --> 00:31:14.800
But like I think one probably the funniest thing I've ever seen, and and this is part

00:31:15.040 --> 00:31:20.960
partially because of like what I study, um, is uh Dave Chappelle has a skit,

00:31:21.120 --> 00:31:26.800
uh, I think it was on the uh Chappelle show, where it's a blind um black man

00:31:26.800 --> 00:31:28.800
who's a white supremacist, right?

00:31:28.960 --> 00:31:32.080
Yeah, and it's it's super funny.

00:31:32.450 --> 00:31:38.450
Um and uh and and I think it's exactly because you can't imagine a higher

00:31:38.450 --> 00:31:42.530
cost fix right than being not being aware of what you are.

00:31:42.690 --> 00:31:46.610
He actually I I listened to a video Dave Chappelle actually mentioned that that can his

00:31:46.610 --> 00:31:52.370
idea came from a family member of his who was actually lighter skinned and passed as white.

00:31:53.020 --> 00:31:55.820
And actually, I think it was his uncle or somebody.

00:31:56.140 --> 00:32:01.980
And so that idea of sort of mixing up your racial identity and the high cost social

00:32:01.980 --> 00:32:05.900
consequences that follow, you know, that struck him as funny.

00:32:05.980 --> 00:32:11.900
And I think that validated, I mean, that's that's um that's a really nice example of the

00:32:12.060 --> 00:32:16.490
the the intensity of the humor is driven by the costliness.

00:32:16.570 --> 00:32:21.050
And I think people sort of like professional comedians kind of intuitively get this.

00:32:21.130 --> 00:32:22.570
So yeah, totally.

00:32:22.730 --> 00:32:26.970
You cannot imagine a more costly mix up than mixing up an in group member for an out group

00:32:27.130 --> 00:32:29.210
member, particularly when they're violently.

00:32:29.370 --> 00:32:30.010
Yes, exactly.

00:32:30.170 --> 00:32:32.090
And you're like going to the meetings, right?

00:32:32.250 --> 00:32:32.330
Yeah.

00:32:33.450 --> 00:32:33.690
Totally.

00:32:33.930 --> 00:32:34.810
Yeah, exactly.

00:32:34.970 --> 00:32:40.170
That's is like, yeah, you cannot imagine, as you said, a more um a higher cost mix up.

00:32:40.250 --> 00:32:40.490
Yeah.

00:32:40.730 --> 00:32:40.970
Yeah.

00:32:41.130 --> 00:32:46.160
Um, another good example of a costly mix-up um is from the movie Rat Race.

00:32:46.400 --> 00:32:47.280
I don't know if you've seen it.

00:32:47.680 --> 00:32:47.920
No.

00:32:48.400 --> 00:32:54.000
Um so in the movie, uh so John Lovitz plays um a Jewish father with his

00:32:54.000 --> 00:32:58.720
Jewish family, um, and uh he's trying to race to get to the the the money, I guess the

00:32:58.720 --> 00:32:59.280
premise of the movie.

00:32:59.360 --> 00:33:02.080
They're all racing to get to this this you know bag of money.

00:33:02.240 --> 00:33:06.960
Uh and uh his daughter is getting increasingly petulant and really wants to, you know, pull

00:33:06.960 --> 00:33:10.400
over and do something, and she sees a sign for the Barbie Museum.

00:33:11.230 --> 00:33:12.910
She goes, please, please, can we go to the Bar Museum?

00:33:12.990 --> 00:33:15.550
And finally, you know, he caves, okay, we'll go to the Barbie Museum.

00:33:15.790 --> 00:33:20.590
And they and they go in, and this is the first of many mix-ups where uh the Barbie Museum

00:33:20.750 --> 00:33:25.150
is not about the doll, but about the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie.

00:33:26.270 --> 00:33:26.590
Right.

00:33:26.750 --> 00:33:27.230
Exactly.

00:33:27.310 --> 00:33:27.470
Yeah.

00:33:27.870 --> 00:33:30.590
Uh which is a really catastrophic mix-up for a Jewish family.

00:33:30.670 --> 00:33:34.350
And it turns out to be an anti-Semitic museum, and there are like neo-Nazi thugs there

00:33:34.670 --> 00:33:35.550
trying to sniff them out.

00:33:36.030 --> 00:33:36.430
Exactly.

00:33:36.590 --> 00:33:36.830
Yeah.

00:33:37.080 --> 00:33:40.600
Um and then so they uh but this is just the first of of many mix-ups.

00:33:40.920 --> 00:33:44.360
So they so they they flee the museum in like one of the cars.

00:33:44.440 --> 00:33:46.680
Um they just get in the car and like flee the museum.

00:33:47.080 --> 00:33:51.960
And uh it turns out that it's um uh implausibly uh none other than Hitler's car.

00:33:52.200 --> 00:33:52.280
Right.

00:33:52.360 --> 00:33:54.280
They discover it as they're on the road.

00:33:54.520 --> 00:33:54.840
Exactly.

00:33:55.080 --> 00:33:58.360
Uh and then they're and then the husband and wife are bickering over whether or not it's

00:33:58.360 --> 00:34:01.640
appropriate for her to like put on Ava Braun's lipstick because it was in the glove

00:34:01.640 --> 00:34:04.250
compartment, and they're like fighting over whether they should she should put on the

00:34:04.250 --> 00:34:07.850
lipstick and then the dark lipstick gets smeared on the top of the steering wheel.

00:34:08.010 --> 00:34:08.170
Right.

00:34:08.330 --> 00:34:12.410
And then and then the the the Nazi thugs catch up with them and there's a car chase and

00:34:12.410 --> 00:34:16.650
they've you know he veers off the road and crashes into this like outdoor convention and

00:34:16.650 --> 00:34:20.250
the cigarette lighter flies into his throat and it's caught in his throat and he slams his

00:34:20.250 --> 00:34:21.130
face on the steering wheel.

00:34:21.370 --> 00:34:21.530
Of course.

00:34:21.690 --> 00:34:23.050
And and and the lipstick Yep.

00:34:23.290 --> 00:34:23.690
Of course.

00:34:23.850 --> 00:34:24.170
Yep.

00:34:24.330 --> 00:34:26.100
Uh long long walk to that.

00:34:26.500 --> 00:34:28.420
A dark a dark impression on his lip.

00:34:28.500 --> 00:34:28.660
Yeah.

00:34:28.820 --> 00:34:31.300
Where the dark light look reminiscent of a Hitler mustache.

00:34:31.620 --> 00:34:36.900
So he gets out of the car and he finds a podium and he starts like slamming the podium and

00:34:36.900 --> 00:34:40.980
like but but but because the cigarette lighter is still on his throat, he can't talk, and

00:34:40.980 --> 00:34:44.980
so like what's coming out of his mouth is like a garbled gibberish that that's it's like

00:34:44.980 --> 00:34:46.660
vaguely reminiscent of a German accent.

00:34:46.980 --> 00:34:48.980
And he's like pounding the podium like tree.

00:34:50.770 --> 00:34:54.850
And then the camera zooms out and it's a convention for World War II veterans.

00:34:57.010 --> 00:34:58.210
Yeah, no, exactly.

00:34:58.370 --> 00:35:02.850
So yeah, that's just yeah, bumbling through costly mess after costly.

00:35:03.650 --> 00:35:06.770
Like this I I think of this as like a supernormal stimulus.

00:35:06.930 --> 00:35:07.090
Yeah.

00:35:07.330 --> 00:35:11.330
Like you know, you could not like in ancestral environments, you could not have engineered

00:35:11.730 --> 00:35:15.410
a situation like this a mix up this costly and like this tempting.

00:35:15.890 --> 00:35:19.420
Like um so it's i I I think of it as analogous to like fast food.

00:35:19.660 --> 00:35:19.820
Yeah.

00:35:19.900 --> 00:35:20.780
Um that's great.

00:35:20.860 --> 00:35:21.260
Yeah, yeah.

00:35:21.340 --> 00:35:25.500
You would be like if aliens were like, I don't know what makes the humans laugh, this would

00:35:25.500 --> 00:35:26.300
describe it, right?

00:35:26.380 --> 00:35:26.540
Yeah.

00:35:26.860 --> 00:35:27.500
Yeah, totally.

00:35:27.660 --> 00:35:31.260
Like at the maximum temptingness, like he looks just like Hitler.

00:35:31.340 --> 00:35:35.100
He's got the mustache, he's pounding the podium, he's got Hitler's car right behind him,

00:35:35.260 --> 00:35:37.500
and then you'll uh maximum costliness.

00:35:37.580 --> 00:35:40.220
He's at a convention for elderly World War II veterans.

00:35:40.300 --> 00:35:44.670
One of them even like takes out a gun and aims it at uh and then they flee again in another

00:35:44.670 --> 00:35:44.990
vehicle.

00:35:45.070 --> 00:35:50.190
And like the movie is full of these kinds of really implausible but hilarious, you know,

00:35:50.510 --> 00:35:52.510
mix-ups of extreme magnitude.

00:35:52.990 --> 00:35:58.670
I remember um I saw the movie in a packed theater, um, and the the the John Lovitz Hitler

00:35:58.670 --> 00:36:04.190
mix-up elicited the by far the loudest laughter I had ever witnessed in a movie going

00:36:04.350 --> 00:36:04.590
audience.

00:36:04.750 --> 00:36:08.510
Like the entire theater was just uh absolutely uproarious.

00:36:08.670 --> 00:36:08.910
Yeah.

00:36:09.070 --> 00:36:12.520
Um so um I don't know if the if the movie has aged well or not.

00:36:12.600 --> 00:36:16.680
And we could talk about you know why comedy doesn't age as well as other genres of art.

00:36:17.000 --> 00:36:18.200
Yeah, that's a really interesting thing.

00:36:18.280 --> 00:36:21.160
Yeah, watching stand up from like the 60s or 70s.

00:36:21.240 --> 00:36:26.360
I mean, some of it is evergreen, and I think people some people were explicitly like trying

00:36:26.360 --> 00:36:27.560
to be evergreen.

00:36:27.640 --> 00:36:30.280
Um, but yeah, some stuff does not hold up for sure.

00:36:30.440 --> 00:36:33.320
And that's an interesting maybe yeah, we can circle back to that.

00:36:33.560 --> 00:36:36.280
So costliness, confusability.

00:36:36.840 --> 00:36:38.040
Um, yeah.

00:36:38.530 --> 00:36:38.770
Yeah.

00:36:38.930 --> 00:36:44.450
So I'm in the middle of trying to um test to just basically see if we can predict

00:36:44.450 --> 00:36:47.970
funniness by measuring the costliness and measuring the confusability.

00:36:48.210 --> 00:36:54.210
Um and and so far, um just from some preliminary data, it's looking like just temptingness

00:36:54.210 --> 00:36:56.850
alone is explaining a good chunk of the variance in funness.

00:36:56.930 --> 00:37:01.010
It's like twenty to thirty percent of the variance just from the measuring how tempting the

00:37:01.170 --> 00:37:01.810
the mix up is.

00:37:01.970 --> 00:37:04.690
So I think I think we're on the right track and now I gotta figure out how to measure

00:37:04.690 --> 00:37:05.570
costliness.

00:37:05.810 --> 00:37:08.320
Um but uh yeah, that's that would be the next step.

00:37:08.640 --> 00:37:08.960
Cool.

00:37:09.200 --> 00:37:11.440
And then um, so that's that part.

00:37:11.520 --> 00:37:13.680
But then what is hum why humor?

00:37:13.840 --> 00:37:15.600
Like what's the selection pressure for it?

00:37:15.680 --> 00:37:17.040
So those are the two things.

00:37:17.280 --> 00:37:17.600
Yeah.

00:37:17.760 --> 00:37:20.880
Um, what's what's up with the why does that exist?

00:37:20.960 --> 00:37:23.040
Um, why would there be selection for it?

00:37:23.200 --> 00:37:25.440
Or is it a byproduct of some like what is it?

00:37:25.520 --> 00:37:25.680
Yeah.

00:37:26.000 --> 00:37:27.760
Yeah, no, so I think it's an adaptation.

00:37:27.840 --> 00:37:33.170
I think there were strong selection pressures for to develop a sense of humor

00:37:33.810 --> 00:37:38.050
because the benefits of it were so great in our highly socially interdependent uh

00:37:38.130 --> 00:37:39.570
cooperative species.

00:37:39.730 --> 00:37:43.650
Um and so you can think about those two components, confusability and costliness, as

00:37:43.650 --> 00:37:49.090
basically just combining to map out to the expected costs of failing to coordinate with

00:37:49.090 --> 00:37:49.410
others.

00:37:49.570 --> 00:37:49.730
Right.

00:37:49.970 --> 00:37:53.730
So, you know, the confusibility you could think of as the likelihood of the cost being uh

00:37:53.730 --> 00:37:56.850
incurred, and the cost is just the magnitude of the cost incurred.

00:37:57.010 --> 00:37:59.330
And so it's pretty straightforward logic.

00:37:59.410 --> 00:38:03.520
You know, the the bigger those two things are, the bigger the benefit from avoiding it.

00:38:03.680 --> 00:38:03.920
Right.

00:38:04.240 --> 00:38:07.920
The bigger the benefit from anticipating it in advance and avoiding it.

00:38:08.080 --> 00:38:14.080
Um, and uh the bigger the benefit of signaling it to other people uh and creating

00:38:14.080 --> 00:38:19.360
common knowledge of it to uh diffuse the costs of it if and when it does.

00:38:19.760 --> 00:38:22.400
Signaling and common knowledge of the mixability.

00:38:22.560 --> 00:38:26.960
So it's it's so it's the the selection pressures or the lack of coordination or the mistake

00:38:26.960 --> 00:38:32.490
that you would make, um, the mix the mixing something up, and then the point

00:38:32.730 --> 00:38:38.570
of doing this thing of finding something funny and producing whatever we do, this weird

00:38:38.570 --> 00:38:44.170
thing we do, um that that's a signal of can you

00:38:44.170 --> 00:38:45.370
unpack that a little bit?

00:38:45.770 --> 00:38:46.010
Sure.

00:38:46.170 --> 00:38:49.530
So I I so uh the way I map it out is by dividing it into two parts.

00:38:49.610 --> 00:38:53.850
So I think the first part of the evolution of humor is just the the evolution of the sense

00:38:53.850 --> 00:38:59.380
of humor, just the ability to detect and anticipate and avoid mix-ups.

00:38:59.620 --> 00:39:00.660
That's just the sense part.

00:39:00.740 --> 00:39:02.740
You can think of that leave laughter out of the picture.

00:39:03.220 --> 00:39:08.980
It's just it's straightforwardly uh adaptive, beneficial, fitness enhancing to be

00:39:08.980 --> 00:39:12.900
able to detect, avoid, uh, and anticipate mix-ups.

00:39:13.300 --> 00:39:13.540
I see.

00:39:13.780 --> 00:39:16.180
So like it's sort of intrinsically pleasurable.

00:39:16.340 --> 00:39:17.860
You know, just to make sure I understand it.

00:39:17.940 --> 00:39:22.100
So the idea is almost like it's in in the same way it's intrinsically pleasurable to sort

00:39:22.100 --> 00:39:27.850
of like discover uh something that might be fitness promoting like a new friendship or a

00:39:27.850 --> 00:39:32.490
group that you never knew existed or like a lovely place to visit or like your home is

00:39:32.490 --> 00:39:34.330
nicer than you expected.

00:39:34.490 --> 00:39:40.410
Um you get the idea is that to see confusibility, costly mis

00:39:40.650 --> 00:39:46.520
discordination or confusability ahead of time, because doing that avoids

00:39:47.160 --> 00:39:48.360
the the error.

00:39:48.440 --> 00:39:51.400
It's sort of like a caution tape around a hidden hole.

00:39:51.720 --> 00:39:57.560
It's intrinsically pleasurable because exactly it's it's a rewarding thing

00:39:57.720 --> 00:40:01.480
because it's a a signal of you've avoided a a cost.

00:40:02.200 --> 00:40:02.600
Exactly.

00:40:02.760 --> 00:40:03.080
Exactly.

00:40:03.160 --> 00:40:04.200
That's a great way of putting it.

00:40:04.840 --> 00:40:06.280
Um so that's the first stage.

00:40:06.440 --> 00:40:09.470
And so so I've I tried to model this mathematically.

00:40:09.630 --> 00:40:14.190
And so um so straightforwardly you can just show that you know ha having the ability to uh

00:40:14.190 --> 00:40:18.990
uh detect and avoid these mix-ups helps you um you know avoid the costs of coordination

00:40:18.990 --> 00:40:23.630
failure, reap the benefits of better coordination, um, and and these costs and benefits

00:40:23.630 --> 00:40:27.790
will loom larger when they're when interactions are longer, and the and the potential to

00:40:27.790 --> 00:40:32.110
continue reaping those benefits or continue incurring those costs uh is larger.

00:40:32.190 --> 00:40:36.160
So if we spend a longer time dancing back and forth in the hallway, then we're gonna reap

00:40:36.240 --> 00:40:39.760
we're gonna incur more costs if we fail to detect the mix-up.

00:40:39.840 --> 00:40:44.720
Um and uh if if we we interact with each other a lot and it's really important that we

00:40:44.720 --> 00:40:49.200
understand what we're what we're thinking and feeling, then the the the benefits of

00:40:49.200 --> 00:40:50.800
coordinating are gonna be higher.

00:40:51.040 --> 00:40:53.520
So the first part is just evolving that sense.

00:40:53.600 --> 00:40:56.790
And I really do think it's analogous to a sense like seeing or hearing.

00:40:56.870 --> 00:41:01.350
Um I think we're scanning the social world for coordination opportunities and uh we're

00:41:01.430 --> 00:41:06.710
we're picking up on on these hot spots, these these tempting, confusable areas that could

00:41:06.710 --> 00:41:09.110
potentially be costly for us uh socially.

00:41:09.430 --> 00:41:10.870
And so the first part is sensing.

00:41:11.030 --> 00:41:16.150
And the second part is even if you're the best humor sensor in the world and you never get

00:41:16.150 --> 00:41:21.030
into mix-ups, you're always anticipating them in advance, or or i if a mix-up does occur,

00:41:21.110 --> 00:41:26.720
you immediately spot it and you and you switch to whatever the the alternative uh behavior

00:41:26.720 --> 00:41:26.880
was.

00:41:27.040 --> 00:41:32.400
So if we're mixing up our meanings of the phrase hook up with and I say, you know, I hooked

00:41:32.400 --> 00:41:36.480
up with a bunch of guys at Taco Bell and I and I uh see that a weird expression on your

00:41:36.480 --> 00:41:39.920
face and I instantly realize that, oh, there was a mix up involving this meaning.

00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:42.320
I'm gonna switch to the other meaning of hook up with.

00:41:42.400 --> 00:41:45.440
Now I know what it means and we'll continue coordinating successfully.

00:41:45.760 --> 00:41:50.240
Even if I have sensed it and have avoided it in future interactions with you, there's still

00:41:50.240 --> 00:41:55.950
that initial cost that I paid, or that we paid, because you uh mistook what I did,

00:41:56.110 --> 00:41:56.350
right?

00:41:56.590 --> 00:41:59.150
You you you thought that I had sex with random people.

00:41:59.550 --> 00:42:05.310
Um so um, even if I avoid that mix-up and subsequent interactions with you,

00:42:05.470 --> 00:42:07.870
that initial cost is still going to be there.

00:42:08.350 --> 00:42:12.590
And so that uh brings us to the second stage of of the evolution of humor, which is

00:42:12.590 --> 00:42:12.990
laughter.

00:42:13.150 --> 00:42:16.500
So, how do we erase that initial cost?

00:42:16.740 --> 00:42:21.780
How do we create common knowledge that you're no longer you're no longer going to view me

00:42:21.780 --> 00:42:25.780
as a weirdo who has sex with random guys in public places, right?

00:42:25.940 --> 00:42:31.140
Uh how do we establish common knowledge that we know, uh that the other knows, that the

00:42:31.140 --> 00:42:34.340
other knows, that uh this was just a misunderstanding.

00:42:34.420 --> 00:42:39.690
Uh we're not going to take this communication seriously, Um, we're not going to treat it as

00:42:39.690 --> 00:42:44.650
actual communication and we're going to just forget about it, no harm, no foul, and move

00:42:44.650 --> 00:42:44.730
on.

00:42:45.370 --> 00:42:51.130
So you're telling me that that you know that it was a mix-up and that you see that

00:42:51.130 --> 00:42:56.490
there was a cost, and I know it was a mix-up, and I know there was a cost.

00:42:57.050 --> 00:43:02.250
And we're getting into the logic of how laughter

00:43:03.100 --> 00:43:08.700
allows both of us to have common knowledge that we both represent that there was a mix up

00:43:08.700 --> 00:43:09.740
and there was a cost.

00:43:10.140 --> 00:43:10.700
Exactly.

00:43:10.860 --> 00:43:13.500
And and um it needs to be shared too.

00:43:13.580 --> 00:43:16.540
Because if I'm laughing at it and you're not laughing with me, then that's a problem.

00:43:16.700 --> 00:43:18.140
You might not know that there was a mix up.

00:43:18.380 --> 00:43:21.900
So we need to be laughing together to establish common knowledge.

00:43:22.060 --> 00:43:22.220
Right.

00:43:22.380 --> 00:43:27.870
Um so we both So if I didn't laugh, it would and and the and and we'll keep going.

00:43:27.950 --> 00:43:30.350
But like, yeah, that means something to you.

00:43:30.990 --> 00:43:35.310
And it means something about what I am changing about my representation of you.

00:43:35.470 --> 00:43:35.710
Right.

00:43:35.950 --> 00:43:36.270
Yes.

00:43:36.510 --> 00:43:36.910
Exactly.

00:43:37.230 --> 00:43:37.550
Interesting.

00:43:37.790 --> 00:43:41.470
And if you don't share the laughter, I might think that you think that I'm a weirdo.

00:43:41.630 --> 00:43:45.550
And then that lowers the benefits of of uh cooperating with you, you know, for me.

00:43:45.870 --> 00:43:46.110
Right.

00:43:46.270 --> 00:43:46.430
Right.

00:43:46.670 --> 00:43:50.680
Or I think hooking up is is uh means meeting up with people, right?

00:43:50.840 --> 00:43:51.000
Right.

00:43:52.120 --> 00:43:55.400
Yeah, but there's some inference about why I'm not laughing.

00:43:55.720 --> 00:43:58.440
Or uh or yeah, or like I'm your enemy.

00:43:59.080 --> 00:44:04.920
And so I don't I reject the the laughter because the work that

00:44:04.920 --> 00:44:08.280
the laughter is doing is reparative for you.

00:44:08.520 --> 00:44:09.720
Hmm yeah.

00:44:09.960 --> 00:44:11.000
Yeah that's a great point.

00:44:11.080 --> 00:44:13.750
Yeah you might not want to defuse those costs.

00:44:13.910 --> 00:44:19.350
If you're my rival, you might enjoy me being embarrassed or devalued by others and you

00:44:19.350 --> 00:44:21.590
might try to resist the laughter.

00:44:21.910 --> 00:44:22.150
Right.

00:44:22.310 --> 00:44:28.150
Um Yeah, I think one of the way people one of the ways people show a low status, low

00:44:28.310 --> 00:44:31.990
power person is somebody who laughs a lot.

00:44:32.630 --> 00:44:35.670
Um, and the people around them are not laughing with them.

00:44:36.660 --> 00:44:37.060
Yeah.

00:44:37.300 --> 00:44:41.860
It's a person who thinks that they're, you know, constantly struggling to coordinate with

00:44:41.860 --> 00:44:44.020
people or is aware that they're struggling to coordinate with people.

00:44:44.260 --> 00:44:46.340
And they're trying to repair those failures.

00:44:46.500 --> 00:44:49.860
And people just aren't accepting the bid to repair those failures.

00:44:50.020 --> 00:44:50.180
Right.

00:44:50.340 --> 00:44:52.020
Because they're just seen as a low value part.

00:44:52.820 --> 00:44:58.310
And I think if you do look at people um like I think people even kind of intuitively know

00:44:58.310 --> 00:44:58.550
this.

00:44:58.630 --> 00:45:02.790
So, like, I've seen people just sort of act, like if you get an actor, for example, who's

00:45:02.790 --> 00:45:08.390
pretty good and just pretends to be like lower status or meek or whatever, it's this kind

00:45:08.390 --> 00:45:10.790
of like constant l laughter.

00:45:10.950 --> 00:45:16.710
Um, and it's a different kind than I mean, obviously, there's sort of taxonomies

00:45:16.870 --> 00:45:22.790
of there can be biting humor where people are very they're using it in a way that's

00:45:23.100 --> 00:45:26.140
the opposite, where it's sort of like attacking other people's status.

00:45:26.220 --> 00:45:29.660
But there is this version of sort of you're lo you're exactly right of like kind of

00:45:29.660 --> 00:45:30.940
laughing at themselves.

00:45:31.260 --> 00:45:32.380
Yeah, totally.

00:45:32.700 --> 00:45:38.220
Um, and this is a good way to segue into what I think is the third part of the model, which

00:45:38.220 --> 00:45:42.300
is um identifying others' sense of humor.

00:45:42.460 --> 00:45:42.700
Mm-hmm.

00:45:42.860 --> 00:45:48.540
Uh and preferentially uh affiliating with people with better senses of humor, um, who get

00:45:48.540 --> 00:45:53.970
your jokes, um, who laugh at the things that you laugh, We laugh at the same things, right?

00:45:54.050 --> 00:45:55.650
Who you you laugh with instead of at.

00:45:55.890 --> 00:45:56.210
Right.

00:45:56.450 --> 00:46:00.610
So if you have a really good sense of humor, if you're good at telling jokes, which signals

00:46:00.610 --> 00:46:04.610
that you're good at spotting and anticipating and avoiding mix-ups, well, that means that

00:46:04.610 --> 00:46:08.770
the benefits of coordinating with you are going to be higher than coordinating with some

00:46:08.770 --> 00:46:09.890
other buffoon, right?

00:46:10.050 --> 00:46:12.210
Because you're going to be better able to avoid those mix-ups.

00:46:12.290 --> 00:46:13.810
We're going to cooperate more smoothly.

00:46:13.970 --> 00:46:15.090
We're going to vibe more.

00:46:15.170 --> 00:46:18.450
And so you're a better coordination partner if you have a better sense of humor.

00:46:18.690 --> 00:46:23.980
Whereas if you're a a a buffoon, a fool, an idiot, uh, we're gonna get into so many

00:46:23.980 --> 00:46:25.340
different kinds of misunderstandings.

00:46:25.420 --> 00:46:27.900
We're gonna struggle to vibe and to work together.

00:46:28.060 --> 00:46:31.100
And that's just a very low-value social partner for me.

00:46:31.260 --> 00:46:36.300
And I should want to avoid them and preferentially affiliate with the smooth, funny, witty

00:46:36.300 --> 00:46:41.340
people who are good at coordinating and good at getting the prevailing social norms and

00:46:41.340 --> 00:46:42.140
conventions.

00:46:42.300 --> 00:46:46.780
Um, and so I think that is what is involved in the art of joke telling or being a funny

00:46:46.780 --> 00:46:49.020
person, why we find funny people attractive.

00:46:49.290 --> 00:46:51.210
It shows that they're really good at coordinating.

00:46:51.290 --> 00:46:53.850
They understand the the culture that they live in.

00:46:53.930 --> 00:46:54.810
They're good at culture.

00:46:54.890 --> 00:46:56.250
They're good at communication.

00:46:57.130 --> 00:47:01.850
And we want to coordinate with those people because the long run payoffs of coordinating

00:47:01.850 --> 00:47:07.370
with them are going to be higher with fewer mix-ups over time

00:47:08.250 --> 00:47:10.810
than with than than coordinating with someone else.

00:47:11.080 --> 00:47:11.240
Right.

00:47:11.480 --> 00:47:12.120
That's really interesting.

00:47:12.280 --> 00:47:15.960
I wonder too, like, you know, people often talk about, you know, in their friends or in

00:47:15.960 --> 00:47:20.040
their mates, they want somebody who's funny and smart.

00:47:20.680 --> 00:47:24.520
Um, and I wonder, like, if part of that, it's two things.

00:47:24.680 --> 00:47:30.360
One is that um there's sort of like right at what's on the edge of your conf

00:47:31.000 --> 00:47:33.080
thinking or confusability.

00:47:33.240 --> 00:47:38.600
Um, and so if somebody is discovering confusibility that you hadn't thought of, um

00:47:39.350 --> 00:47:43.670
it's it's it's a con it's sort of there's an arms race where there's always somebody who's

00:47:43.670 --> 00:47:49.510
sort of um it's showing that they're in this competitive thing of sort of um

00:47:49.750 --> 00:47:55.350
I'm not being very articulate about it, but but basically it's it's a um there's there's

00:47:55.350 --> 00:48:01.270
never enough um uh so like what's something if you found something very easily confusable

00:48:01.590 --> 00:48:04.070
to the point that it's trivial, yeah.

00:48:04.320 --> 00:48:09.840
If you might not find that funny, but if I do, it sort of means that we're whatever quote

00:48:09.920 --> 00:48:14.080
unquote, like you know, intelligence means, which is just a difference, it's not like a

00:48:14.080 --> 00:48:19.200
mechanism, it's not you know, but um, but it kind of it kind of it it teases apart.

00:48:19.280 --> 00:48:24.800
Oh, if somebody is like picking out stuff that I hadn't thought of, that's they're spending

00:48:24.800 --> 00:48:29.760
time, they're valuable, there's sort of some cognitive resource there that's interesting.

00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:35.010
It also though um shows like what you care about and what your interests are, and to

00:48:35.330 --> 00:48:40.290
whatever extent, like everybody is sort of like occupying different status games, right?

00:48:40.450 --> 00:48:42.450
Or like you're just uh pursuing a thing.

00:48:42.610 --> 00:48:47.170
So if I make a joke of I don't know about sports for you, David, you know, and uh like you

00:48:47.170 --> 00:48:50.690
know, I sit down and I'm like, well, you know, this thing, and it involves like a confusion

00:48:50.690 --> 00:48:52.690
about sports, you might like not laugh.

00:48:52.930 --> 00:48:56.770
And the fact that I think it was the right joke to tell you, you'd just be like, Well, you

00:48:56.770 --> 00:48:58.610
don't know me, I don't care about sports.

00:48:58.770 --> 00:49:02.380
And so it's sort of a way to sort of filter people.

00:49:02.620 --> 00:49:08.620
Humor attempts are a way to filter people by like what um what status game we're all gonna

00:49:08.620 --> 00:49:09.660
coordinate on.

00:49:09.900 --> 00:49:14.460
And so that that would be another like I think those would be two two things.

00:49:14.620 --> 00:49:16.780
Um and there's a lot of use of humor, right?

00:49:16.860 --> 00:49:20.220
Like I mean people are trying people are using humor all the time.

00:49:20.460 --> 00:49:25.850
Um So that was uh um really not funny two points, but that that's my two points.

00:49:25.930 --> 00:49:26.090
Yeah.

00:49:26.410 --> 00:49:27.610
No, no, I totally buy that.

00:49:27.690 --> 00:49:33.610
So this ties into um uh Flamson and Barrett's uh encryption theory of humor, which

00:49:33.610 --> 00:49:36.010
is really complementary with my approach.

00:49:36.330 --> 00:49:40.010
And the the idea there is basically what you were getting at, which is when you tell a

00:49:40.010 --> 00:49:45.050
joke, what you're doing is you're encrypting um a piece of information that can only be

00:49:45.050 --> 00:49:50.170
decrypted by uh people who share your background knowledge and your and your cultural

00:49:50.220 --> 00:49:50.700
knowledge.

00:49:51.180 --> 00:49:56.780
So if I'm going to, you know, tell a story about a mix-up or you know, simulate or

00:49:56.780 --> 00:50:01.740
role-play a mix-up in a in a specific kind of coordination game, the only people who are

00:50:01.740 --> 00:50:05.100
going to pick up on that are going to be the people who are playing that same coordination

00:50:05.100 --> 00:50:09.660
game or who share my knowledge about what it means to be uh mixed up.

00:50:09.820 --> 00:50:13.660
And so that's going to be a great way of differentiating people who are in my subculture

00:50:13.660 --> 00:50:14.620
from people who are not.

00:50:14.780 --> 00:50:17.420
And what's great about it is that I can do it covertly.

00:50:17.580 --> 00:50:21.670
So if I tell a joke and you get it, um, but someone else doesn't.

00:50:21.990 --> 00:50:27.190
Um, that allows us to affiliate with one another and exclude that third person without

00:50:27.190 --> 00:50:30.230
overtly telling the third person, I don't like you, go away.

00:50:30.470 --> 00:50:31.110
Right.

00:50:31.350 --> 00:50:35.110
Um, which could potentially be costly because then that could develop, you know, animosity,

00:50:35.270 --> 00:50:36.150
resentment, and so forth.

00:50:36.310 --> 00:50:36.390
Right.

00:50:36.550 --> 00:50:41.830
And so it it evolves us, it allows us to sort of exclude people and hobnob with other like

00:50:41.910 --> 00:50:46.100
minded people without making it overt um or or offensive or common knowledge.

00:50:46.340 --> 00:50:46.500
Right.

00:50:46.580 --> 00:50:50.820
Like a lame example of this, like let's imagine, and apologies to anybody named Josh, but

00:50:50.900 --> 00:50:53.700
um maybe I'll choose a different because we should have Josh Timeron.

00:50:53.940 --> 00:50:57.540
But let's assume like somebody named Josh is a jerk and we both know Josh is a jerk.

00:50:57.620 --> 00:51:03.540
And then like somebody comes up and and I basically am like, oh Josh, you know, like I I

00:51:03.540 --> 00:51:05.140
just say basically Josh, right?

00:51:05.220 --> 00:51:07.780
And it's a signal to you that this person's a jerk.

00:51:07.860 --> 00:51:09.380
Um but the person doesn't know.

00:51:09.460 --> 00:51:14.890
You know, like you could imagine um, you know, it's kind of ki it's sort of sophomoric, but

00:51:14.890 --> 00:51:19.930
like I think a lot of times, even just thinking about like when I was like in my teens, uh

00:51:20.250 --> 00:51:24.330
groups of kids, you just sort of like allude to past things.

00:51:24.490 --> 00:51:29.450
Like you would even just words, you would just sort of say like stupid nonsense words, but

00:51:29.450 --> 00:51:34.140
you would just sort of repeat them when it was roughly appropriate and and kids would just

00:51:34.140 --> 00:51:34.700
laugh, right?

00:51:34.780 --> 00:51:37.180
Like just the funny made up word you made, you know.

00:51:37.420 --> 00:51:42.620
Um and uh and so it's almost like it's picking out this point of coordination that other

00:51:42.620 --> 00:51:43.660
people wouldn't know.

00:51:43.900 --> 00:51:45.500
But somehow it's amusing.

00:51:45.580 --> 00:51:47.980
I don't know if it reaches the point of funny, but yeah.

00:51:48.140 --> 00:51:50.540
Um yeah, no that's interesting.

00:51:50.700 --> 00:51:53.660
Um yeah the the gibberish words that's an interesting case.

00:51:53.740 --> 00:51:58.860
It could be that sometimes the humor comes from its similarity to another word.

00:51:59.180 --> 00:51:59.500
Right.

00:51:59.740 --> 00:52:03.690
Um or or or even another another word that you maybe shouldn't say.

00:52:03.930 --> 00:52:04.170
Right.

00:52:04.330 --> 00:52:05.530
Um, that could be part of it.

00:52:05.690 --> 00:52:10.890
Another part of it is just there's such a strong expectation that when we open our mouths

00:52:10.890 --> 00:52:15.210
and put phonemes together, yeah, that we're going to be providing valuable information.

00:52:15.290 --> 00:52:17.690
We're going to be communicating something of relevance.

00:52:18.010 --> 00:52:22.920
And and the and the more we we violate that social convention and are mixed up about the

00:52:22.920 --> 00:52:27.480
purpose of opening our mouths and putting phonemes together, the more costly that that

00:52:27.480 --> 00:52:27.800
could be.

00:52:28.440 --> 00:52:33.480
Confusing the purpose of talking with you know flapping our mouths is a kind of tempting

00:52:33.480 --> 00:52:33.800
mix up.

00:52:33.880 --> 00:52:37.000
If you, you know, if you don't speak a language, it might seem like they're just flapping

00:52:37.000 --> 00:52:37.480
their mouths.

00:52:37.880 --> 00:52:42.440
And when you try to imitate that, that could be a pretty costly and and tempting mix up.

00:52:42.600 --> 00:52:43.640
So maybe that's what's going on there.

00:52:44.040 --> 00:52:44.280
Yeah, yeah.

00:52:44.440 --> 00:52:48.600
I mean, like even just because you know I have a pre sch or you know a preschool age uh at

00:52:48.600 --> 00:52:53.190
home and like uh and like even just like on the playground, just like kids running around

00:52:53.350 --> 00:52:55.750
just like yelling like something like donk, right?

00:52:55.990 --> 00:52:57.270
Like I'm just making up a word.

00:52:57.350 --> 00:53:01.430
But you know, and the fact that they're they all start doing it and they just laugh when

00:53:01.430 --> 00:53:03.990
they're doing it, like they're playing with language, right?

00:53:04.150 --> 00:53:04.310
Yeah.

00:53:04.550 --> 00:53:09.110
I mean, the other thing that's to the costly thing is like, you know, uh, you know, around

00:53:09.110 --> 00:53:14.780
this age, um, things like that are related to like disgust, like poop, are really just

00:53:14.780 --> 00:53:16.060
intrinsically funny, right?

00:53:16.140 --> 00:53:20.380
Like the funniest thing is like pretending like this ball I'm gonna throw at you is like

00:53:20.380 --> 00:53:22.300
poop and it's just hilarious, right?

00:53:22.700 --> 00:53:23.260
Oh yeah.

00:53:23.580 --> 00:53:23.740
Yeah.

00:53:23.900 --> 00:53:26.940
No, I think I mean there there's really interesting yeah.

00:53:27.180 --> 00:53:30.700
Yeah, scatological and there's really interesting developmental hypotheses you could make.

00:53:30.860 --> 00:53:35.180
So I would expect, you know, toddlers who are learning how to potty train and learning the

00:53:35.500 --> 00:53:40.460
the norms and conventions surrounding uh poop and bodily waste, like it's really important

00:53:40.460 --> 00:53:42.540
that they're learning this stuff and they learn it really well.

00:53:42.790 --> 00:53:47.270
And these are all coordination games we're playing about how to deal with poop, how to talk

00:53:47.270 --> 00:53:47.670
about it.

00:53:47.830 --> 00:53:53.670
Um and uh in the critical period, the developmental period where we're learning about this

00:53:53.670 --> 00:53:59.190
stuff, um, we should find mix-ups uh relating to it especially valuable and rewarding.

00:53:59.270 --> 00:53:59.510
Right.

00:53:59.670 --> 00:53:59.910
Right.

00:53:59.990 --> 00:54:03.190
Because we're we're we're gaining important pieces of pieces of information about what not

00:54:03.190 --> 00:54:05.350
to do, how not to deal with with poop.

00:54:05.590 --> 00:54:05.830
Right.

00:54:05.910 --> 00:54:06.070
Right.

00:54:06.230 --> 00:54:06.390
Yeah.

00:54:06.710 --> 00:54:11.400
Um there's a really oh sorry, go yeah, there's a really interesting thing too that's funny.

00:54:11.480 --> 00:54:12.680
Um because we discordinated.

00:54:12.840 --> 00:54:17.880
Um there's a uh we haven't had Daniel Schnitzer on yet either, but like the idea of self

00:54:17.960 --> 00:54:19.240
conscious emotions.

00:54:19.480 --> 00:54:25.240
Um, like David, we're both parents and I like I'm really aware of um the the self

00:54:25.320 --> 00:54:30.360
conscious emotions being things like guilt, shame, pride, where it's sort of my emotions

00:54:30.520 --> 00:54:34.520
are an anticipation of how others will think of me.

00:54:34.910 --> 00:54:35.230
Right.

00:54:35.470 --> 00:54:40.990
So if I do something, um, you know, like if I walk around and I've got toilet paper stuck

00:54:40.990 --> 00:54:46.670
to my pants and I'm walking around work, you know, that's not actually that costly

00:54:46.830 --> 00:54:47.710
personally for me.

00:54:47.870 --> 00:54:50.990
Like, you know, I'm like less aerodynamic, but like who cares?

00:54:51.310 --> 00:54:56.350
But um, you know, but but um, but people will look at it and think, oh, that's gross, or

00:54:56.430 --> 00:54:57.710
like think I'm weird.

00:54:57.950 --> 00:55:03.780
And so the emotional reaction isn't about the consequences for you, but it's an

00:55:03.780 --> 00:55:07.220
anticipation of how others will respond to you.

00:55:07.460 --> 00:55:12.340
And there's a really interesting developmental thing too, where sort of, you know, some

00:55:12.420 --> 00:55:16.980
self-conscious emotions sort of come online, or what counts as costly, you know, like

00:55:17.060 --> 00:55:19.380
nobody's gonna laugh at a baby for pooping, right?

00:55:19.460 --> 00:55:22.580
And like babies don't care that they have poop all over them, right?

00:55:22.740 --> 00:55:22.900
Yeah.

00:55:23.060 --> 00:55:26.310
But like, but that's very different by the time you are an adult.

00:55:26.390 --> 00:55:32.230
And somewhere in between that, different content is becoming entrained into or

00:55:32.230 --> 00:55:37.990
turned on into what it what are the relevant self-conscious emotional contents, right?

00:55:38.390 --> 00:55:44.070
And I think that that also I think would make predictions about if if humor what

00:55:44.230 --> 00:55:49.510
what what humor content should be should be related to these um self-conscious emotions

00:55:49.670 --> 00:55:55.540
too, because the self-conscious emotions are about the costs and benefits of

00:55:55.620 --> 00:56:01.460
if something if you do something um and you lose status uh or people think worse of you.

00:56:02.180 --> 00:56:02.500
Yeah.

00:56:02.740 --> 00:56:06.100
No, that's that's a good way to transition into embarrassment.

00:56:06.740 --> 00:56:12.020
So I think the theory um has some really interesting implications on on what

00:56:12.020 --> 00:56:15.110
embarrassment is and what its adaptive function is.

00:56:15.430 --> 00:56:18.150
So I think of embarrassment as a close cousin of shame.

00:56:18.550 --> 00:56:19.750
So shame is is very simple.

00:56:19.830 --> 00:56:22.790
You know, Dan Schneezer has has studied this, and we're gonna have him on soon.

00:56:22.870 --> 00:56:24.070
I'm excited to talk to him.

00:56:24.230 --> 00:56:28.710
But um shame is just when when you're devalued by others, when when others think you're a

00:56:28.710 --> 00:56:33.190
bad social partner, you're mean, you're disgusting, you're selfish, you're dumb, whatever,

00:56:33.430 --> 00:56:34.470
you're ugly.

00:56:34.780 --> 00:56:39.340
When you perceive that, you feel shame and you feel motivated to um hide that part of

00:56:39.340 --> 00:56:41.500
yourself and mitigate those costs.

00:56:41.660 --> 00:56:46.860
Maybe it causes you to defer to other people and and try to placate them, to hide, to, to

00:56:46.860 --> 00:56:49.580
fear other other people excluding you, or or whatever.

00:56:49.820 --> 00:56:55.100
You can think of shame as as uh mobilizing a response to being devalued by other people,

00:56:55.260 --> 00:56:58.620
um, particularly other you other people that you you care about.

00:56:59.100 --> 00:57:01.970
Um so embarrassment is not shame.

00:57:02.130 --> 00:57:03.970
Um it's not as clearly negative.

00:57:04.050 --> 00:57:08.050
Sometimes embarrassment can be kind of funny and kind of positive, depending on how it how

00:57:08.050 --> 00:57:09.010
it plays out.

00:57:09.250 --> 00:57:15.090
So uh so I think what embarrassment is, is a kind of mix-up in

00:57:15.090 --> 00:57:20.530
the audience uh that you're that you're in, or the audience that's observing you, and they

00:57:20.530 --> 00:57:24.900
are struggling to coordinate on whether or not your status has fallen.

00:57:25.220 --> 00:57:25.940
Oh, interesting.

00:57:26.100 --> 00:57:26.340
Yeah.

00:57:26.500 --> 00:57:28.580
A really interesting example, just to plug in.

00:57:28.660 --> 00:57:28.900
Yeah.

00:57:28.980 --> 00:57:32.180
Uh one thing that people find really difficult, because I've worked in like, you know,

00:57:32.340 --> 00:57:33.220
working with infants.

00:57:33.300 --> 00:57:37.140
And when you work with infants, you, you know, you do like baby talk, we're like, hi, you

00:57:37.140 --> 00:57:38.180
know, look at this.

00:57:38.340 --> 00:57:42.180
And it's like very weird to do that with adults.

00:57:42.420 --> 00:57:48.420
And so people feel embarrassed to do to show um what how

00:57:48.420 --> 00:57:51.990
to interact with an infant to adults, right?

00:57:52.230 --> 00:57:57.510
And so it's this thing of like, I'm supposed to do this, but there's part of me that's

00:57:57.510 --> 00:58:01.750
like, well, this is going to be costly to um to these people.

00:58:01.910 --> 00:58:05.350
And you kind of feel embarrassed for the people who are doing it sometimes.

00:58:05.830 --> 00:58:09.350
I mean you can push this even harder where like, you know, if you watch like a YouTube

00:58:09.590 --> 00:58:15.580
video for kids and the adults is like really infant directed, you're kind of like,

00:58:15.740 --> 00:58:18.220
I feel bad, like I'm embarrassed for you, you know.

00:58:18.540 --> 00:58:22.940
Like and it's yeah, the guy in the Barney costume who's doing offish dance.

00:58:23.020 --> 00:58:24.460
Yeah, it's kind of embarrassing.

00:58:24.620 --> 00:58:25.100
Yeah.

00:58:25.340 --> 00:58:26.140
Um, yeah.

00:58:26.220 --> 00:58:30.300
And I think what makes it embarrassing is that it's you're not quite sure whether the

00:58:30.300 --> 00:58:34.460
person has lost status or whether other people think that the person has lost status, or

00:58:34.460 --> 00:58:38.150
whether you should start devaluing that person or whether you think other people are going

00:58:38.150 --> 00:58:39.030
to devalue that person.

00:58:39.190 --> 00:58:39.350
Right.

00:58:39.510 --> 00:58:40.870
Um, it's kind of ambiguous.

00:58:40.950 --> 00:58:45.430
Like, yeah, they're kinda doing something kind of silly and and and oafish, but does that

00:58:45.430 --> 00:58:46.710
mean that they're stupid?

00:58:46.790 --> 00:58:48.710
Does uh it's not quite obvious.

00:58:48.870 --> 00:58:49.030
Right.

00:58:49.190 --> 00:58:53.510
Um, or like if you have the toilet paper on on on your foot, like, yeah, it's kind of

00:58:53.510 --> 00:58:56.520
gross, but like, you know, uh anyone could have done that.

00:58:56.600 --> 00:58:57.720
It's kind of an honest mistake.

00:58:57.880 --> 00:58:58.040
Yeah.

00:58:58.120 --> 00:59:02.200
Like, does that mean that, you know, Dave is gr is gross and and and incompetent, or is it

00:59:02.200 --> 00:59:04.120
just a a mistake that any of us could have made?

00:59:04.200 --> 00:59:05.480
Like it's it's kind of ambiguous.

00:59:05.560 --> 00:59:06.200
It's tempting.

00:59:06.360 --> 00:59:08.760
Like, you know, you you could imagine us making one of two errors.

00:59:08.840 --> 00:59:14.440
We could we could all um think that everyone else thinks that your status has fallen, or

00:59:14.520 --> 00:59:19.230
um, you know, we could uh think that your status has stayed the same and everyone else

00:59:19.230 --> 00:59:22.750
thinks that your status has fallen in when you either way it's going to be costly because

00:59:22.750 --> 00:59:27.870
we're going to have disagreement about what your status is in the wake of this embarrassing

00:59:27.870 --> 00:59:28.430
situation.

00:59:28.750 --> 00:59:28.990
Right.

00:59:29.150 --> 00:59:33.950
Um and often you can have two mix ups where you can have one person who has a a mix up or a

00:59:33.950 --> 00:59:38.270
faux pas, and then that causes the audience to be mixed up about whether to treat that faux

00:59:38.270 --> 00:59:42.270
pas as a serious transget transgression or a forgivable mistake.

00:59:42.580 --> 00:59:42.820
Right.

00:59:42.980 --> 00:59:47.780
Um, and so the mix-up itself is is funny, and then the the audience's mix up about how to

00:59:47.780 --> 00:59:50.020
treat that mix-up is is funny.

00:59:50.580 --> 00:59:55.060
Um so when when the audience clearly devalues you, that's shame.

00:59:55.220 --> 01:00:00.020
But when the audience ambiguously devalues you and struggles to coordinate on whether your

01:00:00.020 --> 01:00:04.810
reputation has been damaged, whether your status has fallen, um, there are different um

01:00:04.810 --> 01:00:07.450
adaptive responses to either of those situations.

01:00:07.690 --> 01:00:13.050
With shame, the best response is just to hide, placate, um, try to conceal whatever it is

01:00:13.050 --> 01:00:15.770
that was uh uh damaging uh to your reputation.

01:00:15.930 --> 01:00:18.410
With embarrassment, that's not necessarily the best strategy.

01:00:18.570 --> 01:00:20.970
Um with embarrassment, you're on this sort of knife edge.

01:00:21.210 --> 01:00:23.290
On your stat on the one hand, your status could fall.

01:00:23.450 --> 01:00:25.850
On the other hand, your status could could stay the same and everyone could have a good

01:00:25.850 --> 01:00:27.050
laugh and and move on.

01:00:27.210 --> 01:00:31.900
And so when you're embarrassed, the the best strategy is to try to tip the scales in favor

01:00:32.140 --> 01:00:33.980
of your status staying the same.

01:00:34.140 --> 01:00:34.300
Right.

01:00:34.540 --> 01:00:34.780
Right.

01:00:35.020 --> 01:00:37.500
Uh and and and there are a number of ways you could try to do that.

01:00:37.660 --> 01:00:41.740
One way is to laugh yourself, to try in hopes that you might elicit other people's

01:00:41.740 --> 01:00:42.060
laughter.

01:00:42.300 --> 01:00:45.500
Because if we're all laughing together, then we're diffusing the costs and the costs aren't

01:00:45.500 --> 01:00:46.220
going to be taken seriously.

01:00:46.300 --> 01:00:50.060
You're not going to be devalued and we can all, you know, move on and and continue uh

01:00:50.060 --> 01:00:51.900
coordinating and cooperating as before.

01:00:52.300 --> 01:00:54.460
Um so I might laugh if I'm embarrassed.

01:00:54.620 --> 01:01:00.150
Um another way to try to tip the scales in favor of my preserved social standing is to

01:01:00.150 --> 01:01:04.550
signal that I am in fact embarrassed, that I understand that I made a faux pas, I

01:01:04.550 --> 01:01:08.790
understand that I was mixed up, and that I'm very uh disinclined to have that happen again.

01:01:08.870 --> 01:01:09.030
Right.

01:01:09.270 --> 01:01:12.790
You can count on me to not blunder into that kind of mistake again.

01:01:13.110 --> 01:01:13.350
Right.

01:01:13.590 --> 01:01:17.190
And you could think of that as a really important cue to others that I shouldn't be

01:01:17.190 --> 01:01:17.990
devalued.

01:01:18.200 --> 01:01:23.480
Because if I if I make a mistake or a mix-up, on the one hand, that could signal that I'm

01:01:23.480 --> 01:01:28.440
the type of person that is constantly blundering into these mix-ups, in which case I'm a

01:01:28.440 --> 01:01:31.160
bad social partner and I should be avoided.

01:01:31.320 --> 01:01:35.800
Um but if I make a mix-up and it's not really representative of of who I am and and my

01:01:35.800 --> 01:01:40.680
ability to smoothly coordinate, then it's actually um it's gonna be costly for my audience

01:01:40.670 --> 01:01:42.270
to uh devalue me, right?

01:01:42.350 --> 01:01:45.390
Because it was just a fluke, it was a one-off thing that it's not gonna happen again.

01:01:45.870 --> 01:01:50.030
And so so when I'm embarrassed, I should be trying to signal to others that I that I am

01:01:50.030 --> 01:01:50.510
embarrassed.

01:01:50.590 --> 01:01:52.990
I understand there was a mix-up, it's not gonna happen again.

01:01:53.230 --> 01:01:58.270
And blushing may serve the function of allowing others to uh allowing everyone to have

01:01:58.270 --> 01:02:00.430
common knowledge of the embarrassment.

01:02:00.590 --> 01:02:06.500
Because when I'm blushing, everyone can see that everyone can see that I'm embarrassed.

01:02:06.820 --> 01:02:09.300
And because blushing is hot, you can feel it yourself.

01:02:09.460 --> 01:02:11.300
So not so I know that I'm embarrassed.

01:02:11.380 --> 01:02:13.380
I know that others know that that I'm embarrassed.

01:02:13.460 --> 01:02:16.980
And I know that others know that others know that I'm embarrassed.

01:02:17.860 --> 01:02:20.980
And so that signals to other people that I'm aware of the faux pas.

01:02:21.140 --> 01:02:22.340
It's not going to happen again.

01:02:22.740 --> 01:02:27.780
And that's another way to sort of tip the scales in favor of preserving my social status.

01:02:28.150 --> 01:02:28.950
That's really interesting.

01:02:29.030 --> 01:02:32.790
And I think like there's this trope, and I think it's right, um, you know, and we have

01:02:32.790 --> 01:02:37.110
younger kids, we haven't dealt with this yet, but this sort of like super chronically

01:02:37.110 --> 01:02:42.710
embarrassed adolescent who's sort of like really afraid to do

01:02:42.710 --> 01:02:47.750
anything and just constantly embarrassed, or like, dad, you're embarrassing me in front of

01:02:47.750 --> 01:02:48.470
my friends.

01:02:48.710 --> 01:02:54.420
Um, and it's exactly when this status um game switches to sort of

01:02:54.420 --> 01:03:00.180
idiosyncratic to your peer group and not and you're kind of completely divorced from like

01:03:00.180 --> 01:03:03.060
the status of the prior generation.

01:03:03.220 --> 01:03:09.060
So I think like um you know, adolescent shyness and embarrassment, that's just

01:03:09.060 --> 01:03:11.620
a really um interesting, interesting thing.

01:03:12.020 --> 01:03:13.150
Yeah, absolutely.

01:03:13.310 --> 01:03:17.070
And then and then we can talk about the other side of this, which is what if you fail?

01:03:17.230 --> 01:03:21.150
What if you fail to tip the scales in favor of preserving your social status?

01:03:21.310 --> 01:03:21.470
Right.

01:03:21.630 --> 01:03:25.070
You know, you maybe maybe you laugh ha ha ha and nobody shares laughter with you.

01:03:25.230 --> 01:03:25.390
Yeah.

01:03:25.550 --> 01:03:26.750
Everyone's stone faced.

01:03:27.150 --> 01:03:30.030
Or um or maybe everyone's uh laughing at you.

01:03:30.190 --> 01:03:30.270
Right.

01:03:30.590 --> 01:03:32.510
Or maybe everyone's mocking you.

01:03:32.800 --> 01:03:37.760
Um, and uh everyone knows that everyone knows that you've really lost social standing, that

01:03:37.760 --> 01:03:39.120
your reputation has been damaged.

01:03:39.280 --> 01:03:43.280
Um in that case, the embarrassment will sour into humiliation.

01:03:43.600 --> 01:03:44.000
Right.

01:03:44.240 --> 01:03:48.480
Uh and you can think of humiliation as just shame, but it's preceded by some kind of

01:03:48.480 --> 01:03:49.120
embarrassment.

01:03:49.360 --> 01:03:49.520
Right.

01:03:49.680 --> 01:03:55.680
Um that it's what happens when the the uh the attempt to signal embarrassment and diffuse

01:03:55.680 --> 01:03:59.600
the costs fails and you're just you just slip right into shame.

01:04:00.000 --> 01:04:00.320
Right.

01:04:00.570 --> 01:04:01.450
That's really interesting.

01:04:01.530 --> 01:04:06.330
And I love that what you talked about a second ago was that it can either be a thing of the

01:04:06.330 --> 01:04:11.130
target of the humor is sort of where the lesson is, or ourselves, like the recipients of

01:04:11.130 --> 01:04:11.290
it.

01:04:11.530 --> 01:04:16.970
And this is where I think like I'm thinking Andy Kaufman is a really great example of doing

01:04:16.970 --> 01:04:17.770
all these things.

01:04:17.930 --> 01:04:23.450
So there's sort of one is where Andy Kaufman gets up and is a really bad

01:04:23.450 --> 01:04:24.410
comedian.

01:04:24.970 --> 01:04:27.210
Um and he's really not funny.

01:04:27.680 --> 01:04:32.640
And it's sort of this thing of, well, he's embarrassing himself, right?

01:04:33.120 --> 01:04:38.880
But um, but he continues to not be funny, and people start laughing at

01:04:38.880 --> 01:04:42.160
him because they're he it's an embarrassing thing.

01:04:42.320 --> 01:04:46.000
He's losing status, and then he's sort of like, Why are you laughing at me?

01:04:46.320 --> 01:04:52.080
You know, and so it becomes this thing of it's this comment of you're actually harming

01:04:52.080 --> 01:04:57.730
a person because they're failing to be funny, And so what he's doing on purpose

01:04:58.050 --> 01:05:03.570
is he's he's pointing out that you're it's really

01:05:04.130 --> 01:05:09.010
hurtful to sort of like you're hurting me by um and it's funny, right?

01:05:09.090 --> 01:05:11.330
Because it's like it's he's supposed to be funny.

01:05:11.490 --> 01:05:17.410
The other example of that is um he'll be on like a a a talk show and he'll just be

01:05:17.410 --> 01:05:22.920
like uh you know, uh, I'm gonna contact or my my dad, my parents are here, and you know,

01:05:23.000 --> 01:05:26.120
and I've never really told them I love them, and I'm just gonna tell them I love them.

01:05:26.360 --> 01:05:32.200
And it's a really genuine, sincere thing he's doing, but it's not funny, right?

01:05:32.440 --> 01:05:37.560
Because he's or it is funny because he's he's not doing, he's not like performing, right?

01:05:37.640 --> 01:05:39.320
He's not doing a bit.

01:05:39.720 --> 01:05:40.040
Yeah.

01:05:40.280 --> 01:05:46.110
And and you feel like, well, he's an oaf, but then he's doing this really useful,

01:05:46.190 --> 01:05:47.870
like important real-world thing.

01:05:47.950 --> 01:05:53.790
And then you sort of think, Oh, um, it's horrible that I have the expectation

01:05:54.270 --> 01:05:58.190
and I'm devaluing him because he's telling his family he loves them.

01:05:58.670 --> 01:06:01.630
You know, and he's and there's all these cues that he knows he's doing it.

01:06:01.710 --> 01:06:05.310
So, you know, when he's a bad comedian, like at the end in some of his bits, he'll like do

01:06:05.310 --> 01:06:06.430
an Elvis impression.

01:06:06.510 --> 01:06:07.950
So it's like it's really hard to do.

01:06:08.110 --> 01:06:12.110
So he's showing you, I know that I'm being bad.

01:06:12.350 --> 01:06:13.880
But some people don't get it, right?

01:06:14.040 --> 01:06:17.320
And so, like people, and so I think it's like Andy Kaufman humor.

01:06:17.480 --> 01:06:23.320
I think your theory explains it in a way where it's sort of like

01:06:23.320 --> 01:06:25.640
the you're it's the humor of humor, right?

01:06:25.720 --> 01:06:29.480
Where like what I I I like that about that.

01:06:29.800 --> 01:06:35.720
Um uh but and I think this is also where I've heard people say that like you can

01:06:35.720 --> 01:06:40.830
kind of couch deep insights in humor in ways that you couldn't otherwise, right?

01:06:40.910 --> 01:06:44.990
Like there's sort of the core jester who can sort of get away with making fun of the

01:06:44.990 --> 01:06:50.110
dictator or the king, and other people can't, um, or like political humor.

01:06:50.350 --> 01:06:52.110
Um have you thought about that?

01:06:52.270 --> 01:06:53.790
Like what's going on with that?

01:06:54.190 --> 01:06:54.750
Yeah.

01:06:55.070 --> 01:07:00.510
So related to this analysis is an emotion that is pretty understudied, which we might call

01:07:00.510 --> 01:07:02.030
mirth or amusement.

01:07:03.230 --> 01:07:08.800
And you can think of mirth as functioning to uh defuse or

01:07:08.800 --> 01:07:11.520
nullify the costs of a mix-up.

01:07:11.840 --> 01:07:15.440
Um, you know, there has to be some machinery in the mind that that performs this function

01:07:15.440 --> 01:07:18.640
of making sure that the costs don't get registered, right?

01:07:18.800 --> 01:07:21.520
They don't get taken quote unquote seriously.

01:07:21.840 --> 01:07:27.520
Um and so in order to perform this adaptive function, MERTH has to deactivate or

01:07:27.520 --> 01:07:31.280
suppress um systems in the head that process costs.

01:07:32.320 --> 01:07:36.430
So it's gonna deactivate anger so you don't get angry at the faux pas.

01:07:36.750 --> 01:07:40.190
It's going to deactivate fear.

01:07:40.350 --> 01:07:43.310
So if you're play wrestling, you know, you're not going to be afraid that the person's

01:07:43.310 --> 01:07:44.190
trying to kill you.

01:07:44.350 --> 01:07:49.230
It's going to deactivate hatred so I don't hold a grudge because you try because you tried

01:07:49.230 --> 01:07:53.390
to, you know, uh fight me or whatever, or you're play fighting with me.

01:07:53.470 --> 01:07:56.430
Um it's going to deactivate uh compassion and guilt.

01:07:56.590 --> 01:08:00.990
If you know I'm not going to feel guilty for the the fake uh punch that I threw at you.

01:08:01.230 --> 01:08:01.550
Right.

01:08:02.030 --> 01:08:06.880
Um and so uh it's gonna deactivate all these different negative

01:08:07.200 --> 01:08:12.480
emotions um in order to prevent the costs of the mix-up from being uh registered.

01:08:12.640 --> 01:08:18.320
And so if that's the function of mirth, then all of a sudden there's uh a huge strategic

01:08:18.320 --> 01:08:21.440
advantage to be gained by exploiting that aspect of mirth.

01:08:22.560 --> 01:08:28.350
Um so political coalitions uh mobilize and coordinate by creating common

01:08:28.350 --> 01:08:29.470
knowledge of costs.

01:08:29.710 --> 01:08:35.470
The costs of the enemy coming and invading us or dominating us or exploiting us, the

01:08:35.470 --> 01:08:41.150
costs of us having low status, the costs of being attacked, the costs of

01:08:41.150 --> 01:08:42.190
unfairness.

01:08:43.390 --> 01:08:45.390
Politics is all about taking things seriously.

01:08:45.550 --> 01:08:50.920
And I I think of seriousness as the as basically the ability to register costs.

01:08:51.080 --> 01:08:56.520
Seriousness is the actual or potential or hypothetical costs that could be inflicted by a

01:08:56.520 --> 01:08:56.920
situation.

01:08:57.080 --> 01:09:00.920
I think of a serious person as someone who can inflict costs on you, someone who can harm

01:09:00.920 --> 01:09:04.440
your reputation, who can physically harm you, who can withhold benefits that are really

01:09:04.440 --> 01:09:10.040
valuable to you, a person whose absence is greatly felt, um, a person with who can

01:09:10.040 --> 01:09:11.560
withhold valuable information to you.

01:09:11.720 --> 01:09:16.930
So in in the show Succession, Logan Roy tells his children uh you're not serious people.

01:09:17.170 --> 01:09:20.770
Uh and and you can see why that would cut so deep.

01:09:20.850 --> 01:09:25.490
It's it's you know, telling his kids that they're incapable of, you know, n bargaining with

01:09:25.490 --> 01:09:29.970
or negotiating with anyone or inflicting any kind of real costs or withholding any kind of

01:09:29.970 --> 01:09:31.090
real benefits from anyone.

01:09:31.330 --> 01:09:31.890
Right.

01:09:32.450 --> 01:09:35.570
Um, so I got launched on a sidetrack there.

01:09:35.650 --> 01:09:37.170
So um seriousness.

01:09:37.420 --> 01:09:39.020
We need seriousness politically.

01:09:39.180 --> 01:09:42.860
Politics is about what we should take seriously as a society, right?

01:09:43.660 --> 01:09:49.660
And um if I come into the middle of a political rally or a political protest and

01:09:49.660 --> 01:09:54.780
I start cracking jokes and activating mirth, right, that's going to throw a huge wrench

01:09:55.020 --> 01:09:56.700
into the political coalition.

01:09:56.780 --> 01:10:00.380
It's going to prevent them from creating common knowledge of these costs that they need to

01:10:00.380 --> 01:10:01.180
take seriously.

01:10:01.420 --> 01:10:04.140
And so mirth is kind of a political weapon.

01:10:04.270 --> 01:10:09.790
Um, it can it can really damage uh one one group's ability to to mobilize.

01:10:10.030 --> 01:10:13.150
Um and so I think that's why humor can be so political.

01:10:13.310 --> 01:10:18.030
We really have to figure out what stuff we should be allowed to laugh at and what stuff we

01:10:18.030 --> 01:10:18.350
shouldn't.

01:10:18.430 --> 01:10:21.550
And if something is really costly and we really need to pay attention to the costs of that

01:10:21.550 --> 01:10:27.060
so that we can mitigate it, then we should be really um reluctant to joke about it because

01:10:27.060 --> 01:10:31.860
we cannot afford to activate mirth and deactivate um the negative emotions that we need to

01:10:31.860 --> 01:10:32.660
deal with it.

01:10:33.140 --> 01:10:38.980
And so mirth is a is a kind of anti-seriousness system that we

01:10:38.980 --> 01:10:44.900
should be really antagonistic to in in serious situations, because it prevents us

01:10:44.900 --> 01:10:47.460
from actually dealing with those serious situations effectively.

01:10:47.860 --> 01:10:48.100
Right.

01:10:48.580 --> 01:10:53.220
So like I'm thinking so like, and this is also where maybe the content of humor comes in

01:10:53.460 --> 01:10:59.130
where um you know, I'm thinking like politic politics where political humor where the

01:10:59.130 --> 01:11:04.650
joke is on our side versus the other side, we're fine with that, but we don't find funny

01:11:04.650 --> 01:11:06.810
where like we're the victims of the humor.

01:11:07.130 --> 01:11:12.970
Um is that sort of similar, or is it just even like across the board humor doesn't because

01:11:13.050 --> 01:11:18.890
I'm thinking, you know, like politicians who are sort of very serious, but then might mock

01:11:18.890 --> 01:11:20.090
the other side, right?

01:11:20.840 --> 01:11:21.160
Yeah.

01:11:21.400 --> 01:11:22.840
So I think that's slightly different.

01:11:23.000 --> 01:11:27.240
I think what what's happening there is when you mock someone, you're you're basically

01:11:27.240 --> 01:11:29.800
trying to frame them as a bad coordination partner.

01:11:30.120 --> 01:11:36.120
Someone who's idiotic, foolish, awkward, inept, clumsy, someone who's

01:11:36.120 --> 01:11:40.520
bad to associate with, who's gonna bring very few, if any, benefits and many costs.

01:11:40.840 --> 01:11:41.160
Right.

01:11:41.400 --> 01:11:44.630
Um so I think that that is the function of mockery.

01:11:44.790 --> 01:11:48.950
So once we have this system online where we're evaluating uh each other's values as uh

01:11:48.950 --> 01:11:53.030
value as a social partner, uh, and in your ability to coordinate smoothly is a really good

01:11:53.030 --> 01:11:57.430
indicator of your value as a social partner, it behooves me to try to make my rivals look

01:11:57.430 --> 01:12:01.670
foolish, to look like they're bad social partners, and to make myself look like a good

01:12:01.670 --> 01:12:03.030
social partner by comparison.

01:12:03.270 --> 01:12:08.440
And so you can think of political competition as attempts to rally people to one side of a

01:12:08.440 --> 01:12:09.240
political conflict.

01:12:09.320 --> 01:12:14.040
And one way to get people on your side is to cast the other side as a set of bad social

01:12:14.040 --> 01:12:14.440
partners.

01:12:14.680 --> 01:12:19.480
So we can do this by making them look mean or cruel or selfish or clumsy or offish or

01:12:19.480 --> 01:12:21.400
stupid or idiotic or foolish.

01:12:21.720 --> 01:12:23.640
And I think that's what a lot of political satire is about.

01:12:23.720 --> 01:12:28.440
It's about pointing out the hypocrisies on the other side, the foolishness, uh the idiocy,

01:12:28.680 --> 01:12:34.600
uh, and the ways that they're constantly failing to get how the world works, to uh get how

01:12:34.600 --> 01:12:38.050
uh language works, um to do things the right ways.

01:12:38.290 --> 01:12:41.490
I think that's uh what a lot of political satire is about.

01:12:41.570 --> 01:12:46.610
Um and you can think of hypocrisy itself as a kind of um dual mix up.

01:12:46.850 --> 01:12:52.130
So um if we're all trying to collaborate to enforce some rule that benefits everyone,

01:12:52.290 --> 01:12:54.290
there's a kind of tempting mix up there.

01:12:54.450 --> 01:12:59.410
I could think the purpose of the rule is to benefit me but not others, and that I am

01:12:59.410 --> 01:13:03.840
supposed to um in uh Enforce the rule but not follow it.

01:13:04.080 --> 01:13:04.400
Right.

01:13:04.560 --> 01:13:05.120
Right.

01:13:05.360 --> 01:13:10.720
Um and if I do that, then that could create another mix-up where you think I'm

01:13:10.720 --> 01:13:15.280
virtuous for enforcing the rule when I'm secretly corrupt for flouting it.

01:13:15.440 --> 01:13:15.600
Right.

01:13:15.760 --> 01:13:18.720
And so we have these dual mix-ups where I'm confusing the purpose of the rule, where I

01:13:18.720 --> 01:13:21.680
think it's it's to selfishly benefit me instead of the wider community.

01:13:22.080 --> 01:13:25.760
And there's a mix-up surrounding my virtue where people think I'm more virtuous than I

01:13:25.760 --> 01:13:28.480
really am because I'm enforcing the rule, but I'm also flouting it.

01:13:28.560 --> 01:13:28.800
Right.

01:13:28.960 --> 01:13:29.360
Right.

01:13:29.670 --> 01:13:33.830
And so a lot of political satire, I think, is about pointing out the hypocrisies of the

01:13:33.830 --> 01:13:38.470
other side and accentuating the the aspect of the hypocrisy that's that's the mix-up.

01:13:38.950 --> 01:13:41.750
Um where they're just fundamentally morally confused.

01:13:42.150 --> 01:13:42.630
That's interesting.

01:13:42.710 --> 01:13:47.750
And that means that if I find something funny and I laugh at it, then I'm sort of by virtue

01:13:47.750 --> 01:13:48.550
of its design.

01:13:48.630 --> 01:13:54.630
And I've heard professional comedians say this, that it's sort of like um uh

01:13:54.950 --> 01:14:00.740
it's humor is sort of like a direct pipeline to insight or like ign accepting

01:14:00.980 --> 01:14:05.380
something you might not want to talk about explicitly because if I laugh at it, I'm sort of

01:14:05.380 --> 01:14:06.100
acknowledging.

01:14:06.260 --> 01:14:10.980
If I if I laugh at the hypocrisy of a politician I like, the fact that I'm laughing at it

01:14:11.140 --> 01:14:15.940
means I'm accepting that the hypocrisy exists, that the mix up is happening.

01:14:16.100 --> 01:14:20.340
And then I even like it's I'm creating and I'm maybe I'm even like creating common

01:14:20.340 --> 01:14:21.380
knowledge about it, right?

01:14:21.540 --> 01:14:21.700
Yeah.

01:14:21.860 --> 01:14:27.710
So it's sort of like this um really it sort of bypasses a lot of the sort of like

01:14:27.870 --> 01:14:33.870
filters of in the the talky parts of our brains sort of you know like where

01:14:33.870 --> 01:14:38.590
we wouldn't want to like as a narrative accept a premise but if we find it funny it's sort

01:14:38.590 --> 01:14:42.030
of like it's really telling what what people find funny.

01:14:42.430 --> 01:14:42.910
Yeah.

01:14:43.150 --> 01:14:43.950
Absolutely.

01:14:44.220 --> 01:14:44.860
Yeah.

01:14:45.260 --> 01:14:49.500
Um, should we talk about comic timing?

01:14:49.820 --> 01:14:50.380
Please.

01:14:51.580 --> 01:14:56.780
I think I I think I think the three has a cool uh way of understanding what comic timing is

01:14:57.020 --> 01:14:59.020
and the art of of comedic acting.

01:14:59.180 --> 01:14:59.500
Yeah.

01:14:59.660 --> 01:15:05.500
Um so um you could think about all the subtle coordination games we play every time we have

01:15:05.500 --> 01:15:06.380
a conversation.

01:15:06.620 --> 01:15:08.310
So there's the volume game.

01:15:08.550 --> 01:15:14.230
I could either talk too loudly and frighten you, or talk too softly and you won't hear me,

01:15:14.630 --> 01:15:19.110
um, or talk at the right volume and we could successfully have a conversation.

01:15:19.270 --> 01:15:19.430
Right.

01:15:19.510 --> 01:15:22.550
And they're there are mix-ups just in terms of the volume of my voice.

01:15:22.950 --> 01:15:24.390
Um and there's the pacing game.

01:15:24.470 --> 01:15:28.310
If I talk too quickly, then you won't understand what I'm saying, you won't follow me.

01:15:28.470 --> 01:15:32.550
If I talk too slowly, I might bore you, uh, I might I might look dim-witted.

01:15:32.630 --> 01:15:36.470
And so there's the sweet spot where I can't talk too fast, can't talk too slow, right?

01:15:36.920 --> 01:15:39.800
Um and then there's the uh the gesture game.

01:15:39.960 --> 01:15:44.600
Um if I just I'm totally motionless and expressionless uh when I'm talking, then you're

01:15:44.760 --> 01:15:47.560
you're going to fail to detect uh what I'm saying.

01:15:47.640 --> 01:15:51.080
Uh you're going to fail to detect the emotional undercurrents, you're going to uh miss what

01:15:51.080 --> 01:15:53.000
I'm referring to if I'm not pointing to it.

01:15:53.240 --> 01:15:58.520
But if I am wildly flailing my arms around, or if I'm like contorting my face in

01:15:58.520 --> 01:16:02.840
exaggerated grimaces, then that's not good either because I could, you know, um overstate

01:16:02.840 --> 01:16:08.510
the magnitude of the emotional undercurrents and mislead you about how excited I am or how

01:16:08.510 --> 01:16:11.310
uh uh uh angry I am or whatever.

01:16:11.550 --> 01:16:14.910
I might, you know, if I'm flailing my arms, I might hit you, and you might mistake that for

01:16:14.910 --> 01:16:15.310
aggression.

01:16:15.390 --> 01:16:19.550
So there are mix-ups involving just uh gesturing and emotional communication and facial

01:16:19.550 --> 01:16:20.350
expressions.

01:16:20.510 --> 01:16:22.990
Um there are mix-ups surrounding proximity.

01:16:23.150 --> 01:16:26.830
If I stand too close to you, you might interpret that as threatening or romantic.

01:16:26.910 --> 01:16:30.720
If I stand too far away, you might think that I'm like grossed out by you or afraid of you.

01:16:30.880 --> 01:16:33.600
And so there's another, there's the sweet spot where I have to be just right.

01:16:33.680 --> 01:16:37.120
And if I get it wrong, then we're going to be you know discoordinated.

01:16:37.280 --> 01:16:39.040
Um there's the the tone game.

01:16:39.120 --> 01:16:43.360
If I speak in an overly monotone way, the emotional undercurrents are going to be lost.

01:16:43.440 --> 01:16:48.480
Um if I speak in an overly sing-song-y way, again, you're going to uh uh it's gonna be

01:16:48.480 --> 01:16:52.560
exaggerate the emotional undercurrents that might distract you from the words themselves.

01:16:52.960 --> 01:16:54.790
Um There's the timing game.

01:16:54.870 --> 01:16:59.190
If I respond too quickly to what you say, I might like accidentally interrupt you and you

01:16:59.190 --> 01:17:00.790
might interpret that as hostile.

01:17:00.950 --> 01:17:01.270
Right.

01:17:01.750 --> 01:17:06.470
If I respond too slowly, I might appear like I'm distracted or I'm I'm dim witted.

01:17:06.710 --> 01:17:07.030
Right.

01:17:07.190 --> 01:17:12.470
And so they're all these really subtle micro coordination games we play every time we have

01:17:12.470 --> 01:17:15.030
any kind of conversation or social interaction.

01:17:15.270 --> 01:17:15.750
Right.

01:17:15.990 --> 01:17:21.670
And these type these micro mix ups, this is the toolkit of the comedic actor,

01:17:21.800 --> 01:17:22.120
right?

01:17:22.280 --> 01:17:27.160
You could think of Jim Carrey, the exaggerated clownishness, how he contorts his face and

01:17:27.160 --> 01:17:28.760
these crazy facial expressions.

01:17:28.840 --> 01:17:34.680
And you know, he he's so physical, and like his his um his gestures are so temptingly

01:17:35.000 --> 01:17:36.760
out of sync with like a normal gesture.

01:17:36.840 --> 01:17:40.280
His facial expressions are just like a little bit too much, you know.

01:17:40.440 --> 01:17:44.970
From uh he uh you know he might be too close, he might like put his arm around the Dalai

01:17:45.050 --> 01:17:47.290
Lama like he's one of the like he's a frat bro, you know.

01:17:47.370 --> 01:17:47.610
Right.

01:17:47.770 --> 01:17:53.450
Uh um or like Charles Groden, who is just like totally monotone in his voice and his

01:17:53.450 --> 01:17:54.170
delivery.

01:17:54.250 --> 01:18:00.250
Um, or or you you might accentuate the punch of a punchline by um sort of

01:18:00.250 --> 01:18:04.410
uh uh being temptingly out of sync with the normal rhythms of a conversation.

01:18:04.650 --> 01:18:09.900
Or you might uh be smoothly in sync with the normal rhythms of a conversation in a way that

01:18:09.900 --> 01:18:13.100
allows a whopping absurdity to casually slip out.

01:18:13.180 --> 01:18:16.780
And that might accentuate, you might might create another mix-up where there's a mix-up

01:18:16.860 --> 01:18:21.180
between the shock of the information that is being delivered and the nonchalance with which

01:18:21.180 --> 01:18:22.460
it is being delivered.

01:18:22.940 --> 01:18:28.460
So I think uh like Saster Sasha uh Baron Cohen, like Oli G would be a good example of that,

01:18:28.540 --> 01:18:30.780
like very smooth, but then saying outrageous stuff.

01:18:30.860 --> 01:18:31.020
Yeah.

01:18:31.420 --> 01:18:32.380
Yeah, exactly.

01:18:32.620 --> 01:18:37.770
And so it really is like there's a lot of comedy just simply in the delivery of the joke,

01:18:37.850 --> 01:18:39.770
um apart from the joke itself.

01:18:40.090 --> 01:18:40.250
Right.

01:18:40.410 --> 01:18:44.010
Um and I and I think the the theory can make really interesting and textured predictions

01:18:44.010 --> 01:18:44.490
about that.

01:18:45.130 --> 01:18:45.530
Yeah.

01:18:45.610 --> 01:18:45.850
Yeah.

01:18:46.010 --> 01:18:47.290
I have nothing to say.

01:18:49.130 --> 01:18:49.610
Yeah.

01:18:49.850 --> 01:18:52.810
Um uh yeah super cool.

01:18:52.970 --> 01:18:53.370
Mm-hmm.

01:18:54.570 --> 01:18:54.970
Cool.

01:18:55.050 --> 01:19:00.360
I mean I think that's that's uh about I mean there's another thing.

01:19:00.520 --> 01:19:01.320
One more thing.

01:19:01.560 --> 01:19:02.440
Yeah, please.

01:19:02.760 --> 01:19:03.800
Evil laughs.

01:19:04.200 --> 01:19:06.600
This is another thing that occurred to me.

01:19:06.920 --> 01:19:09.880
Um the mwahaha of the supervillain.

01:19:10.040 --> 01:19:10.600
Yes, yes.

01:19:10.840 --> 01:19:14.760
Um, there's this horror movie called Smile where it's just all about these people with

01:19:14.760 --> 01:19:15.560
creepy smiles.

01:19:15.640 --> 01:19:15.800
Yeah.

01:19:16.040 --> 01:19:16.120
Right.

01:19:16.280 --> 01:19:17.800
And it's like really scary.

01:19:18.120 --> 01:19:22.120
And and and just like some people really dislike um clowns.

01:19:22.910 --> 01:19:27.310
Um, this is something when we were back at the uh infant lab at Yale, we talked to Kylie

01:19:27.390 --> 01:19:31.950
Hamlin about, and I think she went on a podcast soon after we were and was like somebody

01:19:31.950 --> 01:19:35.390
asked her, because she does the infant morality work, and somebody was asking about like

01:19:35.470 --> 01:19:39.070
why do people dislike um like clowns for some reason?

01:19:39.230 --> 01:19:41.470
And like we had talked about this like a few weeks before.

01:19:41.550 --> 01:19:47.470
But yeah, no, this idea of like you can't predict um, or it's sort of like uh

01:19:47.660 --> 01:19:52.700
it's really like clowns, scary clowns are really scary because there's just like smile

01:19:52.860 --> 01:19:55.500
affixed to this scary agent, right?

01:19:55.580 --> 01:19:57.420
Like that's like extra scary, right?

01:19:57.980 --> 01:19:58.620
Totally.

01:19:58.940 --> 01:20:01.260
But you know, it it's hard to interact with scary.

01:20:01.580 --> 01:20:02.060
No worries, no.

01:20:02.220 --> 01:20:06.540
I mean you can begin to make sense of why clowns are scary and why smiles can in some

01:20:06.540 --> 01:20:10.380
contexts be scary, uh, once you understand the adaptive function of mirth.

01:20:11.830 --> 01:20:17.510
So if the function of mirth is to deactivate emotions that process costs, then if you're in

01:20:17.510 --> 01:20:22.150
a state of mirth, you're gonna be a really menacing and dangerous person.

01:20:22.630 --> 01:20:23.110
Right.

01:20:23.430 --> 01:20:28.550
So it's gonna it may deactivate your fear, causing you or enabling you to attack other

01:20:28.550 --> 01:20:30.390
people without any fear of retaliation.

01:20:30.550 --> 01:20:30.630
Right.

01:20:30.870 --> 01:20:32.150
It may deactivate your empathy.

01:20:32.230 --> 01:20:34.070
So if you hurt someone, you won't feel their pain.

01:20:34.150 --> 01:20:34.230
Right.

01:20:34.390 --> 01:20:35.750
Or you won't feel guilty.

01:20:35.910 --> 01:20:41.840
Um it uh it may um make you impossible to threaten or intimidate or deter because

01:20:41.840 --> 01:20:45.680
you're not going to be able to process the costs that are being threatened.

01:20:45.840 --> 01:20:49.440
Um if someone is angry with you, they won't be able to negotiate with you for better

01:20:49.440 --> 01:20:49.920
treatment.

01:20:50.000 --> 01:20:50.080
Right.

01:20:50.400 --> 01:20:55.200
Because such negotiation requires real or hypothetical costs that that you'll just be

01:20:55.200 --> 01:20:56.080
unable to process.

01:20:56.240 --> 01:21:00.320
You know, like like the Joker, I know Morgan Freeman says in in Batman, you know, the Joker

01:21:00.320 --> 01:21:02.400
cannot be bought, bartered, or negotiated with.

01:21:02.560 --> 01:21:02.720
Yeah.

01:21:02.880 --> 01:21:03.120
Right.

01:21:03.360 --> 01:21:05.280
I think it's because he's in a state of mirth.

01:21:05.370 --> 01:21:06.890
He can't take anything seriously.

01:21:07.050 --> 01:21:11.290
And there's something really scary about that, that you there's nothing you can do to

01:21:11.290 --> 01:21:14.650
negotiate with or deter a mirthful person.

01:21:14.810 --> 01:21:18.970
And they're gonna feel no emotion, they're gonna feel no compunctions about harming you in

01:21:18.970 --> 01:21:19.370
any way.

01:21:19.530 --> 01:21:20.570
It's all a joke.

01:21:20.730 --> 01:21:25.130
Um and so there's something really scary about being someone being with someone in a

01:21:25.130 --> 01:21:29.140
mirthful state that and and when you're not sharing that mercyful state.

01:21:29.460 --> 01:21:30.100
That's really interesting.

01:21:30.180 --> 01:21:34.660
There the uh the Quentin Tarantino and Glorious Bastards, there's a character Christopher

01:21:34.660 --> 01:21:35.700
Waltz did.

01:21:36.180 --> 01:21:41.940
Um the the I think he was an SS uh officer, and he's just sort

01:21:41.940 --> 01:21:45.220
of charming and very funny, right?

01:21:45.620 --> 01:21:51.140
And it's really scary, and it's he's really charismatic, and it's really um

01:21:51.460 --> 01:21:57.110
I I think it's one of the most um insidious characters I've ever seen.

01:21:57.190 --> 01:22:01.990
And I think it's exactly, or or maybe partially at least, because there's sort of a sense

01:22:01.990 --> 01:22:06.870
of humor, and there's so much, there's so much sort of sobriety and so cognizant.

01:22:06.950 --> 01:22:09.910
It's not like you're you're looking at somebody.

01:22:10.070 --> 01:22:13.830
I think like what you're saying is like there's a difference between somebody who's about

01:22:13.830 --> 01:22:19.120
to do something terrible, and you can tell they're fighting it within themselves.

01:22:19.280 --> 01:22:22.960
Like they're like terrified, they're shaking, they're scared.

01:22:23.200 --> 01:22:23.600
Yeah.

01:22:23.840 --> 01:22:28.400
And and but they're about to inflict a cost on somebody versus somebody who is like

01:22:28.400 --> 01:22:32.880
composed, cool to the point of being slick and laughing.

01:22:33.120 --> 01:22:33.440
Right.

01:22:33.760 --> 01:22:38.880
Like if they're doing the same thing and one of the like one of those is much scarier than

01:22:38.880 --> 01:22:39.360
the other.

01:22:39.600 --> 01:22:41.280
Um yeah.

01:22:41.920 --> 01:22:42.800
Totally.

01:22:43.120 --> 01:22:43.760
Yeah.

01:22:44.790 --> 01:22:45.830
So yeah.

01:22:46.070 --> 01:22:47.590
Mirth mirth is menacing.

01:22:47.830 --> 01:22:48.150
Yeah.

01:22:48.390 --> 01:22:50.390
Good good I mean good book to me.

01:22:50.550 --> 01:22:55.190
I mean, I would rather I mean I I think it's way less scary if someone's mad at you, or

01:22:55.190 --> 01:23:00.310
even if they're yelling at you, than if someone is mirthful in a in a hostile way toward

01:23:00.310 --> 01:23:00.390
you.

01:23:00.630 --> 01:23:04.550
Because at least if they're mad, you there's the the possibility of negotiating with them,

01:23:04.630 --> 01:23:07.030
of apologizing, of making amends, right?

01:23:07.350 --> 01:23:09.830
Of of of catering to their demands, of doing something.

01:23:09.990 --> 01:23:12.310
But with a mirthful inter individual, you can't do anything.

01:23:12.480 --> 01:23:12.720
Right.

01:23:12.960 --> 01:23:16.960
They're just this train that's moving towards you that's in insensitive to any costs you

01:23:16.960 --> 01:23:17.920
could inflict on them.

01:23:18.320 --> 01:23:18.560
Yeah.

01:23:18.720 --> 01:23:19.760
It's sort of it's interesting.

01:23:19.840 --> 01:23:23.200
There's sort of a trope of like the crazy person, what are they doing?

01:23:23.360 --> 01:23:23.600
Right.

01:23:23.760 --> 01:23:24.000
Yeah.

01:23:24.160 --> 01:23:25.840
And they're typically laughing.

01:23:26.000 --> 01:23:26.320
Yeah.

01:23:26.480 --> 01:23:27.360
Uncontrollably.

01:23:27.440 --> 01:23:30.080
Like I mean it's a trope and I'm sure it came from somewhere in you.

01:23:30.160 --> 01:23:31.200
But yeah, no, exactly.

01:23:31.280 --> 01:23:37.090
Like there's a um the the kind of uncontrollable laughter or laughing at the wrong

01:23:37.090 --> 01:23:42.930
times yeah or when when somebody is like imposing costs on people like if

01:23:42.930 --> 01:23:47.090
somebody's holding somebody hostage and they're laughing maniacally that's super scary

01:23:47.250 --> 01:23:52.850
right yeah totally yeah um all right so where

01:23:53.090 --> 01:23:59.010
um uh so what's the bottom well one one last question then is that or

01:23:59.010 --> 01:24:04.900
maybe not last but um uh the the idea of humor is

01:24:04.900 --> 01:24:09.940
sort of like people being funny sort of feels like um i'm just imagining like for example

01:24:10.020 --> 01:24:15.300
like scientists who I know who are very serious versus who are very funny.

01:24:15.940 --> 01:24:21.700
And um if I equate them for like, you know, they're are they serious

01:24:21.700 --> 01:24:25.460
scientists in this sense of like they're really good scientists.

01:24:25.700 --> 01:24:31.630
Um but one are one person's funny and one isn't like they're

01:24:31.870 --> 01:24:37.070
some of the best scientists I have ever known are also funny people, and they will like,

01:24:37.150 --> 01:24:40.190
you know, make be funny about things.

01:24:40.510 --> 01:24:46.190
I don't think they're funny about well, I don't know, they're not funny about the science.

01:24:46.510 --> 01:24:52.270
Um, but uh I don't know, but I'm I'm just sort of thinking out loud, like what's the

01:24:52.670 --> 01:24:57.390
um it almost feels like the difference for me of like people who are funny versus not

01:24:57.710 --> 01:25:02.220
they're sort of like they're helping me in a way, or they're affiliative and I just like

01:25:02.220 --> 01:25:05.260
them more than somebody who's very serious.

01:25:05.660 --> 01:25:06.140
Yeah.

01:25:06.380 --> 01:25:06.940
Totally.

01:25:07.100 --> 01:25:07.340
Yeah.

01:25:07.420 --> 01:25:11.420
I mean, well, there are a number of benefits to affiliating with funny people.

01:25:11.500 --> 01:25:15.340
I mean, number one, they're gonna you're gonna have an easier time coordinating with them.

01:25:15.500 --> 01:25:19.420
Number two, they're going to alert you to potentially costly mix-ups that you might have

01:25:19.470 --> 01:25:20.910
otherwise blundered into.

01:25:21.070 --> 01:25:24.590
So they're providing you with useful information, a useful kind of service.

01:25:25.710 --> 01:25:31.470
And number three, they're likely to share a lot of uh cultural and background knowledge

01:25:31.470 --> 01:25:31.870
with you.

01:25:32.030 --> 01:25:36.350
Like if you get their jokes, then you're playing the same status game as them.

01:25:36.510 --> 01:25:42.110
Um you you have the same uh beliefs, uh opinions, norms, values.

01:25:42.190 --> 01:25:47.020
Um, and so that's signaling that they're particularly good uh uh social partner with you

01:25:47.100 --> 01:25:48.540
they're they're particularly sympatico.

01:25:49.100 --> 01:25:52.860
Um so there are a lot of lot of reasons why we're attracted to funny people.

01:25:53.020 --> 01:25:57.740
Um and in even you know in a scientific context, I know we're you know we're gonna have Dan

01:25:57.820 --> 01:26:01.180
Sneezer on um in in a in a future episode.

01:26:01.340 --> 01:26:06.140
There's there's a joke that he tells that I've I can't stop telling this joke where he says

01:26:06.300 --> 01:26:08.950
um Sorry we're about to spoil a little bit.

01:26:09.270 --> 01:26:10.070
We're spoiler your joke.

01:26:10.150 --> 01:26:12.630
Uh but I fully credit him with this with this brilliant joke.

01:26:13.110 --> 01:26:16.950
So every time um there is like a gap in the in the scientific literature or there's

01:26:16.950 --> 01:26:21.830
uncertainty or we need we need to know more, he always says, um, well, uh uh yeah, uh more

01:26:21.910 --> 01:26:22.870
more funding is needed.

01:26:23.110 --> 01:26:23.830
Yes, exactly.

01:26:23.990 --> 01:26:25.350
More funding is yes.

01:26:25.670 --> 01:26:31.320
What's great about this joke is so everyone in academia always uses this phrase, more

01:26:31.480 --> 01:26:32.600
research is needed.

01:26:32.840 --> 01:26:37.800
And it's this really like mealy-mouthed, like passive voice way of saying I need money.

01:26:37.880 --> 01:26:38.200
You know?

01:26:38.360 --> 01:26:38.600
Exactly.

01:26:38.840 --> 01:26:44.680
And what what's funny about the sneezer joke is that he's mixing up the um the overt

01:26:44.920 --> 01:26:47.400
with with the uh the covert, right?

01:26:47.480 --> 01:26:51.560
Like so overtly you say more research is needed, but covertly you really mean I I need more

01:26:51.560 --> 01:26:51.720
money.

01:26:51.880 --> 01:26:55.080
And so what's funny is that Sneezer is mixing up the two, and he's saying more funding is

01:26:55.080 --> 01:26:55.320
needed.

01:26:55.480 --> 01:26:55.720
Yes.

01:26:55.880 --> 01:26:58.010
Uh And uh it's a lovely joke.

01:26:58.090 --> 01:26:59.290
I always say that whenever you're not sure.

01:26:59.450 --> 01:27:00.170
No, it's really funny.

01:27:00.330 --> 01:27:03.770
And it even does it, like even if people do say more funding is needed, they'll often try

01:27:03.770 --> 01:27:08.330
to couch it in a way that's sort of like, oh, and I just backed into the corner of I guess

01:27:08.330 --> 01:27:10.970
it would be good for more funding to exist.

01:27:11.130 --> 01:27:13.450
You know, it's not like it's not opportunistic.

01:27:13.530 --> 01:27:18.090
And Daniel's just like his nonverbals are sort of like, here's another chance for me to say

01:27:18.090 --> 01:27:19.130
more funding is needed.

01:27:19.210 --> 01:27:19.450
Right.

01:27:19.610 --> 01:27:25.120
So it it it fills away the the the pantomime of sort of like, you know, I'm not looking for

01:27:25.120 --> 01:27:27.840
opportunities where I can ask for more resources.

01:27:27.920 --> 01:27:28.320
Yeah.

01:27:28.560 --> 01:27:29.040
Yeah.

01:27:29.360 --> 01:27:34.400
So um but yeah, one one of the many reasons I I like hanging out with uh Sneezer.

01:27:35.040 --> 01:27:35.520
Yeah.

01:27:35.680 --> 01:27:36.560
Uh good.

01:27:36.800 --> 01:27:40.080
Um is there anything I should have asked you, David?

01:27:40.560 --> 01:27:40.880
Oh.

01:27:42.800 --> 01:27:45.770
I think we covered just about everything.

01:27:46.010 --> 01:27:49.450
I mean, we got to m mirth, embarrassment, evil laughs.

01:27:49.610 --> 01:27:51.930
Um oh we absurdism.

01:27:52.010 --> 01:27:53.290
We didn't get to absurdism.

01:27:54.650 --> 01:27:55.610
One final piece.

01:27:55.770 --> 01:28:00.410
I I'm constantly discovering new implications and new w ways of understanding things that I

01:28:00.410 --> 01:28:04.650
hadn't understood before, but I think I'm starting to understand absurdism a little better.

01:28:04.970 --> 01:28:08.730
Um so So this the the urinal is art?

01:28:08.810 --> 01:28:12.020
Is that absurdism or potentially.

01:28:12.820 --> 01:28:18.660
So uh the theory entails that we laugh to sort of diffuse and nullify

01:28:18.660 --> 01:28:21.380
the costs of these of mix-ups that are occurring.

01:28:21.780 --> 01:28:27.620
But the theory doesn't really entail that we always have to pinpoint exactly what was

01:28:27.620 --> 01:28:29.060
mixed up with what.

01:28:29.700 --> 01:28:34.340
Um it's certainly helpful to figure that out, and we often do, but it's not strictly

01:28:34.340 --> 01:28:34.900
necessary.

01:28:35.140 --> 01:28:40.030
All that is necessary is that the costs of the mix-up, whatever their source, whatever the

01:28:40.030 --> 01:28:42.190
cause of them are, are nullified.

01:28:42.350 --> 01:28:46.670
And whoever was mixed up just stops doing whatever foolish thing they were doing.

01:28:46.830 --> 01:28:47.070
Right.

01:28:47.150 --> 01:28:49.230
So we don't need to know exactly the the source of it.

01:28:49.310 --> 01:28:52.030
We just need to know that something someone was mixed up about something.

01:28:52.190 --> 01:28:55.070
We're going to signal that and we're going to try to diffuse the costs so that they stop

01:28:55.150 --> 01:28:56.270
doing that foolish thing.

01:28:56.510 --> 01:29:02.120
Um and you could think of that as um absurdist humor where you know that that the that

01:29:02.120 --> 01:29:05.480
something's off, that they're confused about something you're not quite sure what it is,

01:29:05.640 --> 01:29:10.120
but you know that that there's been a mix-up and you can laugh to signal that a mix-up has

01:29:10.120 --> 01:29:10.840
taken place.

01:29:11.480 --> 01:29:17.080
Um so um there's uh there's a great joke from Arrest Development where the attorney thinks

01:29:17.080 --> 01:29:20.600
that um a husband and wife cannot be accused of the same crime.

01:29:20.920 --> 01:29:21.320
Right.

01:29:21.560 --> 01:29:22.120
That's great.

01:29:22.200 --> 01:29:27.490
I love yeah which is a really really um and so it's actually it's so it's a mix-up with um

01:29:27.490 --> 01:29:30.450
uh a legal term called spousal testimonial privilege.

01:29:31.090 --> 01:29:35.650
So it's where uh a husband cannot be forced to testify against his wife, right?

01:29:35.810 --> 01:29:39.970
Which is sort of temptingly similar to a husband and wife cannot be accused of the same

01:29:39.970 --> 01:29:44.690
crime, but uh very, very different and very costly to make that mistake.

01:29:44.930 --> 01:29:49.620
Um what but what's interesting is that even if if you have never heard of spousal

01:29:49.620 --> 01:29:54.420
testimonial privilege, you can you're you'd still be on solid ground in inferring that the

01:29:54.660 --> 01:29:56.660
the idiotic lawyer was mixed up about something.

01:29:56.900 --> 01:29:56.980
Yeah.

01:29:57.140 --> 01:30:01.940
And you could just appreciate the absurdity of him having this uh ridiculous belief.

01:30:02.340 --> 01:30:07.380
So you don't always need to know exactly what was mixed up with what in order to find the

01:30:07.380 --> 01:30:09.140
absurdity humorous.

01:30:09.380 --> 01:30:09.780
Right.

01:30:10.020 --> 01:30:12.950
Um and so that's that's the idea there.

01:30:13.110 --> 01:30:18.870
Um and my favorite example of absurdity um is from the movie uh naked gun, two and a

01:30:18.870 --> 01:30:19.270
half.

01:30:19.350 --> 01:30:19.590
Okay.

01:30:19.750 --> 01:30:23.030
Uh uh and the title two and a half is itself a kind of absurdity.

01:30:23.110 --> 01:30:25.430
It's like a kind of mix up about how sequel numbers work.

01:30:25.750 --> 01:30:28.470
Like you can't you can't have half of a sequel.

01:30:29.510 --> 01:30:34.860
Um and uh what what's great is that um so it's the opening m credits, and usually the the

01:30:34.860 --> 01:30:37.180
opening credits, the purpose of it is just you know set the tone.

01:30:37.340 --> 01:30:37.420
Right.

01:30:37.660 --> 01:30:40.940
And you know, it starts with like he's driving down the streets and in his police car, and

01:30:40.940 --> 01:30:45.420
there's like jazzy music play playing, and it's like it's setting the tone for a for a noir

01:30:45.740 --> 01:30:45.980
film.

01:30:46.220 --> 01:30:46.460
Right.

01:30:46.540 --> 01:30:52.540
Um and then uh the montage transitions to him uh in his police car driving through a

01:30:52.540 --> 01:30:57.370
bullfighting arena and then bumping into a series of bumper cars and then driving down a

01:30:57.370 --> 01:30:59.210
bowling lane and knocking down the pins.

01:30:59.450 --> 01:31:02.970
And then it concludes with him emerging from a woman's birth canal.

01:31:03.210 --> 01:31:03.850
Right.

01:31:05.370 --> 01:31:10.730
And you you know that like some something is deeply mixed up here.

01:31:11.450 --> 01:31:12.410
They've mixed a lot of things.

01:31:12.490 --> 01:31:12.570
Yeah.

01:31:12.970 --> 01:31:14.730
There's some kind of deep confusion happening.

01:31:14.890 --> 01:31:17.540
Maybe it's about you know the purpose of an opening credit sequence.

01:31:17.860 --> 01:31:22.260
Maybe they're confused about what kind of genre noir is, or where police cars are permitted

01:31:22.260 --> 01:31:24.980
to drive, or how large police cars are, or where they come from.

01:31:25.060 --> 01:31:25.220
Right.

01:31:25.380 --> 01:31:27.140
Like there's there's some deep confusion here.

01:31:27.220 --> 01:31:31.620
You don't need to know necessarily exactly right the source of the confusion to to just to

01:31:31.620 --> 01:31:32.740
get that it's funny and to laugh.

01:31:32.980 --> 01:31:36.020
Yeah, like the Monty Python silly walk would be another example.

01:31:36.180 --> 01:31:37.380
Like it's just absurd.

01:31:37.540 --> 01:31:40.180
I wonder if that's like a category for like there's so much going on.

01:31:40.260 --> 01:31:41.300
I mean, maybe this is what you're saying.

01:31:41.380 --> 01:31:45.810
Like, there's so much going on here that it's this category of like it's overdetermined

01:31:45.810 --> 01:31:47.410
what mix-ups are happening.

01:31:47.730 --> 01:31:48.050
Yeah.

01:31:48.210 --> 01:31:48.370
Right.

01:31:48.610 --> 01:31:49.010
Totally.

01:31:49.250 --> 01:31:49.410
Yeah.

01:31:49.570 --> 01:31:49.890
Yeah.

01:31:50.130 --> 01:31:51.010
Um interesting.

01:31:51.170 --> 01:31:54.450
Um really quickly, so why does some humor a not age well?

01:31:54.530 --> 01:31:59.490
So like old comedy from like the 60s or 70s about race or gender stuff.

01:31:59.730 --> 01:32:02.610
Um, you know, what what's up with that?

01:32:03.170 --> 01:32:03.490
Yeah.

01:32:03.650 --> 01:32:09.570
So um if if humor is about coordination games and mix-ups, um, and culture

01:32:09.570 --> 01:32:14.840
itself uh is just a huge number of coordination games and and equilibria that we have

01:32:14.840 --> 01:32:20.600
coordinated on, well then uh comedy is going to be culturally relative, right?

01:32:21.240 --> 01:32:25.720
What w what counts as a mix-up in one culture is going to be different from what counts as

01:32:25.720 --> 01:32:27.320
a mix-up in another culture.

01:32:27.560 --> 01:32:31.640
What counts as a mix-up in one language is obviously going to be to be different from a

01:32:31.640 --> 01:32:32.520
mix-up in another language.

01:32:32.680 --> 01:32:35.690
And we use different sounds to mean different things, there they're going to be different

01:32:35.690 --> 01:32:37.930
sources of confusion, different sources of mix ups.

01:32:38.010 --> 01:32:38.170
Right.

01:32:38.250 --> 01:32:42.170
If the grammar is different, you might have different, you know, hot spots of confusion

01:32:42.170 --> 01:32:44.810
where you misinterpret the meaning of w of what a person says.

01:32:44.970 --> 01:32:50.650
So linguistically you're going to have different uh y cultural differences, um uh in terms

01:32:50.650 --> 01:32:54.650
of like social status and the status games that are being played in the culture and what is

01:32:54.730 --> 01:32:58.320
what is normative, what is um permitted, what is forbidden.

01:32:58.480 --> 01:33:00.160
These things are gonna vary culturally.

01:33:00.320 --> 01:33:03.040
And you know, the the the politics are gonna vary culturally.

01:33:03.120 --> 01:33:08.800
So what what stuff have we agreed to take seriously and to and to mark as like a no-mirth

01:33:09.040 --> 01:33:09.440
zone?

01:33:09.600 --> 01:33:13.440
And what stuff are we uh permitted to laugh about and to joke about?

01:33:13.600 --> 01:33:17.520
Like that is also culturally relative, and that depends on which political battles are

01:33:17.520 --> 01:33:19.440
being won by by which side.

01:33:19.600 --> 01:33:24.730
Uh and so I don't think it's a coincidence that comedy ages more poorly than drama, because

01:33:24.730 --> 01:33:26.810
drama deals with just basic human conflicts.

01:33:26.890 --> 01:33:32.810
And you know, you can read a a play, you know, from you know uh uh ancient Athens and and

01:33:32.810 --> 01:33:37.610
still you know feel moved by the plight of of you know the the conflicts that are being

01:33:37.610 --> 01:33:38.330
experienced.

01:33:38.490 --> 01:33:44.330
Um but you know a comedy from you know 20 years ago will make you cringe because

01:33:44.330 --> 01:33:46.650
culture culture changes so quickly.

01:33:47.380 --> 01:33:52.820
And so I do think the theory predicts a lot of cultural variation in what is considered

01:33:52.820 --> 01:33:53.140
funny.

01:33:53.220 --> 01:33:56.660
And it predicts that that comedy will age poorly in some cases.

01:33:56.820 --> 01:33:59.940
There are some universal aspects of comedy that you might be able to predict.

01:34:00.020 --> 01:34:05.860
Like every culture has to has different social roles relating to gender and age.

01:34:10.180 --> 01:34:12.660
That's a mix-up that's probably going to be culturally universal.

01:34:12.900 --> 01:34:13.140
Right.

01:34:13.550 --> 01:34:14.350
Or potty humor.

01:34:14.430 --> 01:34:15.150
Yes, catalogs.

01:34:15.390 --> 01:34:15.790
Potty humor.

01:34:15.870 --> 01:34:15.950
Yeah.

01:34:16.110 --> 01:34:16.670
Or sexual.

01:34:17.390 --> 01:34:19.710
Yeah, like kind of discuss like the universal things.

01:34:19.790 --> 01:34:24.910
But the so like what you're saying is like so like the idea that like, you know, the doctor

01:34:24.910 --> 01:34:26.030
is a woman, right?

01:34:26.110 --> 01:34:27.230
Like that's funny, right?

01:34:27.310 --> 01:34:28.830
Like, no, that's not funny at all.

01:34:29.070 --> 01:34:33.630
And so the idea that like somebody thinks that that's funny because it's a mix-up or it

01:34:33.630 --> 01:34:38.920
violates our expectations, it's it's depending on uh a set of

01:34:38.920 --> 01:34:43.320
expectations that we no longer hold, or if somebody held it, we'd be like, dude, that

01:34:43.320 --> 01:34:45.160
person's like an asshole.

01:34:45.400 --> 01:34:48.280
Not not that like that, oh, we're all in on this joke, right?

01:34:48.360 --> 01:34:49.400
So yeah, exactly.

01:34:49.800 --> 01:34:50.040
Okay.

01:34:50.200 --> 01:34:50.520
Yeah.

01:34:50.760 --> 01:34:51.560
Interesting.

01:34:51.800 --> 01:34:54.840
Um and then uh what's up with slapstick?

01:34:55.320 --> 01:34:55.720
Hmm.

01:34:55.960 --> 01:34:57.720
This one I have kind of a hard time with.

01:34:58.440 --> 01:35:00.600
I think I understand most of it.

01:35:00.920 --> 01:35:06.690
Um so uh part of it is just you know, a lot of uh uh physical

01:35:06.690 --> 01:35:09.890
slapstick involves failures of two people coordinating.

01:35:10.210 --> 01:35:12.690
Right, like in the hall bumping into each other or I mean the hall, yeah.

01:35:12.770 --> 01:35:15.890
That's that would be an example of of slapstick where where there's like a physical

01:35:15.890 --> 01:35:17.330
coordination failure between two people.

01:35:17.570 --> 01:35:20.850
You can think of another example where like if we're passing a basketball back and forth

01:35:21.010 --> 01:35:23.890
and you know, we've coordinated on the fact that we're both looking at each other, then I

01:35:23.890 --> 01:35:27.170
get distracted by like a pretty woman in the bleachers and this hall hits me in the face.

01:35:27.330 --> 01:35:28.210
And hits me in the face.

01:35:28.290 --> 01:35:31.820
Like that would be a slapstick where we've failed to coordinate on what we're supposed to

01:35:31.820 --> 01:35:32.780
be doing when we're passing the ball.

01:35:33.180 --> 01:35:34.140
Especially if you don't get hurt.

01:35:34.300 --> 01:35:37.100
Like I think if you like sprouted sp sprouted blood.

01:35:37.500 --> 01:35:40.780
I mean, I think there's like the extreme version where it's like the Monty Python holy

01:35:40.780 --> 01:35:45.420
grail thing where like blood is spurting, but it's sort of due to like something like a

01:35:45.420 --> 01:35:46.300
rabbit, you know.

01:35:46.460 --> 01:35:47.020
I don't know.

01:35:47.100 --> 01:35:48.860
But but anyway, I'll let yeah, yeah.

01:35:49.100 --> 01:35:49.260
Yeah.

01:35:49.340 --> 01:35:50.940
So there's like another disconnect.

01:35:51.260 --> 01:35:56.940
There's sort of a disconnect between um the infliction and the um

01:35:57.340 --> 01:36:02.830
uh like what you would expect, you know, like your slapstick where so yeah, well sorry, I'm

01:36:03.070 --> 01:36:06.830
kind of getting ahead, but like, you know, for slapstick is the idea that like it's a mix

01:36:06.910 --> 01:36:10.350
up like you think the person might be hurt but they're really not, or they make a mistake

01:36:10.350 --> 01:36:11.870
physically but they're still okay.

01:36:12.030 --> 01:36:13.790
So it's sort of a lower class thing.

01:36:13.870 --> 01:36:14.030
Yeah.

01:36:14.430 --> 01:36:18.190
I think that's that's my hunch about what's going on with slapstick.

01:36:18.270 --> 01:36:24.160
I my hunch is that the funniest kinds of slapstick will be things that uh

01:36:24.480 --> 01:36:27.520
really look like the person got seriously hurt.

01:36:27.600 --> 01:36:32.000
And like you're really tempted to think that they like really hurt themselves, but then you

01:36:32.000 --> 01:36:33.280
quickly realize that they're okay.

01:36:33.520 --> 01:36:33.840
Right.

01:36:34.080 --> 01:36:34.320
Right.

01:36:34.400 --> 01:36:38.320
And so there's like this this really strong potential for a mix up of you know

01:36:38.480 --> 01:36:43.040
overestimating how seriously the person was injured and like rushing in to like, you know,

01:36:43.200 --> 01:36:47.120
saw off their their their leg or whatever to amputate and they're they're totally fine.

01:36:47.360 --> 01:36:51.450
Like so that's a core so every time someone gets injured, we all have to coordinate on how

01:36:51.450 --> 01:36:55.450
seriously to take this injury and like how severe the injury was, what its magnitude was,

01:36:55.610 --> 01:36:56.250
what we should do.

01:36:56.410 --> 01:37:00.570
And there you could imagine coordination failures surrounding how seriously to take an

01:37:00.570 --> 01:37:02.490
injury or how badly someone was injured.

01:37:02.810 --> 01:37:08.810
So if someone suddenly drops to the floor very quickly, in most cases, that's that's

01:37:08.810 --> 01:37:10.010
because something terrible has happened.

01:37:10.170 --> 01:37:14.260
Maybe they got maybe they got shot, maybe they they got hit by a projectile, maybe they had

01:37:14.260 --> 01:37:15.780
like a heart attack, whatever.

01:37:15.860 --> 01:37:17.860
Like m in most cases it's gonna be really bad.

01:37:18.180 --> 01:37:20.340
But if you then you see that it was just a banana peel.

01:37:20.500 --> 01:37:20.580
Right.

01:37:20.820 --> 01:37:24.580
Then all of a sudden the mix-up is resolved and you can have a good laugh about it.

01:37:24.660 --> 01:37:25.300
They're okay.

01:37:26.500 --> 01:37:28.980
And so that that might be what's going on.

01:37:29.140 --> 01:37:29.300
Yeah.

01:37:29.540 --> 01:37:34.740
Another part of it was alluded to in um how the mind works, Stephen Pinker's book, where it

01:37:34.740 --> 01:37:39.810
might be that we're um we're coordinating on like what categories to to place people in,

01:37:40.210 --> 01:37:46.130
and then we could either think of a person as like a locus of thoughts and feelings and and

01:37:46.130 --> 01:37:48.290
desires, like a locus of consciousness.

01:37:48.530 --> 01:37:48.610
Right.

01:37:48.850 --> 01:37:51.410
Um we could we could use our our theory of mind system.

01:37:51.570 --> 01:37:55.730
We've talked about theory of mind a lot, or we could just see them as a hunk of matter

01:37:55.730 --> 01:37:57.010
obeying the laws of physics.

01:37:57.250 --> 01:37:57.410
Right.

01:37:57.730 --> 01:37:58.050
Right.

01:37:58.450 --> 01:38:04.420
Um and it may be that um when a person like slips on a banana peel, the the

01:38:04.420 --> 01:38:09.060
frame shifts from viewing them as a locus of of consciousness to a physical object, to a

01:38:09.300 --> 01:38:10.020
hunk of matter.

01:38:10.100 --> 01:38:10.260
Right.

01:38:10.420 --> 01:38:12.100
You know, that that's obeying the law of gravity.

01:38:12.340 --> 01:38:17.540
Yeah, and the switch between those two frames could elicit a kind of you know mix up uh

01:38:17.540 --> 01:38:17.940
detection.

01:38:18.500 --> 01:38:18.820
Exactly.

01:38:18.980 --> 01:38:22.420
So if your wife walked in right now and started treating you like a bookshelf where she

01:38:22.420 --> 01:38:26.820
just started piling books on you and we were still trying to still have a conversation, it

01:38:26.820 --> 01:38:31.730
would kind of be funny because this juxtaposition of like treating you like a a a device to

01:38:31.730 --> 01:38:37.010
hold books versus you know a sentient talking human being.

01:38:37.090 --> 01:38:37.410
Yeah.

01:38:37.890 --> 01:38:38.050
Right.

01:38:38.210 --> 01:38:41.810
Or if I'm on the on the floor like you know uh wiping something up and she puts her feet on

01:38:41.810 --> 01:38:42.930
me like I'm a foot rest, you know.

01:38:43.330 --> 01:38:43.650
Exactly.

01:38:43.730 --> 01:38:43.810
Yes.

01:38:44.050 --> 01:38:44.370
Uh yeah.

01:38:44.610 --> 01:38:48.770
So there there's humor there about like how how what frame how we should treat a person as

01:38:48.770 --> 01:38:51.410
like a physical object or you know, a a human being.

01:38:51.570 --> 01:38:54.400
Um and so that could also be what's what's going on.

01:38:54.560 --> 01:38:56.320
So I think there could be multiple things going on.

01:38:56.560 --> 01:38:56.640
Yeah.

01:38:56.720 --> 01:39:00.320
And there's also the Looney Tune trope of sort of like, you know, you're like, there's like

01:39:00.320 --> 01:39:05.520
really aggressive violence, but then it's sort of like silly consequences, right?

01:39:05.600 --> 01:39:09.840
So it's sort of like you hit them with a you hit somebody over the head with like a mallet,

01:39:10.080 --> 01:39:13.680
and there's just like little like a bump comes up and like little birds.

01:39:13.890 --> 01:39:14.130
Right.

01:39:14.370 --> 01:39:15.970
And the person just shakes it off.

01:39:16.290 --> 01:39:21.010
And I don't know if that's like funny, or maybe it like, you know, but there's this um,

01:39:21.490 --> 01:39:27.010
yeah, it's sort of funny, or like at least it's sort of treated as like puerile or like

01:39:27.170 --> 01:39:29.010
infantile or young humor.

01:39:29.170 --> 01:39:34.610
Like there's an old Simpsons episode where they make um films, and like I think

01:39:34.610 --> 01:39:38.210
Krusty the Clown, who's sort of you know the clown who's supposed to he makes like a really

01:39:38.210 --> 01:39:44.180
heartfelt movie, like short film, and then it gets edited over to throwing a football

01:39:44.180 --> 01:39:45.780
into somebody's groin, you know?

01:39:46.020 --> 01:39:48.100
And everybody's laughing about the football.

01:39:48.180 --> 01:39:51.460
And it's sort of this take on uh people's sense of humor.

01:39:51.540 --> 01:39:54.180
People it's just the lowest common lowbrow humor, right?

01:39:54.260 --> 01:39:56.100
Like slaps the lowbrow.

01:39:56.340 --> 01:39:58.740
Um and totally uh yeah.

01:39:58.980 --> 01:39:59.380
I don't know.

01:39:59.460 --> 01:40:00.260
What do you think about that?

01:40:00.340 --> 01:40:01.700
Or like Yeah, it's interesting.

01:40:01.780 --> 01:40:06.340
I mean, it reminds me of uh the the joke from Idiocracy, which is a really funny movie I

01:40:06.340 --> 01:40:07.060
recommend.

01:40:07.220 --> 01:40:11.530
Um, where uh you know it's a future dystopia where everyone's stupid.

01:40:11.690 --> 01:40:17.050
Um and like the highest grossing movie is called ass and it's just

01:40:18.650 --> 01:40:21.930
and it's just two hours of an ass that occasionally farts.

01:40:23.850 --> 01:40:28.570
And like and and and like the best the like most popular show is called Ow My Balls.

01:40:29.060 --> 01:40:29.460
Exactly.

01:40:29.620 --> 01:40:32.340
No, that's exactly right, exactly.

01:40:32.420 --> 01:40:33.780
And that's just like a tagline.

01:40:33.940 --> 01:40:34.180
Yeah.

01:40:34.340 --> 01:40:34.980
Yeah.

01:40:35.380 --> 01:40:36.980
You just go through your day.

01:40:37.380 --> 01:40:38.020
Yes.

01:40:38.980 --> 01:40:39.860
But it is funny.

01:40:39.940 --> 01:40:40.340
Like, right?

01:40:40.500 --> 01:40:40.900
It is funny.

01:40:41.540 --> 01:40:43.380
Farts are funny, getting hit in the balls is funny.

01:40:43.460 --> 01:40:43.540
Yeah.

01:40:43.700 --> 01:40:46.500
And it's also like there's but it's also funny to find that funny.

01:40:46.580 --> 01:40:49.460
It's like you're mixed up about what you what you should be laughing at, what you should be

01:40:49.460 --> 01:40:49.940
finding funny.

01:40:50.260 --> 01:40:50.420
You know?

01:40:50.580 --> 01:40:52.550
So there's like a mix up layered on top of it.

01:40:52.790 --> 01:40:53.030
Yes.

01:40:53.430 --> 01:40:54.230
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:40:54.390 --> 01:40:54.550
Yeah.

01:40:54.950 --> 01:40:58.710
It's very human to find uh find slapstick hu humor.

01:40:58.870 --> 01:41:04.470
But I do think your theory explains it more than, for example, like I don't think the um

01:41:04.630 --> 01:41:08.950
the cryptic theory of humor would explain the slapstick as well.

01:41:09.190 --> 01:41:12.950
Um like I think the mix-up is better um at doing that.

01:41:13.190 --> 01:41:13.430
Yeah.

01:41:13.640 --> 01:41:13.880
Yeah.

01:41:14.120 --> 01:41:14.360
Yeah.

01:41:14.520 --> 01:41:17.160
And and part of it might be with you know the comic timing element.

01:41:17.400 --> 01:41:21.880
So like um, you know, just moving your body in a rhythmically funny way.

01:41:22.040 --> 01:41:26.040
You know, it could just be it's subtly violating people's expectations about how your body

01:41:26.040 --> 01:41:28.840
should be moving or how you should be gesturing.

01:41:29.080 --> 01:41:31.480
Um there there could be mix-ups surrounding that.

01:41:31.560 --> 01:41:34.680
Um I'm uh or even just like music or dancing.

01:41:34.760 --> 01:41:36.290
Like dancing is a coordination game.

01:41:36.370 --> 01:41:39.570
You have to coordinate with the musicians to dance on the beat that they're they're setting

01:41:39.570 --> 01:41:39.730
for you.

01:41:40.130 --> 01:41:41.490
So Elaine Bennis, yeah, exactly.

01:41:41.730 --> 01:41:45.490
Yes, the Elaine Bennis, yeah, spasmodic dancing is very funny.

01:41:45.810 --> 01:41:46.610
It's really funny.

01:41:46.770 --> 01:41:47.010
Yeah.

01:41:47.410 --> 01:41:48.530
She's like almost dancing.

01:41:48.610 --> 01:41:52.370
She's like sort of doing some of the things that dancing entails.

01:41:53.170 --> 01:41:57.090
But uh but getting some things wildly wrong, and it's very funny.

01:41:57.330 --> 01:41:57.570
Yes.

01:41:57.650 --> 01:42:01.410
I have to say I'm kind of like reluctant to convey this, but I think I should because I

01:42:01.500 --> 01:42:05.980
remember I was once sitting in a talk of somebody who was conveying the cryptic theory of

01:42:05.980 --> 01:42:06.620
humor.

01:42:06.940 --> 01:42:11.980
And somebody like very like earnestly and like seriously was like, you know, well, what

01:42:11.980 --> 01:42:13.340
about slapstick?

01:42:13.900 --> 01:42:17.820
And, you know, the person thought about it for a second and they were like, That's not

01:42:17.820 --> 01:42:18.460
humor.

01:42:20.220 --> 01:42:22.940
And and we thought that was kind of actually a funny response, right?

01:42:23.020 --> 01:42:26.620
Like at least they were, but like the the idea was like, you know, that's slapstick isn't

01:42:26.620 --> 01:42:26.860
funny.

01:42:26.940 --> 01:42:27.820
I mean, so yeah.

01:42:28.470 --> 01:42:29.510
That is itself funny.

01:42:29.990 --> 01:42:30.390
Exactly.

01:42:30.470 --> 01:42:30.630
Yes.

01:42:30.790 --> 01:42:31.030
Exactly.

01:42:31.430 --> 01:42:32.310
The overconfidence.

01:42:32.470 --> 01:42:32.630
Yes.

01:42:34.150 --> 01:42:34.550
But um.

01:42:35.270 --> 01:42:37.430
But anyway, well, David, uh, thank you.

01:42:37.510 --> 01:42:40.070
I hope this was a uh um a mirth.

01:42:40.390 --> 01:42:40.950
I feel better.

01:42:41.030 --> 01:42:42.950
I feel better after the conversation.

01:42:43.430 --> 01:42:48.150
Whatever whatever cocktail of hormones are caused by talking about or laughing a bit, this

01:42:48.230 --> 01:42:48.790
this was great.

01:42:48.950 --> 01:42:49.190
Yeah.

01:42:49.430 --> 01:42:49.830
Totally.

01:42:50.070 --> 01:42:50.310
Thank you.

01:42:50.630 --> 01:42:50.950
Awesome.

01:42:51.030 --> 01:42:51.110
Yeah.

01:42:51.270 --> 01:42:51.990
I had a great time.

01:42:52.310 --> 01:42:52.950
Uh yeah.

01:42:53.110 --> 01:42:56.390
So um stay tuned for the next um

01:42:58.240 --> 01:42:59.920
non-funny episode.

01:43:00.320 --> 01:43:00.560
Yeah.

01:43:00.720 --> 01:43:03.120
Or hopefully we'll be a little bit funny at at times.

01:43:03.280 --> 01:43:05.200
We'll we'll maybe make some bad dad jokes.

01:43:05.520 --> 01:43:11.520
Or we can just talk about uh I'm not even gonna talk about how my balls that's that's we'll

01:43:11.520 --> 01:43:12.160
cut that out.

01:43:12.320 --> 01:43:15.120
So all right David, thank you so much.

01:43:15.360 --> 01:43:15.840
That was great.

01:43:16.240 --> 01:43:16.800
Yep.

01:43:17.120 --> 01:43:17.440
Okay.

01:43:18.640 --> 01:43:24.480
But uh David, we just finished up uh an episode where um you talked for a while so

01:43:24.480 --> 01:43:28.850
I'll give you a break and say that if you're listening, please subscribe.

01:43:29.010 --> 01:43:30.450
Please leave a review.

01:43:30.930 --> 01:43:32.530
We may start reading our reviews.

01:43:32.690 --> 01:43:37.810
Also, if you have a suggestion about what we should talk about or who we should have on,

01:43:38.770 --> 01:43:41.330
we will either take that advice or not.

01:43:41.730 --> 01:43:47.620
But you know, it it only hurts if you only get uh you

01:43:47.620 --> 01:43:50.820
get zero percent of the things you don't ask for.

01:43:50.980 --> 01:43:55.220
I don't know if that's the correct way to say that, but that is a coherent way to say it.

01:43:55.380 --> 01:43:57.060
Is there a different way to say that?

01:43:57.860 --> 01:44:01.620
Um ask not and ye shall not receive.

01:44:02.100 --> 01:44:03.700
Uh that was a double negative.

01:44:03.860 --> 01:44:09.850
But isn't there something like you only get you only get you know, you you get

01:44:10.250 --> 01:44:12.730
you don't you you miss the shots you don't take.

01:44:13.450 --> 01:44:14.010
Yeah.

01:44:14.250 --> 01:44:20.170
I hate qu can I just say like there's just this whole category of like really tepid vanilla

01:44:20.170 --> 01:44:21.690
quotes I just hate.

01:44:22.170 --> 01:44:22.730
Uh yeah.

01:44:22.810 --> 01:44:26.410
We should do an episode on quotes where we just read quotes from quotes.com.

01:44:26.730 --> 01:44:26.890
Yeah.

01:44:27.130 --> 01:44:29.850
I do just talk about how why is it so lame?

01:44:29.930 --> 01:44:32.010
I think the evolutionary psychology of quotes.

01:44:32.090 --> 01:44:33.050
Maybe we should have a whole episode.

01:44:33.370 --> 01:44:34.170
Yeah, that's great.

01:44:34.480 --> 01:44:40.160
Why did we why did our cavemen ancestors evolve to take quotes from other people?

01:44:40.480 --> 01:44:46.160
Well, because if you if you're painting on a cave, you uh it's takes a really long time to

01:44:46.160 --> 01:44:52.160
write out something longer, but a short quote gives you enough time to go forage and hunt

01:44:52.320 --> 01:44:58.160
and you know make sure you're you're not away so long and uh and

01:44:58.160 --> 01:45:01.520
quotes are sexy and you might get some reproductive success.

01:45:01.990 --> 01:45:02.550
Nailed it.

01:45:02.630 --> 01:45:02.710
Yeah.

01:45:03.030 --> 01:45:03.110
Science.

01:45:03.430 --> 01:45:09.430
And you can also sharpen your stick for poking at critters uh by

01:45:09.590 --> 01:45:12.790
you know the charcoal you're writing your poem with.

01:45:13.750 --> 01:45:14.310
Beautiful.

01:45:14.550 --> 01:45:14.790
Yeah.

01:45:14.950 --> 01:45:15.270
Thanks.

01:45:15.350 --> 01:45:16.870
I'll be here all day.

01:45:17.030 --> 01:45:19.430
Um yeah, and yeah.

01:45:21.110 --> 01:45:21.590
Good.

01:45:21.750 --> 01:45:22.150
All right.

01:45:22.390 --> 01:45:26.390
Well, anyway, on that on that note, um uh we're doing good ebb psych.

01:45:26.710 --> 01:45:29.190
And that was a joke in case nobody's clear about it.

01:45:29.300 --> 01:45:30.180
we were kidding.

01:45:30.500 --> 01:45:32.900
That's not good at evolutionary psychology.

01:45:33.220 --> 01:45:34.100
Yeah, yeah.

01:45:34.340 --> 01:45:36.980
So although seriously, I would love to shoot on some quotes.

01:45:37.220 --> 01:45:37.620
Okay, sure.

01:45:37.700 --> 01:45:38.420
Well let's do that.

01:45:38.580 --> 01:45:38.900
Okay.

01:45:39.060 --> 01:45:39.460
All right.

01:45:39.700 --> 01:45:40.660
Thanks for listening.

01:45:40.740 --> 01:45:43.700
Uh we'll have the next episode next Tuesday.