What about puns? It seems like at least some humor is about generic “surprise” rather than danger, even social danger. Another example is absurdist humor.
Would this theory pin this too on the danger-finding circuits—perhaps in the evolutionary environment, surprise was in fact correlated with danger?
It does seem like some types of surprise have the potential to be funny and others don’t—I don’t often laugh while looking through lists of random numbers.
I think the A/B theory would say that lists of random numbers don’t have enough “evidence that I’m safe” (perhaps here, evidence that there is deeper structure like the structure in puns) and thus fall off the other side of the inverted U. But it would be interesting to see more about how these very abstract equivalents of “safe”/”danger” are built up. Without that it feels more tempting to say that funniness is fundamentally about surprise, perhaps as a reward for exploring things on the boundary of understanding, and that the social stuff was later built up on top of that.
I did put surprise on my list in Section 4.2.2, as one of the common sources of physiological arousal. So I don’t think we’re disagreeing on the narrow point that surprise can contribute to laughter.
Yeah, the correlation of surprise with danger (at least in the ancestral environment, although I think also today) is presumably why surprise tends to temporarily increase your heart rate. (I.e., surprising situations might call for immediate fight-or-flight type behaviors.)
I think my theory (surprise --> physiological arousal --> laughter) is a better fit than the direct “surprise --> laughter” alternative theory that you’re proposing (if I understand you). Two examples where I think my theory works and yours doesn’t are: Lists of random numbers, like you said (surprise is present [arguably, depending on your definition of “surprise”], physiological arousal is not, laughter is not), and kids chasing each other (no surprise, yes physiological arousal, often laughter).
What about puns? It seems like at least some humor is about generic “surprise” rather than danger, even social danger. Another example is absurdist humor.
Would this theory pin this too on the danger-finding circuits—perhaps in the evolutionary environment, surprise was in fact correlated with danger?
It does seem like some types of surprise have the potential to be funny and others don’t—I don’t often laugh while looking through lists of random numbers.
I think the A/B theory would say that lists of random numbers don’t have enough “evidence that I’m safe” (perhaps here, evidence that there is deeper structure like the structure in puns) and thus fall off the other side of the inverted U. But it would be interesting to see more about how these very abstract equivalents of “safe”/”danger” are built up. Without that it feels more tempting to say that funniness is fundamentally about surprise, perhaps as a reward for exploring things on the boundary of understanding, and that the social stuff was later built up on top of that.
I did put surprise on my list in Section 4.2.2, as one of the common sources of physiological arousal. So I don’t think we’re disagreeing on the narrow point that surprise can contribute to laughter.
Yeah, the correlation of surprise with danger (at least in the ancestral environment, although I think also today) is presumably why surprise tends to temporarily increase your heart rate. (I.e., surprising situations might call for immediate fight-or-flight type behaviors.)
I think my theory (surprise --> physiological arousal --> laughter) is a better fit than the direct “surprise --> laughter” alternative theory that you’re proposing (if I understand you). Two examples where I think my theory works and yours doesn’t are: Lists of random numbers, like you said (surprise is present [arguably, depending on your definition of “surprise”], physiological arousal is not, laughter is not), and kids chasing each other (no surprise, yes physiological arousal, often laughter).