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Thanks for sharing. I had no idea there was a term for it. As I reflect, I can see that with a lot of shows I thought were amazing. Humour evolves in such a fa

Thanks for sharing. I had no idea there was a term for it. As I reflect, I can see that with a lot of shows I thought were amazing. Humour evolves in such a fascinating way that a killer joke, even if it’s not context specific to an era, can stop being funny. I showed my wife a bunch of flash videos from my teenage years. She just stared and I slowly came to realize: they’re just not funny anymore. I remember thinking they were such a novel concept and the humour was trying something very new. But I guess what was new and exciting then is so socially normal now that it doesn’t trigger the funny response.

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DonHopkins 4y ago
Check out Marvin Minsky's paper about how (he thinks) jokes work, which offers one explanation about why hilarious jokes cease to be funny: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27458494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27458494 Jokes and their Relation to the Cognitive Unconscious. Marvin Minsky. AI memo No. 603. November, 1980. https://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/jokes.cognitive.txt https://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/jokes.cognitive.txt >JOKES and the Logic of the Cognitive Unconscious >Marvin Minsky, MIT >Abstract: Freud's theory of jokes explains how they overcome the mental "censors" that make it hard for us to think "forbidden" thoughts. But his theory did not work so well for humorous nonsense as for other comical subjects. In this essay I argue that the different forms of humor can be seen as much more similar, once we recognize the importance of knowledge about knowledge and, particularly, aspects of thinking concerned with recognizing and suppressing bugs -- ineffective or destructive thought processes. When seen in this light, much humor that at first seems pointless, or mysterious, becomes more understandable. >Introduction >A gentleman entered a pastry-cook's shop and ordered a cake; but he soon brought it back and asked for a glass of liqueur instead. He drank it and began to leave without having paid. The proprietor detained him. "You've not paid for the liqueur." "But I gave you the cake in exchange for it." "You didn't pay for that either." "But I hadn't eaten it". --- from Freud (1905). [...] >In the 1912 edition Freud, still perplexed about the purpose of nonsense, recounts a joke of this form: {11} >"A man at the dinner table dipped his hands in the mayonnaise and then ran them through his hair. When his neighbor looked astonished, the man apologized: "I'm so sorry. I thought it was spinach." [...]

deleted 4y ago

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DonHopkins 4y ago

Check out Marvin Minsky's paper about how (he thinks) jokes work, which offers one explanation about why hilarious jokes cease to be funny: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27458494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27458494 Jokes and their Relation to the Cognitive Unconscious. Marvin Minsky. AI memo No. 603. November, 1980. https://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/jokes.cognitive.txt https://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/jokes.cognitive.txt >JOKES and the Logic of the Cognitive Unconscious >Marvin Minsky, MIT >Abstract: Freud's theory of jokes explains how they overcome the mental "censors" that make it hard for us to think "forbidden" thoughts. But his theory did not work so well for humorous nonsense as for other comical subjects. In this essay I argue that the different forms of humor can be seen as much more similar, once we recognize the importance of knowledge about knowledge and, particularly, aspects of thinking concerned with recognizing and suppressing bugs -- ineffective or destructive thought processes. When seen in this light, much humor that at first seems pointless, or mysterious, becomes more understandable. >Introduction >A gentleman entered a pastry-cook's shop and ordered a cake; but he soon brought it back and asked for a glass of liqueur instead. He drank it and began to leave without having paid. The proprietor detained him. "You've not paid for the liqueur." "But I gave you the cake in exchange for it." "You didn't pay for that either." "But I hadn't eaten it". --- from Freud (1905). [...] >In the 1912 edition Freud, still perplexed about the purpose of nonsense, recounts a joke of this form: {11} >"A man at the dinner table dipped his hands in the mayonnaise and then ran them through his hair. When his neighbor looked astonished, the man apologized: "I'm so sorry. I thought it was spinach." [...]