Laughter is an involuntary physiological response, so whatever is funny has to trigger that. The ideas in the article about superiority and related sentiments a

Laughter is an involuntary physiological response, so whatever is funny has to trigger that. The ideas in the article about superiority and related sentiments aren't satisfying to me tho. When you look at humor that uses disgust or discomfort/awkwardness, that underlying, necessarily involuntary aspect becomes more obvious. It explains why the failure mode of funny is often "asshole," as well, where you've made a play for someones involuntary responses and failed. To be funny, you have to prevail. I am what I would call semi-pro level funny, where I can make pretty much anyone crack up in almost any situation, but there are people I've offended who will never laugh at anything I say again because they've been hurt by it and don't trust my words or intentions anymore. This trust or feeling of safety is another necessary ingredient. The expectations theory of humour has part of it, but mainly where when you are funny, you are taking peoples expectations on a ride. If you've crashed the bus before, they're not going to trust you to drive it again. Comedians at the top of their art are storytellers, and what a friend calls stand-up philosophers, where at that level, punchlines are just satisfying closure on a baroque network of opened loops. You can compose stories like music, where you build tension and introduce themes and motifs, cresendo and decrecendo, etc. I think we're just at the beginning of understanding what funny is, and I'd suspect we're less than 18 months away from LLMs creating Python's, The Funniest Joke in the world.