Thread by @IntuitMachine

If humor has so many benefits (i.e. positive feelings, conflict de-escalation, improving relationships, enhancing creativity, improving marketability, etc.) then why is it not studied as much? Clearly, humor has immense utility.

Perhaps it's because humor is a risky business? Failed attempts at humor can lead to unfavorable impressions. But isn't the consequences of failure imply the need to understand humor better?

To set some ground rules, what we find funny springs from our intuition. What springs from our intuition is what we accumulate through our own experiences. What is funny is a subjective and personal experience.

What I find funny may not be funny to other people. Yesterday, I laughed a lot. I had GPT3 cranking out quotes that I found funny. Here's one:

https://twitter.com/IntuitMachine/status/1424049841441808384

I did watch *The* Suicide Squad and I was entertained by the humor. Taika Waititi, a director that always makes me laugh, was in the movie! Although to my surprise, he wasn't the director. What is it about Waititi that he can generate so many laughs?

The movie was directed by James Gunn. He also directed Guardians of the Galaxy. Another entertaining movie in my book. Why are these two directors are funny and others aren't as much? What's their formula? imdb.com/name/nm0348181/

Surprise or incongruity is what makes words funny. A funny quote is when a comedian sets up the context that can be imagined and then conjures up a surprise that breaks the original expectation. It's not unlike a magic trick. Perhaps that's why magic is also entertaining.

It appeals to one's intuition of the familiar and then breaks that symmetry. To set up a surprise (and also horror) one has to prime the audience and then break that priming in a manner that makes obvious in a causal sense but is also unexpected.

Something funny begins by making sense and then ends by also making sense. It must be logically stitched together. This explains why good comedians are usually very intelligent people.

Humor is rich in semantics. It entangles the similar with the dissimilar. It leads from the familiar to the unexpected. It blends concepts that are conceptually incompatible. It exhibits the features of what makes humans generally intelligent.