Sense of humour is important

[BurnedOut]

Sense of humour is an important trait. When I say that, I mean that a profound sense of humour is not always possible but simply having it can make a person attractive.

There are two ways of looking at the person indulging in humour. The former one is ignored routinely by pop-psy and the latter one is frequently mentioned when in reality, I feel that the former one is abused and the latter one is underused grossly.

Type 1:
Average humour with the ability to get a vast majority of the crowd guffawing like hyenas.

Traits of the person
1) Excellent people-observation skills
Is able to figure out the LCM of people's perception.

2) Skilled oration
Is able to deliver the joke to most people.

3) Better than average observation skills.

However, I feel that the people who engage in run-of-the-mill humour are not humorous after the novelty of their joke dies. Sadly, there is always a pattern to their humour which can be predetermined. A good example would be yo-mama jokes. Other examples consists of fat jokes. I won't count racist jokes because they always have an element of history and hence interpretation. The interpretation, if creative, can make a racist joke funny too.

Type 2:
Profound sense of humour

Traits of the person
1) Excellent people-observation skills
Is able to notice details that are normally ignored about people.

2) Probably unskilled in oration

3) Highly above average observation skills and pattern recognition.

The problem with profound sense of humour is that it is not always easy to figure out the chain of reasoning. For example,

a manager calls his workers slaves and then says that he's a habit of cracking black jokes and has a white complexion

may be found humorous by him, so much so that he may keep laughing while others may take offense at being called his slaves. Then many of them would understand that 'black joke' was a pun. Some could see that they have a white manager who cracked a racist joke. Maybe the latter ones may understand what he meant and may find it humorous because the interpretations could also include USA being a racist capitalistic nation with a 'bourgeoisie class' and a 'proletarian class'. Maybe the joke was on itself.

What I am trying to say is that the former type of humour is quite restricted while the latter is divergent in nature. The latter's divergence is caused by the fact that the joke goes meta and explains itself as its interpreted. I have a theory regarding this and that says that a good joke arrives effortlessly to the audience because the amount of activation of memories it causes is high. Secondly, the activation of memories as a broad range. Thirdly, this means that the joker was able to spot a LCM pattern which can a cause an activation effect.

I am ignoring humour based on information because its too exclusive (humour is exclusive but information humour is very very exclusive).

Also humour is a function of logic. Maybe we find things funny because they go against the heuristical thinking of a person. Therefore, profound humour is a sign of profound logical thinking too.

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Do you think INTPs have a good sense of humour?

Do you think some types are inherently poor at understanding humour? I think that Fi types miss humour if their Te and Ne/Se is not able to understand the realistic-cum-abstract logic of the joke. I have had an INFP serially ruining all my jokes. Many of the black jokes I cracked ended in me and him fighting.

 

[Cognisant]

a manager calls his workers slaves and then says that he's a habit of cracking black jokes and has a white complexion

I think that's funny but Australia has a culture of being offensive as a way of showing closeness, I would only crack a joke like that with someone who I know is going to retort with white/english slurs, then it's all in good fun. I would be absolutely mortified if I did that with someone and they took legitimate offense.

 

[Deleted member 1424]

I don't see why that 'joke' is funny. It's low hanging, boring fruit at best. It doesn't even really constitute a 'joke' imo. I'd think the manager is relying on his status to get people to laugh for him when he's unfunny, consciously or not. That's common enough among the obtuse.

 

[Hadoblado]

I don't really agree with anything you've said. I find it odd to ascribe aptitude to humour types blindly, or to categorise humour as average or profound. I think it's both too simple and probably not correct.

My take is that humour is a measure of the group, and not the individual. The funny person is the one who can identify and meet the standards set by the group. Your sense of humour is just the accumulation of standards you have kept from the groups you have been part of.

 

[BurnedOut]

categorise humour as average or profound

Why not?

 

[byhisello99]

I don't really agree with anything you've said. I find it odd to ascribe aptitude to humour types blindly, or to categorise humour as average or profound. I think it's both too simple and probably not correct.

My take is that humour is a measure of the group, and not the individual. The funny person is the one who can identify and meet the standards set by the group. Your sense of humour is just the accumulation of standards you have kept from the groups you have been part of.

My reaction as well. I don't understand the categories. I understand broad humor, humorous sexual innuendo, insult humor, perhaps a dozen more types. Most of my humor is best described as dry; those who know me best describe it as arid. Television laugh-track humor leaves me cringing.

One of my careers was as a federal Special Agent, and I frequently interviewed witnesses and suspects. I believed that an interview without a laugh was a failure.

 

[Hadoblado]

Whenever you describe reality, be critical of any explanation that explicitly or incidentally invokes a hierarchy without evidence or explanation, especially if you would be at the top of it.

The ego is appeased when its praises are sung at the temple within. This can be achieved through earning a position within your own world view (e.g. becoming strong if you value strength), or it can be achieved by shaping your worldview such that you are well-positioned within it. Typically, people do a bit of both. With reshaping worldview however, there is a deathspiral that occurs when this process is too explicit, forging its own momentum from a state of intra and inter reference.

Your example is concerning because while humour and attraction are functional, they are among the most subjective topics possible, and yet you categorise with powerful valence and *some of* the trappings of objective critique.

 

[BurnedOut]

and yet you categorise with powerful valence and *some of* the trappings of objective critique.

Your critique is rational.

There are 2 points backed by evidence that I posit :
1. Historically there have been humours of various qualities. Some of them are deemed of superior qualities and some are deemed as hackneyed and some are deemed as claptrap. There's witty humour, there's run of the mill humour, etc. Compare the humour of Oprah Winfrey, the tea-party humour, with the humour in Brooklyn 99 or Mr. Bean's humour with Shakespheare's satire. You will understand the contrast between their depths.

2. Humour is a function of logic. Humour is correlated with divergent thinking. Rather than being illogical and subjective, good humour is quite penetrative.

 

[Hadoblado]

Yes, but neither of these things are sufficient to conclude a binary categorisation of average or profound.

You talk about "deeming" but this is a subjective measure. I deem all of the mentioned comedians/authors as garbage because I genuinely don't find any of them funny. I can appreciate they are skilled in different ways but none of them overlap my sense of humour. It's not because I am profound, or that they are. It's just that we share no mutual point-of-reference. And I'll point out that all four of those comedic sources are well-received regardless of "profundity".

IMO "good" humour has multiple interacting layers, balances shared point-of-reference (relevance) with adaptivity/divergence/misdirection (freshness), delivery, and most importantly social function. Logic is rarely funny, but it does share common contributing factors with humourous capacity.

I'd venture to guess that the difference between what you deem to be hackneyed or of superior quality is the SES and age of the demographic that consumes the content.

 

[BurnedOut]

IMO "good" humour has multiple interacting layers, balances shared point-of-reference (relevance) with adaptivity/divergence/misdirection (freshness), delivery, and most importantly social function. Logic is rarely funny, but it does share common contributing factors with humourous capacity.

Attaboy. Obviously, individual jokes was not the crux but rather the features. Only that I believe that sense of humour is independent of social adaptability to a fair degree

 

[ZenRaiden]

I think we should ask the most obvious thing before we go technical and start categorizing humor.

I believe humor is indeed important for human survival.

I believe humor has social function.

Yes we can laugh when we are alone about the absurd shit in our life and all that, but humor serves a function in society.

I think what humor does it helps people to dissociate from immediate bad reality of the world and help connect with the other person.

So laughing at a joke is basically like saying .... the world is bad, but the two of us can do it, because we agree its bad and we both kind of recognize it.

 

[crippli]

Do you think INTPs have a good sense of humour?

Do you think some types are inherently poor at understanding humour? I think that Fi types miss humour if their Te and Ne/Se is not able to understand the realistic-cum-abstract logic of the joke. I have had an INFP serially ruining all my jokes. Many of the black jokes I cracked ended in me and him fighting.

Isn't INTP like the Joker?

Cum abstracted logic?
LOL

 

[Puffy]

and yet you categorise with powerful valence and *some of* the trappings of objective critique.

Your critique is rational.

There are 2 points backed by evidence that I posit :
1. Historically there have been humours of various qualities. Some of them are deemed of superior qualities and some are deemed as hackneyed and some are deemed as claptrap. There's witty humour, there's run of the mill humour, etc. Compare the humour of Oprah Winfrey, the tea-party humour, with the humour in Brooklyn 99 or Mr. Bean's humour with Shakespheare's satire. You will understand the contrast between their depths.

2. Humour is a function of logic. Humour is correlated with divergent thinking. Rather than being illogical and subjective, good humour is quite penetrative.

It's hard to articulate but I feel like you're over-intellectualising humour as if it is intrinsically about that. From that logic, you say 'high culture' like Shakespeare is "profound" and 'low culture' like Oprah is "average". So, can "profound" humour only be accessed by cultured or well educated people, such as yourself? ;-)

Film scholars could intellectualise Charlie Chaplin and say he's "profound" or a "genius", but then Chaplin's main audience of people probably found him funny for the slap-stick & clowning. Can humour by your logic be both "profound" and "average" depending on whose there to appreciate it and why they find it funny?

I'm not sure humour is intrinsically about whether it's intellectual or not, or profound or not, for it to make sense to grade it on that basis. That feels more like a reflection of how an intellectual might grade things, placing a higher value on what they appreciate. Like Hadoblado said I'd be cautious of this as it just feels like the intellectual's way of expressing hir higher status over others, as s/he is able to appreciate the humour in what remains inaccessible to the "average" folk.

 

[BurnedOut]

From that logic, you say 'high culture' like Shakespeare is "profound" and 'low culture' like Oprah is "average". So, can "profound" humour only be accessed by cultured or well educated people, such as yourself? ;-)

I won't deny that I am not able to provide a suitable scientific explanation on why some humour is profound and some is not but rather being pragmatic about it.

No, I don't claim that Shakespheare's humour is profound Those examples were meant to show the contrast. Why? A good stand-up comedian or a man in a slum can deliver humour excellently too despite being intellectually and financially penurious. Therefore the point you are raising is wrong.

I'm not sure humour is intrinsically about whether it's intellectual or not, or profound or not, for it to make sense to grade it on that basis

Again. I am trying to be pragmatic than intellectualizing. Nobody can deny that there's bad humour and good humour.

 

[Hadoblado]

I'm denying it. I think the burden is on you to delineate "good" humour from "humour I prefer".

If you venn diagrammed the overlap of humour between people in this thread, I think the amount of content that was held as funny by every single member would be <1%. If humour had constituted mostly some objective "pragmatic" factor, you would expect there to be a lot more overlap.

 

[Puffy]

From that logic, you say 'high culture' like Shakespeare is "profound" and 'low culture' like Oprah is "average". So, can "profound" humour only be accessed by cultured or well educated people, such as yourself? ;-)

I won't deny that I am not able to provide a suitable scientific explanation on why some humour is profound and some is not but rather being pragmatic about it.

No, I don't claim that Shakespheare's humour is profound Those examples were meant to show the contrast. Why? A good stand-up comedian or a man in a slum can deliver humour excellently too despite being intellectually and financially penurious. Therefore the point you are raising is wrong.

I'm not sure humour is intrinsically about whether it's intellectual or not, or profound or not, for it to make sense to grade it on that basis

Again. I am trying to be pragmatic than intellectualizing. Nobody can deny that there's bad humour and good humour.

I think it was fair for me to raise that point within the context of your post. You were talking about some humours being superior and some as being "hackneyed" or "claptrap". Then you gave an example of Shakespeare vs Oprah and Mr. Bean as a contrast. It follows from that that you're saying Shakespeare is superior humour.

I can't deny that there's some humour I consider bad and some I consider good. Though I feel the thrust of Hado's point is that humour is subjective and that my taste in good humour won't necessarily be the same as his.

To give an example. Some people consider George Carlin or Bill Hicks to be 'profound' or 'penetrative' comedians. I've watched their performances and while I enjoy them and find them entertaining I can't think of a single example where I've laughed out loud at one of their jokes. I've seen a bunch of Shakespeare's comedies and again I appreciate them but I've never laughed from them.

A week or so ago I was watching a Frankie Boyle stand-up routine and at some point in the act he said something about 'sucking a dude's dick for money' and I burst out laughing. It was the timing, that it came as a surprise, the intonation in his voice when he said it. There's no denying that the joke and a lot of his routine was really vulgar and crass and yet my body reacted as finding it funnier than Bill Hicks, George Carlin or Shakespeare.

Surely if there was going to be any scientific metric on whether something is good humour or not it's whether it makes you laugh? I'd wager if you used that as a metric that you'd find for a lot of people good humour has little to do with how profound it is.

 

[BurnedOut]

Surely if there was going to be any scientific metric on whether something is good humour or not it's whether it makes you laugh? I'd wager if you used that as a metric that you'd find for a lot of people good humour has little to do with how profound it is.

I am not denying Hado's or yours' point. I am just struggling to understand if there is an objective point to be raised in judging humour. If being humorous has something to do with creativity and logic then I am sure there is some metric

 

[Puffy]

Surely if there was going to be any scientific metric on whether something is good humour or not it's whether it makes you laugh? I'd wager if you used that as a metric that you'd find for a lot of people good humour has little to do with how profound it is.

I am not denying Hado's or yours' point. I am just struggling to understand if there is an objective point to be raised in judging humour. If being humorous has something to do with creativity and logic then I am sure there is some metric

I'm curious why you feel humour is a function of logic? It's a part of what led me to feel like you were over-intellectualising it. I'm likely misunderstanding what you mean. But I'm a part of a few improvisational comedy & clowning groups and the facilitators often teach that over-thinking and being in your head too much is what leads to a dead act. Humour can be a really physical and body-based thing (Mr. Bean & Chaplin are good examples.)

As an observer you could analyse the performance in terms of logic, how one event flowed to another, etc. But I don't feel when you're performing you think of it that way, you're too immersed in the present moment flowing with it to be able to sustain that kind of analytical detachment. Humour, in that context at least, is a lot more intuitive than analytical.