Inside Jokes

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1. kensAug 2025
   If you're interested in the theory behind humor, I recommend "Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind"; cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett is a co-author. It makes a mostly convincing case that humor evolved to encourage people to detect cognitive error. The book also ties this in with (pre-LLM) artificial intelligence. The basic idea is that humor depends on errors in reasoning and the punchline causes you to reevaluate your reasoning and discover your error. Humor evolved to be enjoyable to encourage the discovery of errors.
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2. yborisDec 2022
   Somewhat on-topic: an excellent book where a philosopher, psychologist, and technologist attempt to provide a cohesive theory of humor and jokes. I love the book:

   Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind by Daniel Dennett, Matthew Hurley, & Reginald Adams

   The rough summary is that humor is "the joy of debugging" - an evolutionarily-installed mechanism to provide delight (incentive) to humans for finding (recognizing the absurdity and then removal) of incorrect beliefs.

   https://www.amazon.com/Inside-Jokes-Using-Humor-Reverse-Engi...

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3. js8Apr 2016
   Not sure if it's what you're asking for, but I found http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Jokes-Using-Humor-Reverse-Engin... interesting.
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4. khcJul 2014
   Poor Economics - Abhijit Banerjee & Esther Duflo

   Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman

   The Signal and The Noise - Nate Silver

   Predictably Irrational - Dan Ariely

   This Time is Different - Carmen Reinhart & Kenneth Rogoff

   Subliminal - Leonard Mlodinow

   Fooled by Randomness - Nassim Taleb

   For something more lighthearted, I also enjoyed:

   An Economist Gets Lunch - Tyler Cowen

   Inside Jokes - Matthew Hurley & others (mostly skipped the dense parts)

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5. iricktMar 2013
   The proposal seems to be a joke. For example, this video review of the existing theories is hand-wavy and totally "blond" (sorry). https://www.microryza.com/projects/crowdsourcing-humor-using...

   If this was serious she would at least mention this recent book, which presents a deep and subtle evolutionary explanation, along with a thorough review of past theories, and yes includes lots of jokes: Inside Jokes by Matthew M. Hurley, Daniel C. Dennett, and Reginald B. Adams Jr. http://insidejokesbook.com/

   Basically, humor is a learning mechanism. It's funny when we take something to be true and then suddenly discover it to be false (as long as there is no immediate danger).

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6. jseligerOct 2013
   If you're interested in the subject, see Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind by Hurley, Dennett, and someone else. They critique Bergson (and many others) and conclude something interesting but which I can't remember because I'm traveling and don't have the book handy.
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