Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2000 17:35:11 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in (Rahul Siddharthan) Cc: des@ofug.org (Dag-Erling Smorgrav), tlambert@primenet.com (Terry Lambert), jkh@winston.osd.bsdi.com (Jordan Hubbard), bright@wintelcom.net (Alfred Perlstein), chat@FreeBSD.ORG, jkh@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: fortune candidate from #FreeBSD on EFNet Message-ID: <200011081735.KAA19984@usr08.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <20001108113145.H48888@lpt.ens.fr> from "Rahul Siddharthan" at Nov 08, 2000 11:31:45 AM
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> Incidentally, the God quotation would also be familiar to anyone who
> reads P G Wodehouse. But I don't think it's necessary to be familiar
> with the quote to get the joke :)
I disagree; without the implied "his wonders to perform", it's
just a set of unrelated sentences. The only thing that makes
such things funny is cognitive dissonance. Without the implied
end to the sentence, it could as easily be saying that FreeBSD's
man pages are inpenetrable. It's split infinitive on the order of
"You can't put too much water in a nuclear reactor" or "You can't
look too long at a nuclear cloud". The humor there might be
metahumor, based on people's observable reactions ("Wait, does
that mean I shouldn't put more than a certain amount of water
into a nuclear reactor, or does it mean that no matter how much
water I put it, it will never be too much?"). But because the
ambiguity in interpretation can't play on an inherent bias about
the readers opinion of FreeBSD, it loses most or all of its
humor.
With the implied ending to the first sentence, we have cognitive
dissonance, and a much better joke. It's on the order of a classic
"shaggy dog" story, or a Haiku, where the ending takes you by
surprise, and it's this disconnect between your expectation and
the reality that results in the humor.
FWIW: "The Far Side" humor works the same way. Some people just
don't get "The Far Side". I've become convinced that, at least
for the majority of these people, it's because they read the
caption before looking at the picture, and forming their own
opinion of what's going on. Without this step, there is no set
up for cognitive dissonance, and it merely becomes "yeah, that's
a picture of what the caption was describing", rather than "wow,
that's a totally bizarre interpretation of the picture, which I
was not expecting!". Mostly, these people tend to give you the
"will they leave my office before I need a stick?" look, and not
laugh.
The great thing about such humor is that what you are laughing
at is really the incorrectness your own assumptions; if you
are laughing at anyone's expense, it's your own. I'd say that
if you can laugh at yourself, you aren't laughing at your expense,
you're laughing to your credit; it means you are keeping an open
mind, which is a prerequisite for honest scientific inquiry.
NB: the "nuclear" examples were taken from Ed Asner's appearance
on Saturday Night Live, just so I'm not accidently credited where
it's not due...
Terry Lambert
terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.
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