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Greetings, fellow aliens! Today, I will explain
something that puzzles many alien visitors:
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Funny situations, jokes, and laughing - in
one word: Humour.
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My videos are usually based on a mix of earthling
literature, alien sources and conclusions
00:00:47
drawn from my own observations. Humour, however,
is a tricky thing which puzzles alien and
00:00:52
earthling scientists alike. So, this episode
is entirely based on an earthling book released
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one solar cycle ago: "Inside Jokes - Using
Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind". It provides
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the most convincing theory about humour I've
seen so far. You'll find a link in the description
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Let's start with a typical funny situation:
An earthling crosses a river, a body of hydric
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acid, by walking on stones, when one of the
stones turns out to be an animal. This mistake
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triggers a peculiar reaction: The earthling
produces strange rhythmic noises, called laughing.
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The whole phenomenon is called humour.
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Early alien visitors of earth thought that
laughing is an artificial respiratory distress
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induced by the brain, in order to punish mistakes.
However, this can't be right, for earthlings
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actually enjoy laughing - which is very strange.
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Anyway, humour seems to be triggered by mistakes,
based on false assumptions. To understand
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what is going on, we have first to understand
the important role of assumptions for the
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Earthlings are often compared to levy drones
of the tax authority. Like drones, earthlings
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create a model of the environment in their
mind, in order to make decisions. This model
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is called "mental space". Unlike drones, an
Earthling is even capable of handling several
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mental spaces simultaneously. For example,
one mental space for the present, one for
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last night, one for the near future, and one
for a video game he is currently playing.
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However, drones perform continuously full-spectrum
scans of the environment, whereas the earthlings'
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rudimentary senses provide very incomplete
data. In consequence, the earthlings have
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to fill the gaps by making educated guesses.
In other words: Assumptions.
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A second problem is time. No matter whether
in an airplane or in a bar, Earthlings have
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often no choice but to make decisions in a
limited amount of time, based on incomplete
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data. So, assumptions are unavoidable, but
unfortunately, false assumptions can have
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fatal consequences.
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That's where humour comes in. Let's try to
define what humour actually is. Humour seems
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to be triggered by the discovery of a false
assumption - like the assumption that the
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thing in the river is a stone. But not every
false assumption is funny.
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For example, if the earthling is just sitting
at the shore of the river, sees what might
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or might not be a stone, but doesn't decide
what to believe, it's not funny. He has to
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commit to the false assumption; he has to
take it as truth rather than a mere possibility.
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Secondly, if he commits to a false assumption
which leads to fatal consequences like losing
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his legs, it's not funny either - at least
not for him, right now. More generally, it's
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not funny if the discovery of the mistake
is loaded with negative emotions. So, humour
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only occurs when the earthling commits to
an assumption which turns out to be false,
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Thirdly, if the earthling wonders consciously
whether the thing in the river is an animal,
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then decides it's a stone, it's not funny
either to discover it's an animal. It's necessary
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that the assumption has entered the mental
space covertly. Let me explain this in a typically
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earthling manner: With a metaphor.
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Let's say, this is the earthling mind. Many
assumptions enter the mental space by the
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font-door, are examined and analyzed, before
the mind accepts or refuses them. But some
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assumptions enter the mind by the backdoor
and establish themselves without having been
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thought over. Such sneaky assumptions are
vicious, if the mind trusts them, as they
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can do a lot of harm.
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