[ineptech]

This doesn't sound even a little right to me. That punchline is based on inversion of expectations, not self-deprecation. Certainly there seems to be some connection between laughter and an interrupted defense mechanism, but your version of it ("laughing is a reflex that you have when you recognize prey") doesn't make much sense. Why would we need a mechanism to avoid biting prey?

It would be much more plausibly viewed as a mechanism to avoid fighting rivals. As in: monkey A steals monkey B's banana, and monkey B bares his teeth to attack, but then, recognizing that monkey A is bigger and will kill him, monkey B evolves the behavior of laughing instead, as a way to dissipate the aggression and avoid a fight he will lose. Later, lower-status monkeys use humor as a way to gain status, because since laughter is equivalent to not-fighting, you can win or avoid a fight with a higher-status monkey by making him laugh.

That sounds a lot more believable, and it kinda-sorta comports with observation (e.g. it maps very neatly to medieval jesters getting away with making jokes about the King, or schoolyard bullying victims 'winning' if they can get the crowd laughing at the bully). But it's still a just-so story about evolutionary behavior, and by definition suspect as those are famously easy to gin up.

[pessimizer]

> That punchline is based on inversion of expectations, not self-deprecation.

The expectation is that Jimmy Carr is of normal intelligence and awareness. The joke that he is making is that he is not.

I don't buy the monkey story because laughing isn't generally defensive. If somebody attacks you and you laugh, they will attack you harder. To defend yourself with laughter, you point at a third-party and laugh, so maybe they'll think the third party is weaker than you.

[bluefirebrand]

> The expectation is that Jimmy Carr is of normal intelligence and awareness. The joke that he is making is that he is not.

I'm pretty sure the joke is that you aren't going to get much done in "a moment" of Cancer Research.

Not that he's too stupid to do the research. He could be the world's foremost expert on Cancer Research and the joke is still funny.

[ineptech]

You've misunderstood the monkey story. Laughter isn't the defense mechanism, it's the thing that interrupts the defense mechanism. The involuntary grin response doesn't happen when someone punches you, it happens when you feel attacked but also feel as if you can't react aggressively because of the social situation you're in.

Dissecting jokes is tedious and subjective but the sheer number of people disagreeing with you is telling. Jimmy Carr does a fair bit of self-deprecating humor but this one is pure "punchline subverts the expectation of the setup". It feels like you're working really hard to force this "woke=weak" thing in to a place where it doesn't remotely fit.

edit to add: and in cases where humor is aggressive or dismissive (e.g. jokes about gays, Polish people, blondes, etc) I think you'll find that "ingroup vs. outgroup" is a much better model than "predator vs. prey".