| "The problem is, your making that argument is countering your claim that there isn't any subjectivity to humor." I'm not claiming there isn't any subjectivity to humor, I'm claiming that it is objective as well as subjective. When I say that humor is objective, I mean there are several patterns underlying what can make something funny. (You yourself said you enjoy discovering new kinds of humor, and kinds of humor implies underlying patterns.) I believe that it is possible to discover these underlying patterns, and then make a determination as to whether a statement falls into one of these patterns or not. This can be done independently of whether or not a person exists who can see that the statement falls into one of these patterns. But I also believe that humor is subjective, in terms of the feeling we get when we hear something funny. I don't believe that this can be quantified or measured-- when I say that humor is objective, I simply mean that a binary determination can be made as to whether or not a statement falls into some underlying bucket. "And your original point wasn't about humor. It was about interest. The two pertinent definitions: 'The state of 'wanting to know or learn about something or someone," and 'The advantage or benefit of a person or group.'" My belief is that the first dictionary definitions you list is a symptom of interest, but not what makes something interesting. The Baillargeon paper I cited talks about how babies look longer at impossible events. For example, if you create an illusion whereby you drop a toy and it appears to fall through a table, the baby will look at that longer than if the toy lands on the table like its supposed to. Interesting is very easy to define: Anything that violates our expectancy of how things are supposed to work. (Insight and humor are specific subsets of 'interesting'.) In practice you wouldn't describe something that was insightful or funny as interesting, for the same reason you wouldn't call a senator a congressman even though a senator is a congressman. Anyway, it is this violation of expectancy that makes us want to know or learn something. In other words, when our expectancy is violated we naturally want to either find some new schema, or else amend our previous schema to make it more accurate. Anything that violates our expectancy is interesting in an objective sense. And things that violate expectancy do generally hold our attention. But not always. The reason being that insightful writing is even more compelling than writing that is merely interesting, so it tends to steal our attention away. |
Okay, then. That makes sense. I don't know if from that you would be able to quantify humor like you mentioned before, but yes: there is rhyme and reason to it.
Anything that violates our expectancy is interesting in an objective sense. And things that violate expectancy do generally hold our attention. But not always. The reason being that insightful writing is even more compelling than writing that is merely interesting, so it tends to steal our attention away.
I still don't agree with that - I think that there's more to "insight and interest" than just declaring objective tags to things. I have easily learned more from reading fiction than I have from reading nonfiction. But I see where you're coming from.
Now I have to go and upvote this whole discussion. This was one of the best I've had on this site. Thanks a ton.