Foolproof Humor Recipe?

In early 2010, Hurley, Dennett, and Adams put the finishing touches on their evolutionary/neurocomputational model of humor and wondered if, just possibly, they had cracked the mystery that had baffled intrepid analysts and researchers for several millennia: it seemed they might have not only uncovered the neural mechanisms of humor but in the process devised a foolproof recipe for generating humorous stimuli of all varieties, from slapstick to witty retorts, from dirty jokes to high comedy. Set the dial and turn the crank and out comes Oscar Wilde, Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields, P.G. Wodehouse; nudge the dial and turn the crank again and out comes Steve Martin, Jim Carrey, Dave Barry, Gary Larson… Reductionistic science has triumphed again, and humor, as we know it, will soon be dead.

OK…we lied about the humor recipe. Not only does the theory in this book not uncover such a recipe, it shows why it is extremely unlikely that anybody—or any bank of computers—will ever find one.

From the preface of Matthew M. Hurley, Daniel C. Dennett, and Reginald B. Adams, Jr.’s new book, Inside Jokes. Happy April Fools’ Day!