Hwæt. I've been thinking about humor, why humor exists, and what things we find humorous. I've come up with a proto-theory that seems to work more often than not, and a somewhat reasonable evolutionary justification. This makes it better than any theory you can find on Wikipedia, as none of those theories work even half the time, and their evolutionary justifications are all weak or absent. I think.

So here are four model jokes that are kind of representative of the space of all funny things:

"Why did Jeremy sit on the television? He wanted to be on TV." (from a children's joke book)

"Muffins? Who falls for those? A muffin is a bald cupcake!" (from Jim Gaffigan)

"It's next Wednesday." "The day after tomorrow?" "No, NEXT Wednesday." "The day after tomorrow IS next Wednesday!" "Well, if I meant that, I would have said THIS Wednesday!" (from Seinfeld)

"A minister, a priest, and a rabbi walk into a bar. The bartender says, 'Is this some kind of joke?'" (a traditional joke)

It may be noting that this "sample" lacks any overtly political jokes; I couldn't think of any.

The proto-theory I have is that a joke is something that points out reasonable behavior and then lets the audience conclude that it's the wrong behavior. This seems to explain the first three perfectly, but it doesn't explain the last one at all; the only thing special about the last joke is that the bartender has impossible insight into the nature of the situation (that it's a joke).

The supposed evolutionary utility of this is that it lets members of a tribe know what behavior is wrong within the tribe, thereby helping it recognize outsiders. The problem with this is that outsiders' behavior isn't always funny. If the new student asks for both cream and lemon in their tea, that's funny. If the new employee swears and makes racist comments all the time, that's offensive. If the guy sitting behind you starts moaning and grunting, that's worrying. What's the difference? Why is this difference useful?