First, regarding puns, yes that's how I explain them. But puns and misplacements frequently aren't funny...they usually create humor through 2nd person laughter (at someone else's bold and forced punnery, showing either their lameness or utter disrespect for people who don't like puns), or through being layered with something else (misplacement combined with further physical failure)
Misplacement by itself is kind of like a hamburger patty without any salt, bun, lettuce or tomato. If it's a wrong enough misplacement, it CAN be funny, just like you CAN eat the plain old hamburger patty without preparing it...but it's pretty uncommon. The "flushed with success" example is a layered pun. It's not just the patty. The person is pointing out first that they didn't use puns, implying that it's lame, obvious, easy or silly, then immediately doing it. This is combined with the misplacement. So you get both him purposefully doing something that he just implied isn't good humor, AND the sense of misplacement...it's a hamburger patty combined with some seasoning, which is what we normally see. Plushed with success might still be somewhat funny because he's failing at punning or still "stooping to it" after mentioning it, but not as funny as "flushed" since that has more pun characteristics.
By the way, I'm well-aware that this is one of the least obvious aspects of the theory, and I'm also well-aware that this is the most ripe for me to focus on and try to put more clearly and speak more about. I'm not proclaiming that this is or was stated perfectly, but I do have a strong feeling that I've gotten a handle on what's going on and just need to trim and organize the thoughts on it well.
In general, this theory seems squarely aimed at humour that could be classified as "laughing at someone" (perhaps one's hypothetical self, etc.). There is a lot of humour of this kind, but it's by no means all there is.
At the risk of overgeneralizing (we're covering a lot of ground here)...I'm essentially saying that yes, all humor is laughing at someone, but it's done for the purposes of peaceful group organizing, so it's not as evil or threatening as that might seem...and a lot of laughter is when someone says something or acts something out that we can imagine them saying and would cause us to laugh at them...of which the imagining causes us to laugh.
Also, we usually don't realize which someone we're laughing at. Sometimes the "someone" is an unknown person with an average-person expectation...and often our primitive brain will laugh at what it thinks is an error by an unknown person. and we get confused at who the someone is.
I am fairly sure (just from introspection, which is of course rather unreliable) that I sometimes find things funny because they're much cleverer than they first appear -- the exact reverse of your status loss mechanism. (But it fits nicely with Hurley&Dennett's.) I suppose you could try to cram this into your framework by saying that I am the one whose status is being lowered here, but I don't think this makes sense in your just-so story. What value would there be in drawing attention in a status-lowering manner to one's own mistake? Especially a mistake one has made only internally?
Yes, this is a very valid concern that has been brought up. The example I've used elsewhere is here...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww2d_o0N62w&t=2s
Obviously we can find more examples but just one makes things tidy. The commentator (Isiah Thomas) really clarifies what I'm proposing because he laughs after the HIGHER STATUS display by Jordan, but says "Excuse me! I'm sorry!" which I think underlines the idea that this display is making him laugh at his own expectation or claim (in this case that Jordan was losing his athleticism in his mid-30's) being proven so starkly wrong.
The question of WHY we would laugh at ourselves is also a very good one to ask and I've thought about it. I think that 1) There's a "fail-safe" switch for ruining your own status in that having anxiety about it would counteract the reflex, so it doesn't happen in situations that would totally kill your status. And 2) We view people who can laugh at themselves as being likable and socially desirable. This fits with the idea that they accept their own errors being noticed and peacefully placing them wherever they may be in the status order.
You also asked why we would laugh when we're alone. I think laughter is an unconscious reaction, like smiling, that happens whether we're alone or not. We also, for example, sometimes unconsciously talk to ourselves out loud when we're alone.
Typographical errors are not usually funny, even when their validty and wrongness are both comparable to those in a pun. For instance, in the foregoing sentence there happens to be a missing letter. Maybe you noticed it, maybe not; these things are eminently missable.
As you said yourself, the noticeability on that error is very low. It's also not necessarily a display below expected quality. I make typos all the time, I see them all the time. They don't surprise me. So the difference between "Qe" and "Qd" as well as the "N" (noticeability) are both very low or 0 in the equation.
It seems to me that someone who starts out with visibly low status shouldn't be able to generate humour by doing silly things. (This is about the "expectation" term in your equation.) I think clowns (and probably court jesters) are counterexamples, and I still think so having read what you write about them in your papers. Perhaps in some cases (as you propose) one can explain a jester as mocking the king or courtiers and hence abruptly lowering their status, but I don't think that's the whole of what a jester would do and it certainly doesn't apply to a lot of what a clown does.
People with visibly low status can't generate humor AS EASILY as people with high status. They have to find new ways to mess up or sink to new lows. I think clowns dress the way they do because it earns an initial laugh from kids (adults realize that it's an act, but kids wouldn't recognize high status as well as adults if the clown dressed more normally, so the outfit works better there), but they do all other kinds of things and jokes to keep the laughter going. If it was JUST the outfit, that would get a laugh or two, then people would stop. As you said, the same is true of court jesters, they could probably use their outfits to get an initial laugh, then use their low status to get extra laughter out of mocking others, but you're right, they did other things to be entertaining as well, like maybe juggling or magic. These weren't necessarily funny though.
I can summarize a lot of what I find unsatisfactory in your theory as follows: your theory locates humour in "sudden stupidity", but it seems to me that "sudden cleverness" is approximately equally important and it appears to be entirely neglected in your theory.
I think this is similar to the above points on first-person laughter. Note that sudden cleverness can also be someone telling a clever joke, too.
I also think you exaggerate its novelty. Your theory isn't far from the "superiority theory", for instance. My memory (which is not very reliable) says that Hurley&Dennett's description of this theory lays more stress on the object's inferiority than on the laugher's superiority, at which point the differences look very minor.
I don't know if I'm as focused on "novelty" as I am on elegance, utility and consistency with evidence. Those would be the things I really am more excited about and that I think are most important. Having said that, yes, this theory definitely has things in common with Superiority Theory AND Incongruity Theory and probably some others. What I like is that I think it connects the claims of both in a manner that's logical and (at least at the core) is simple enough to be explained to a child.
But also, I think Superiority Theory focuses on laughter being (as quoted in paper one) sudden joy arising from one's own superiority. This goes much further then that, saying that laughter is not just happiness, but a DISTINCT reflex all its own that has its own physical characteristic (diaphragm spasm), and includes a pleasure chemical and a smile for a clear, logical and specific reason (peaceful social ordering etc). We also introduce a logical basis for anxiety lowering humor and so on.
Obviously, I haven't read all 100+ humor theories so I'm not comfortable proclaiming something is "brand new" and would feel silly doing it. But, I do think it's not true to say that this doesn't have different ideas (or more advanced and logical ideas) than Superiority Theory.
All the best and if you want to focus on anything specific I've said, just let me know. I want to address all the points but I don't want to bury people in mountains of text either. Long or short replies asking about specific issues are both welcome.
Puns
I really don't think you're engaging with the actual points here, which are (1) that puns and similar jokes can be funny simply by being clever, without any "misplacement" required; and (2) that even when a "misplacement" is involved, your theory doesn't appear to identify any reason why the pun should be funnier than a mere plausible mistake that no one would be amused by.
I agree that the particular one I cited, which was simply the first I had to hand, has an extra layer to it that enhances the humour. I already drew attention to ...
Alrighty, with the mass downvoters gone, I can make the leap to posting some ideas. Here's the Humor Theory I've been developing over the last few months and have discussed at Meet-Ups, and have written two SSRN papers about, in one page. I've taken the document I posted on the Facebook group and retyped and formatted it here.
I strongly suspect that it's the correct solution to this unsolved problem. There was even a new neurology study released in the last few days that confirms one of the predictions I drew from this theory about the evolution of human intelligence.
Note that I tried to fit as much info as I could on the page, but obviously it's not enough space to cover everything, and the other papers are devoted to that. Any constructive questions, discussion etc are welcome.
A "Holy Grail" Humor Theory in One Page.
Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Freud, and hundreds of other philosophers have tried to understand humor. No one has ever found a single idea that explains it in all its forms, or shows what's sufficient to create it. Thus, it's been called a "Holy Grail" of social science. Consider this...
In small groups without language, where we evolved, social orders were needed for efficiency. But fighting for leadership would hurt them. So a peaceful, nonverbal method was extremely beneficial. Thus, the "gasp" we make when seeing someone fall evolved into a rapid-fire version at seeing certain failures, which allowed us to signal others to see what happened, and know who not to follow. The reaction, naturally, would feel good and make us smile, to lower our aggression and show no threat. This reaction is called laughter. The instinct that controls it is called humor. It's triggered by the brain weighing things it observes in the proportion:
Humor = ((Qualityexpected - Qualitydisplayed) * Noticeability * Validity) / Anxiety
Or H=((Qe-Qd)NV)/A. When the results of this ratio are greater than 0, we find the thing funny and will laugh, in the smallest amounts with slight smiles, small feelings of pleasure or small diaphragm spasms. The numerator terms simply state that something has to be significantly lower in quality than what we assumed, and we must notice it and feel it's real, and the denominator states that anxiety lowers the reaction. This is because laughter is a noisy reflex that threatens someone else's status, so if there is a chance of violence from the person, a danger to threatening a loved one's status, or a predator or other threat from making noise, the reflex will be mitigated. The common feeling amongst those situations, anxiety, has come to cause this.
This may appear to be an ad hoc hypothesis, but unlike those, this can clearly unite and explain everything we've observed about humor, including our cultural sayings and the scientific observations of the previous incomplete theories. Some noticed that it involves surprise, some noticed that it involves things being incorrect, all noticed the pleasure without seeing the reason. This covers all of it, naturally, and with a core concept simple enough to explain to a child. Our sayings, like "it's too soon" for a joke after a tragedy, can all be covered as well ("too soon" indicates that we still have anxiety associated with the event).
The previous confusion about humor came from a few things. For one, there are at least 4 types of laughter: At ourselves, at others we know, at others we don't know (who have an average expectation), and directly at the person with whom we're speaking. We often laugh for one reason instead of the other, like "bad jokes" making us laugh at the teller. In addition, besides physical failure, like slipping, we also have a basic laugh instinct for mental failure, through misplacement. We sense attempts to order things that have gone wrong. Puns and similar references trigger this. Furthermore, we laugh loudest when we notice multiple errors (quality-gaps) at once, like a person dressed foolishly (such as a court jester), exposing errors by others.
We call this the "Status Loss Theory," and we've written two papers on it. The first is 6 pages, offers a chart of old theories and explains this more, with 7 examples. The second is 27 pages and goes through 40 more examples, applying this concept to sayings, comedians, shows, memes, and other comedy types, and even drawing predictions from the theory that have been verified by very recent neurology studies, to hopefully exhaustively demonstrate the idea's explanatory power. If it's not complete, it should still make enough progress to greatly advance humor study. If it is, it should redefine the field. Thanks for your time.