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Cyan comments on A "Holy Grail" Humor Theory in One Page. - Less Wrong Discussion
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I invite you to spell out the prediction that you drew about the evolution of human intelligence from your theory of humor and how the recently published neurology research verified it.
Sure, from page 22 of the 2nd paper:
"... Now, the reason for this, and what makes it especially interesting, is in what it reveals about the origins of our humor instinct, which is that it clearly evolved not only before language, but also before we had higher brain functions that allowed hypothetical scenarios or sophisticated deception."
Our humor instinct comes from a part of our brain that was evolutionarily programmed in a time where our intellect expressed itself in terms of "A," then "B", and get "C." Put the animal in the fire, wait until it smells good, then eat it. Grab the stick, hit the branch, and the fruit will fall."
This study was announced a few days ago in Harvard magazine (http://harvardmagazine.com/2014/09/was-the-human-brain-unleashed), discussing the basic parts of the brain compared to the more "advanced" ones in humans.
"...the neurons in the sensory and motor areas seem to be playing a game of telephone, in which information follows serial paths, the cells in the association areas use a communications strategy more like the Internet—with lots of simultaneous connections and pathways.
Buckner and Krienen looked for a simple way to explain this phenomenon. Association areas not only evolved later in humans, they also form later in an individual’s development."
The functioning of our "misplacement" instinct, as I found it in my studying of humor, seemed to indicate precisely that our early form of intelligence, and the laughter that came from, functioned only in terms of A-B-C and recognizing errors in those types of sequences, and our advanced functions that allowed more abstract and hypothetical thinking must have occurred later. The study seems to have used different methods to have arrived at the same conclusion.
Awesome, thanks!
When did it evolve? Do other primates have humor? Do dogs?
Yeah, both other apes and dogs have been found to have their own forms of laughter. It's discussed in the last entry in the second paper with links to two studies.
Apes' since of humor seems to be based entirely on physical fails, which makes a lot of sense since their use of tools and organization is limited (so I don't think they'd develop the misplacement humor instinct). Dogs is based on their own forms of play, like mock hunting and chasing and those other activities, so I think it's linked to what they see about your fitness in those matters.
Both other apes and dogs are social animals with breath control and, at the very least, an "ABC" level of intellect, so within what I'm claiming, it would make sense for them to develop laughter. Obviously this is something that can be investigated far further though.
Do they engage in something like laughing during that activity?
It might make sense based on your theory to make a few predictions for different species about which of those species should have something like humor and which don't. If later someone investigates you could validate your thesis.
Yes I believe the dogs do, but I haven't spent a lot of time dissecting this or being able to study it (maybe I can figure out something the next time I'm dogsitting for my cousin).
Here's the link... http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/200911/do-dogs-laugh
Regarding the second idea, that would probably be something good to do. Look at animals (other than humans) with breath control and consistent physical similarity, who thus have similar social situations as early man where they needed to organize themselves without knowing already who was the worker or the leader, and thus predict that they'd have a form of laughter.
I haven't gone into the animal side of it too much yet, but I'll keep that in mind.
If you manage to use your theory of humor to get the dog to laugh, that would show that you nailed some universal essence of humor.