The Human Brain Cannot Accommodate Two Fundamentally

The human brain cannot accommodate two fundamentally

conflicting ideas at the same time. The logic of our minds needs
to give vent to such tension, released through laughter.
That explains why a restrained laughter doesn’t feel as good as an
unrestrained one.
And what factors could possibly induce such a conflict?
?? Punch line: whatever you heard at last is in conflict with what
you thought. This is also called a surprise, which can be of
many kinds:
o Unconventional: something that contradicts the custom.
For example, if you see the sentence, “Mary had a little
lamb”, what comes to your mind? And what do you think
happened to Mary?
Now here’s the punch line: “Her gynecologist had a heart
attack”.
And how about this: “two fish in the tank”. What kind of
picture do you see?
The second part: “one fish to another, ‘do you know how
to drive this thing?’”.
You see, we laugh because of our inability to take those
ideas as “normal” and absorb it.
o Ambiguity: when a word has different meaning under
different circumstances.
For example, “Do you agree with sex before marriage?”
“Not if it holds up the ceremony.”
The preposition “before” can denote different amount of
time, depending on how you perceive it. In this case, we
were again tricked into a conflict between two possible
interpretations of the same word.
?? Thinking about an “inappropriate” implication. For example, the
word “it” often comes with a sexual connotation. Once we relate
sex to especially something serious we cannot help laughing
because it is both hilarious and inappropriate.
Consider this one: “Have you finished the book I lent you?” “Can
I give it to you later?” “Sure, but can I have my book back too?”
?? Contradictions within a joke. The most obvious type of conflict
and typically a trick on socially agreed meaning of a word,
phrase, or idiom.
Patent: “Doctor, I’m going to die in 50 seconds.” Doctor, “Hold
on, I’ll be with you in a minute.”
You and I both know that “one minute” here doesn’t really mean
exactly 60 seconds. The joke forces us to think “one minute” in
speech is really just one minute and one minute only, thus
introducing a conflict with our past experience.
?? Exaggeration. Needless to say, something that is out of
proportion will be in direct conflict with its agreed perception. We
say “that is not possible” and then laugh because that is
in-congruent with our experience. We usually hear people say,
“…is so…” and that can be frequently used as a basic structure in-exaggeration jokes.
For example, “He is so stupid that he has the intelligence of a
walnut.”