Milt seems to be embracing the superiority theory of humor. As Brian's first article pointed out however, there is humor that doesn't appear to reflect a superiority in the listener. For example, in the lame comedy Full House years back, the writers were always able to get a cheap laugh by having the 3 year old Olsen twins say anything adult, such as "You go girl!" Similar comedy is when animals are depicted as doing human things. Both cases involve the subject of the humor rising above expectations. It's hard to see how one can interpret that as reflecting a feeling of superiority over the subject.

I'm beginning to think superiority theories can be interpreted in terms of incongruity theories. The incongruity in play is an incongruity of social expectations. When someone acts really stupidly, that is incongruous to how we normally expect someone to behave. It's unclear as to why we physically laugh in reaction to such. Yes, there's the ape pounding his chest in superiority theory, but again, that doesn't answer why we think animals and children acting above their expectations is funny. Also, feeling victorious and superior over our opponents doesn't always make us laugh. Finally, this theory doesn’t account for humor representing a radical and sudden violation of our expectations. If we know a person is stupid and does stupid things, then seeing the person doing stupid things would not likely be that funny, particularly if we expected the person to act precisely as we see them act. If humor represents just a feeling of superiority, then anticipating that the person in question would act stupidly and does in fact act so should still elicit a humor reaction (laughter) in us. However, punch lines anticipated are not that funny. It has to be unexpected. So it can’t just be feeling superior. If feeling superior is involved, it has to be related to a situation where someone acts radically and suddenly alternative to our social expectations.

One thing appears clear is that comedy has to involve a radical and abrupt change in expectations. That's why timing is important in comedy, as well as avoiding "telegraphing" the punch line. If the listener anticipates the punch line, then s/he won't be experiencing a radical and abrupt change in expectations. That's probably also why hearing a joke the second time isn't funny (or at least nearly as much), since you already expect the punch line. However, sometimes jokes told or heard a second time are still funny (note how sometimes when we want to tell a joke we heard and thought was funny that we sometimes have a hard time not "keeping a straight face"). I think what's going on is that the change in expectation represented in the joke, relative to the joke’s set up, is so radical that the person repeating the joke is still having difficulty coming to grips with the radical change in expectation represented in the flow of the joke.

The problem with incongruity theories is why we don't find all incongruities funny. My answer is that it's not just a simple incongruity that's going on. It's a particular kind of incongruity involving (at least primarily) social relationships, but more importantly the logic of the joke's subject matter. “Incongruity” just means that something is not going together. But a joke that has a punch line that doesn't have any relationship with the set up of the joke (which would still be incongruous) isn't funny. The punch line has to follow the logic of the joke's subject matter, although in a direction that's radically and abruptly different than what the listener expects.

Most if not the vast majority of if not all jokes involve leading the listener into a false sense of direction of the joke. The listener listens to the set up which falsely leads the listener to think the story is going to go in one direction but then the punch line goes in a radically different direction. But what's important is that the punch line still have a logical relationship with the logic of the joke's subject matter, what I call the key operative concept of the joke. Take a simple joke like "His ass is so big its gravity pulls satellites out of orbit." The key operative concept of the joke is the excessive size of the subject's posterior. Now if I had said, "His ass is so big that he needs to have custom made pants", that wouldn't be a joke, since the conclusion follows normal expectations of what someone with a large behind might have to experience.

But the key operative concept is "The guy has a big butt." Aside from real world expectations, that concept doesn't tell you how big his butt is or could be. So logically (though not realistically - and by logically I mean deductive logic), just saying it's big allows an inference that it could be so big as to have a gravitational pull sufficient to pull satellites out of orbit. Obviously not likely, but logically possible if the only parameter of the concept is that the thing in question is very large. Though that inference is logically possible from the premise that the guy’s butt is big, nevertheless it is a radically different inference than what one would expect if one heard that a person has a large butt, hence the joke.

Graphically, imagine a straight line. That line represents the direction the joke set up is leading the listener. As the set up proceeds, the listener is pulled along the direction of the line, with the comic’s hope that the listener will follow that line in a normally expected direction. At the key point of the punch line however, the logic of the joke's key operative concept (the joke’s subject matter), can logically (through pure deduction, without regard to real world likelihood) take the story in a range of possible directions. So at the moment just prior to the punch line, you might visualize an angle coming out of that straight line representing the range of logically possible directions that the joke story line might go, with the point just prior to the punch line being the vertex and the two diverging rays representing the outer boundaries of logical possibilities of where the direction of the joke, given the story line up until the point of the vertex, could go. A punch line going beyond that range would just not make any sense, violating the logic of humor. Within the range of that larger angle representing the range of logical possibility is a smaller angle representing the range of likely or reasonably expected outcomes given the set up of the joke.

So the listener of the joke follows the line of logic of the joke up until what I called the vertex point, just prior to the punch line. At that point, the listener has expectations of where the story will or might go. However, the punch line takes the story in a direction that logically follows the set up but which is radically (in an absurd and extremely unrealistic sense) and abruptly different than what was expected.

Any theory of humor needs to address real world examples. A few years ago a serious study was conducted to determine the existence, if any, of humor that appealed cross culturally, at lest across western nations. After much research, the joke that turned out to have the broadest international appeal was the following:

“A couple of New Jersey hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn't seem to be breathing, his eyes are rolled back in his head. The other guy whips out his cell phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps to the operator: “My friend is dead! What can I do?” The operator, in a calm soothing voice says: “Just take it easy. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead.” There is a silence, then a shot is heard. The guy's voice comes back on the line. He says: “OK, now what?"”
The vertex point of this joke is the point where the operator suggests making sure that the fallen hunter is dead. That one line from the operator also represents the key operative concept of the joke: namely, the concept of making sure that the fallen hunter is dead. Now, if one were to suggest making sure someone is dead, in the given context of the joke’s set up, the reasonable expectation, reflecting real world experiences, is to check the fallen hunter for vital signs to determine if he is alive or not. Since that would be an expected inference of the operator’s suggestion, that inference would not constitute a punch line, and the story would not be a joke. However, there are at least two logically possible meanings to the phrase “make sure he’s dead.” Aside from the previous, more expected (given the context) meaning, the alternative meaning is to do what is necessary to ensure that the individual is dead. That is, make him dead. Some word play is in operation here, since “make sure” can mean either “necessitate” or “ascertain for certain”. The former sense is causal and the latter is epistemological.
This latter, causal inference from the operator’s comment is radically different than what one would expect in such a situation, particularly given the surviving hunter’s concern for the well being of his fallen friend.

This joke has several incongruities working, perhaps reflecting the joke’s broad appeal. There is the incongruity of the mistaken inference from the operator’s suggestion. There is the incongruity of the surviving friend, obviously concerned about the well being of his fallen friend, shooting and killing him, particularly in his vulnerable state. Finally, on a related note, there is the incongruity of someone being so stupid as to make such an absurd inference. Such breathtaking stupidity is radically different than what we normally expect when interacting with others.

This misleading inference theory also explains word play jokes in general. A word is used that can have more than one meaning. Given the context of how the joke is set up, one possible meaning is expected, but the joke is a joke because an alternative meaning, hopefully one radically different than what one would expect given the joke set up, is drawn out. Slapstick humor involves individuals physically behaving radically different than what our social expectation would lead us to believe are the range of likely behaviors. In a classic pie fight scene in a Three Stooges episode, the pie fight occurs during a formal black tie banquet. The setting of a black tie banquet establishes a set of reasonable possible behaviors that one would infer as likely to occur at such an event, and a pie fight is radically different than what one would expect. A modern audience might not find such a scene funny any more since pie fights are so hoary in the history of comedy, that it wouldn’t be so radical a violation of expectations if one were watching a comedy.
This theory also explains why children at such an early age laugh at things. An adult makes a silly face to a six-month child, violating the child’s expectations in a nonthreatening way, and the child laughs because the adult is acting in a way radically different than what the child expects adults to behave.

A joke that I have often used in explaining my theory is an old joke from Steve Martin, which goes as follows:
I’m feeling kinda depressed. I’ve been thinking about my old girlfriend. She’s not living any more, and I kinda blame myself. We were at a party. She’d been drinking. She asked me to drive her home. I didn’t want to. She asked me again. “Steve, will you please drive me home.” I didn’t want to, so I shot her.

The key operative concept in the above joke is that his girlfriend is dead, she had been drinking at a party, and he blames himself for her death. The normal expected inference from that is that she died in an alcohol involved car accident. However, there is nothing that necessarily follows from the premise that she had been drinking. So a logically possible inference from the fact that she’s dead and that he blames himself is that he killed her. That inference, though a logically possible inference from the key operative concept of the joke, is nevertheless radically different than an any expected inference from the joke’s set up, particularly given the comic’s expression of depression and guilt over his girlfriend’s death.

Some might argue that many humor instances don’t have set-ups from which to draw inferences. An example might be the aforesaid case of a very young child saying something adult, or an animal acting human. But our minds operate rapidly. We see a child or animal and we immediately expect the child or animal to act as children and animals normally act, and hence infer a set of expected possible behaviors from the mere fact that they are children and animals. However children do say things, and they are human beings, so a logical inference from that is that they could say anything, even though there is a range of logically possible things a child could say that are radically different than what we would normally expect them to say.

One final word about laughing at subjects we do feel superior to. The logic of such jokes is that the subject is stupid and inferior to the audience in some way. However, there is a range of possible behaviors that one would expect of someone even if one deems him or her stupid. Hence, the comic could take the logic of the key operative concept of the subjects presumed stupidity and draw it out to an extreme beyond what one would realistically expect. In this sense a joke is in many ways a reductio ad absurdum type of argument. Taking the logic of a concept and drawing the logic out to an absurd degree.

I think we can make a few distinctions to make about the nature of humor. We can break up the ideas on the nature of humor into a few types:

1) THE DEFINITION OF HUMOR (theories about what humor is, in itself; what’s unique about humor; criteria for what makes something funny, the interpretation we have that makes the “funny” thing humorous to us, etc.)

a) THE NATURE OF THE THING THAT’S FUNNY: the situation, joke, etc. that causes us to find it funny
b) THE NATURE OF THE HUMOR RESPONSE: the cognitive and emotional response in us that humor is.

2) THE FUNCTION OF HUMOR (the psychological or sociological effect on humans of using and appreciating humor and laughter, e.g., social bonding, communication of our mental states & views to others, conflict resolution, displaying a sense of superiority over others, a release of tension, etc.).
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ME—note that *situations* or actions are often funny, not just jokes or remarks.