[ExI] Nature of Humor: Grinning and Laughing

[ben]

"spike" <spike66 at att.net> speculated:

 > what I think Lee was asking was not do we laugh
 > at jokes we are reading.  Everyone does that.  But do we ever just
 > think of something and laugh.  I do, but that is a very interesting
 > question, which goes back to one I asked a few years ago in this
 > forum: when something is funny, why do we stop laughing eventually?
 > When we are sad, why do we stop weeping?  What changes?

I understood the question to be "do we laugh when there is no-one else 
around, so no social benefit?"

Can you clarify, Lee?

Laughing at something you just thought of is the same as laughing at 
something you've read, if you've already read it before, i think.
Unless it's something novel you just thought of.

But yes, i do that. I'd expect everyone does.

The question of why do we stop laughing is probably partly habituation, 
partly necessity (or we'd be extinct, having laughed ourselves into the 
belly of a lion).

The thing that changes is the amount of time you've been doing it. 
Nothing is endlessly enjoyable, without pause. We have built-in 
mechanisms to make sure we stop doing things, at least for a while.

I expect that if you can keep doing the same thing all day, day after 
day, without pause except for loo breaks, food and sleep, then either 
you're pharmaceutically enhanced or something's broken.

There's probably also a social component. What would you think of 
someone who always laughed twice as long as everyone else? It would get 
tedious after a while, no?  You'd probably end up regarding them as a 
complete prat.

Hm, that's interesting. If there's a 'right amount of time' to laugh 
for, in a social context, i wonder if this time varies between different 
groups of people?

Ben Zaiboc