Peter McGraw: "To Explain Every Joke Ever"

(Peter McGraw; photo by Andrew Hetherington; reposted from: https://www.wired.com/2011/04/ff-humorcode/)

Recently, I have come across an article on Dr. Peter McGraw and his team's ambition--to find and prove true a universal theory that explains why things are funny and aren't (“One Professor’s Attempt to Explain Every Joke Ever.” qtd. https://www.wired.com/2011/04/ff-humorcode/). Their efforts and research result in their manifesto in print:

McGraw, Peter & Caleb Warren. “Benign Violations: Making Immoral Behavior Funny.” Psychological Science vol. August, 2010.

The gist is that, as taken intact from the journal, "Laughter and amusement result from violations that are simultaneously seen as benign." BVT (the Benign Violation Theory) hence defines funniness as witnessing of an act of or a hint on violation at a secured distance--a threat, but not posed to you, or not posed close enough to you.


While I haven't yet have the time to chew on every sentence of the paper nor sleep on every thought it includes, I decided to have some of his links posted here for future reference.

Dr. Peter McGraw's links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_McGraw
https://www.colorado.edu/business/peter-mcgraw
https://petermcgraw.org/
https://www.wired.com/2011/04/ff-humorcode/

※ The content of this post and the reference to its sources have never been made known to or approved by Dr. Peter McGraw or http://www.wired.com/magazine/. This blog post is therefore subject to immediate removal upon notice. ※