The disambiguation of laughter

Laughter, to understand each other well, is a human behaviour that is very strictly a biological mechanism, like the regulation of blood pressure or the diving reflex. It is in no way private, as a mechanism and of itself, nor is it to any degree personal, nor at all arbitraryⁱ. On the contrary, laughter has a strictly social function ; it has evolved before speech and for a period longer than recorded history it served reasonably well the two extant functions of speech as a behaviour in humans : group formation and mate selection.

The trigger of laughter is dispositive as to the type of laughter encountered : if driven by surprise, it's the common type working towards group formation. Otherwise, it's the sexual type driven by estrogen levels rising in the audience. Concretely as to this last type : yes Yohanna laughed lots and lots and lots, in proportion to how she got moister and moister over the ride's duration. But by the time she lost her shit over the goat storyⁱⁱ it was evident to every sociopath there present as well as to any vicarious sociopaths present through the magical powers of recountingⁱⁱⁱ that it's not because the story was that damned funny.^iv

The other kind of laughter (I hesitate to call either of these normal because it's just not at all clear which is the proper function and which is the parasitic overload) is often driven by surprise incomprehensible to the outside, because the controller is very much the old reptile brain. Something as "unsurprising" as "that loser kid" showing up counts as a surprise in this context, in the sense that it's an event which the eyes perceive and the amygdala creates a ticket for. Which is the handled, for instance by taking his hat and passing it arround while giggling. This is just as much laughter as the other thing, just as basic, just as proper, but evidently not nearly as humorous.

Which is the fundamental problem in equating laughter with humour : there's no such relation. Humour is a livresque quality of a text, an objective, purely intellectual property^v that sometimes translates into laughter, but not always and not necessarily. For instance, I find the ein anderes comment to be the height of comedy, yet I expect if you even understand it (which is on the face very improbable) you most likely aren't laughing. It's funny though, just not the laughing matter kind.

So, to put it in practical terms directly actionable for my dearly beloved American-minded readership :

• If you think you "have a great sense of humour" in the context of a dating app or similar, you have already lost. You imagine, wrongly, that a woman's sexual reaction to your presence is an attribute of you as such^vi, not of the triplet (you, her, context), and consequently are one step away from the red pill idiocy^vii, not to mention being really obnoxious in social intercourse. Relax, will you ?^viii
• If conversely you think you're funny because "all these random girls I meet at parties keep telling me so, I mean they're not all stupid, right ?", you deeply misunderstand what those girls of the same age and social class as you are saying there. A slightly faggoty^ix kid has an easier time making girls in his (white, middle class) peer group laugh because of the reduced pressure, ie he's just not that driven to "bang"^x them, which helps, but that correlates with a talent for writing sitcoms about as well as it correlates with the color Pushkin.^xi

That'd be all.

PS. This article should be sideways proof that the only reason "sociopaths", ie the sort of stunted characters that fail to develop any "emotional intuition" or however you call it but then sometimes attempt to reason their way back into humanity by constructing a sort of neocortex-driven emotion-prosthetic never get anywhere is not because the task is hopeless -- I just got all the way on the power of language-supported intelligence alone, which is to say the furthest tier, last evolved mental capacity -- but that either they're just not all that good at it (which is to be expected, go ahead and measure my IQ somehow) or else that perversely their sufferance is more like a curse than like a disease, in the sense that not only do they lack the direct, but they somehow also have all palliative approaches welded shut, just to make sure.

1. The fact that you can't laugh because you want to (at the very least, not convincingly) should be dispositive of this matter. Characteristically for a psychologically hidden truth (ie, a point of fact that, in touching on the functioning of the human brain, is specifically and purposefully hidden from examination by the very brain in question), you naturally (which is to say, unexaminedly and for as long as you don't, or else can't examine it) somehow arrive at the conclusion that on the contrary, the fact that you can't laugh on command somehow proves it... is arbitrary. Fancy that backwards wonder! [↩]
2. One time many years ago, I went to this farm to relax and whatever. I set up a hammock between two pear trees in the place's orchard, and proceeded to leisurely read a book in the lazy afternoon glow. The book wasn't very good, some sort of detective story, but after a while I did get mildly curious as to who dun it or whatever. Then I got thirsty and got up to get a drink.

   By the time I returned, my hammock had been conquered by an invading goat, who was very peacibly and with some apparent enjoyment eating my book, leaf by leaf. He had this face, too, you know, as if to say "hey, I appreciate learnin' as much as the next billy!". So I chased it away, retook my possessions in possession, only to discover that the damned animal had started with the last pages of my detective story.

   It was two weeks before I could find another copy and be duly disappointed with the moderately disinteresting ending that in any case had been built up too much by my recounting the misadventure over the intervening interval. [↩]

3. Oh, you didn't realise this obvious fact, that storytelling is fundamentally a prosthetic for sociopathy, whereby you can participate in events you weren't there for ? Heh. [↩]
4. See ? It's ok, but it's not tearing up and gasping for air sorta funny.

   It's true that I added some ad-hoc commentary about how the goat was probably "una cabra arabe" trying to terrorize through culture as a throwback to some earlier discussion re her interest in painting her eyes and my time spent among the Sahara folk. But this isn't all that funny either, is it now.

   At least not to you. To her, it was hysterical. [↩]

5. Which is why "maybe it's not for you" is always and universally the hack's excuse -- honey, if your humor comes in verticals it ain't all that humorous! [↩]
6. This is exactly what they mean by objectifying women, by the way, and also why they don't like it when they don't like it (because as you might've noticed they fucking love it when I objectify them -- which you imagine is because I can't afford any good shit and I have a huge penis not to mention ready buckets of sociopathy which is what "these damned bitches" go for, another symptom of the same fundamental problem, of you imagining it's my property rather than a contextual thing) . [↩]
7. I also have an article somewhere (or maybe one of those lengthier log items ?) where I explain my dislike in terms of "here's these cucks trying to hack their way into panties, as a technological rather than sexual behaviour". I can't find the article right now ; but I suspect you can find examples qs, right now.

   But understand this fundamental point : mating doesn't come out of you putting the girl into a situation where she "has to" fuck you or "can't help but" fuck you or etcetera. Mating is this thing where she has plenty of other options, and you ask her and she follows. Sometimes not even. [↩]

8. And more importantly, let her help you! She knows whether she's worth your time or not, let her opt out for crying out loud. If you ran a restaurant would you try to detain people looking for a garage ? Then what the fuck are you doing with all teh "technologees", suspiciously cvasi-medical in their associated magicological imaginarium. Dating pills are kinda like growth hormones for your social life, rite ? [↩]
9. Histrionics is gay-predicting not in the sense that if you personally are outgoing you personally therefore are gay but in the sense that given a million of yous that are all outgoing and ceteris paribus, there'd be a concentration of faggots among that group that'd be statistically relevant -- which doesn't necessarily mean what you think it does but which, as I'm sure you'll agree, is nevertheless the exact same thing. [↩]
10. Consider this sampler :

    14) My name is Sexxxo Pornographicus, Galactic Overlord of Schlaungg, and I am here to crush the Earth. Starting with your pussy. I have mastered your Earth courtship process and have come to conquer all ripe breeding vessels in your “Los Angeles County.” We will meet in a well-lit public place for one of your pathetic caffeinated beverages, at which point my reverse engineered Earth pheromones will overpower any puny resistance you may have and mating will begin. Not at your Third Street Starbucks, though, as I am banned from that one for 30 days. Your absurd statutes regarding proper use of rest rooms are incomprehensible to me.

    15) You have agreeable bone structure.

    16) Not gonna lie, I found you a little intimidating. You’re a handsome young woman and obviously you’ve accomplished a lot in your short life. But there’s also something accessible and human that comes through. It’s like: even Batman takes shits.

    17) I would rather have my dick slammed repeatedly in a car door, and the car is made out of fire ants, than have you not message me back. No pressure.

    18) Let me pitch you an idea:

    We go out a couple times. We make out, maybe we bone. Or maybe we don’t, and I just never call you. Or maybe we do, and then we get married and move slightly out of town to some place where people of modest means can get a pretty big yard, and we get a goat, but the fucking thing is too loud and keeps chewing through the fence- they are surprisingly clever animals. Maybe it actually figures out the latch. But point being the goat keeps getting out and getting into the neighbor’s yard and eating his heirloom tomatoes or whateverthefuck- maybe we laugh at this. Maybe this discord with our neighbors only brings us closer together, like, us against the world. Maybe not, maybe you never wanted to get it in the first place, maybe you never wanted to move to the suburbs, maybe you secretly blame me for everything moving too fast and now you’re stuck here out in Calabasas or something and now you’re like 33 and if you leave me you’ll never have biological children, but if you stay with me you don’t know how you can stand even one more fucking second in this house in the middle of nowhere and separating the bank accounts is going to be such a god damned pain in the ass, and the goat isn’t cute anymore, it was a stupid idea, and it has an expected life span of like 35 more years but any place you give it away to might use it for meat and that would pretty much be unconscionable. You don’t want it, but you can’t get rid of it. That’s what it’s going to be like with you and me in like four years. Maybe. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t have a fuckin crystal ball.

    Anyway: how about it.

    Yes, he has more. And this is culled from the better half, you understand me. [↩]

11. Oh, there isn't a color Pushkin ? Fine, Magenta. [↩]