Intellectual Jokes, apparently. Yeah.

Logician did it for me.

(smug chortle, with arms crossed)

Just noticed there's two logician jokes.

... with the same punchline.

My favorite one isn't here:

A physicist, a chemist and an economist are stranded on an island, with nothing to eat. A can of soup washes ashore. The physicist says, "Let's smash the can open with a rock." The chemist says, "Let’s build a fire and heat the can first." The economist says, "Let's assume that we have a can-opener..."

These come around every so often on Facebook, they're woeful obv

Pavlov one is almost funny, halloween is the only halfway clever one. I remember hearing the Latin one years ago, it is so shit that I honestly wonder how people are able to repeat it without being embarrassed, tho I know full well there's almost certainly some feeb out there wearing a t-shirt with it on

Pavlov meh, oct y and reactive gases y

A geologist, an historian, and an elecrical engineer are on a boat. The geologist says, "Last Wednesday, in the course of my job as a geologist, I discovered a vein of anthracite!". The historian replies, "Last Wednesday, you say? I find that fascinating, for it happened in the past!" The electrical engineer connects a power source to the metal chassis of the boat and kills all three of them with electricity because the other two men were pretty openly having an affair with his wife. GET IT

Rene Descartes walks into a bar. The bartender asks him if he wants anything.
Rene replies, "I think not," and promptly vanishes.

This one contains a logical error

Three logicians walk into a bar. The waitress asks, "Do you all want a beer?"
The first logician says, "I don't know."
The second one says, "I don't know." The third logician exclaims, "Yes!"

i had to stop and think about this, it gets my vote i guess

I don't like that one because it gets the actual logic wrong - I realise that is also a valid reason to like it.

the limits one is great

how does it get the logic wrong, maybe i don't get it after all

I'm a fan of both "You guys should know your limits." and Oct 31 equals Dec 25. The first one wins because it's snappier.

voted vanishing Descartes

Yeah I don't get how the logic is wrong in the 3 logicians joke, either

The problem with the Descartes one is

"I think therefore I am" =/= "I think not therefore I am not"

oh is Andrew talking about the Descartes joke?

no I think he was talking about the logicians one, which I'm also not sure I get -- is it supposed to be that it's a paradox since the first and second logicians can't know if all three of them want beer, whereas the third one can't know unless the first two answer?

The third one does know, because if either of the first two didn't want beer, he'd have said "no."

^^^

I like beer, unionized, limits, Oct/Dec, Pavlov, Higgs Boson, and dozen. Will probably vote for Oct.

See:

If the 1st logician did not want a drink, he could tell the barmaid "No" because he knows that not all three want a beer.

2nd log knows this, but he doesn't know if 3rd log wants one. And if he didn't want one, he could say "no" at that point.

3rd log has enough to answer the q. He does want one, and you got it now I'm sure.

xpost. Too long in the typing.

Yeah, I've always liked the logician one, but I'll vote for Halloween/Christmas, 'cause I haven't heard it before.

Oh durr I get it now xp

Halloween/XMas falls into the "aw cute" bucket for me

As opposed to the belly laughter of the rest?

Oh yeah! Shit, wish I'd voted for the logician/beer one.

As opposed to the belly laughter of the rest?

I am not proud of the amount of laughter the limits joke extracted from me but I will not live a lie

What if the first two logicians don't know if THEY want a beer, like they just haven't decided yet?

Lol

best of these got the barest ghost of a smile from me but in fairness the packaging does not make me well-disposed to them xp

Still beats the yearly 'best joke of the Edinburgh Fringe'.

Oh I cherish those

These are all about 3x as congratulatory to the audience as they are funny

Sort of like NYer cartoons

Let's all make our own up!

Guardian hacks' ability to sniff out the laziest one-liners from hundreds of hours of comedy/remove the least funny line in a show from its context is always a marvel xp

A triangle walks into a bar. "I'll need to know your area before serving you!" says the bartender. "No need," responds the triangle, "half an absinthe, ta".

I think what makes the "only intellectuals will like and share this awkwardly constructed pun revolving around something you remember from high school science!!!!" thing grating is that really like 90% of good comedy is "nerd humour" when you get down to it, but the stuff that makes a huge deal about identifying itself as such is always, always awful

It's really another example of this tendency (lamented by miserable ilx bastards passim in eg fb & zombie threads) to take something completely banal & unremarkable & amplify it to the point of insufferability

imo, the best-formed of these in terms of delivering an actual laugh when properly told is the first one: hunting statisticians. The next best is Pavlov.

The others require a sort of tedious mental crank-turning that requires at least one full turn before the punchline bores its slow way into your understanding, so that the best reaction one can hope for is a brief pause followed by "I get it." Which, I suppose, is the quality the makers of these jokes think makes them 'intellectual'. But it tends to make them fail as 'jokes'.

I like having to think about a joke.

At least none of the jokes in this poll have an insufferable and misguided political message.

"A woman in a hot air balloon realizes she is lost. She lowers her altitude and spots a man fishing from a boat below.
She shouts to him, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."
The man consults his portable GPS and replies, "You're in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 2346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.
She rolls her eyes and says, "You must be a Republican!"
"I am," replies the man. "How did you know?"
"Well," answers the balloonist, "everything you tell me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to do with your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you're not much help to me."
The man smiles and responds, "You must be a Democrat."
"I am," replies the balloonist. "How did you know?"
"Well," says the man, "You don't know where you are or where you're going. You've risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise that you have no idea how to keep, and now you expect me to solve your problem. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met , but, somehow, now it's my fault."

Same minus politics plus a theme that everyone can get behind amirite:

A helicopter was flying around above Seattle when an electrical malfunction disabled all of the aircraft's electronic navigation and communications qquipment. Due to the clouds and haze, the pilot could not determine the helicopter's position and course to fly to the airport. The pilot saw a tall building, flew toward it, circled, drew a handwritten sign, and held it in the helicopter's window. The pilot's sign said "WHERE AM I?" in large letters. People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign and held it in a building window. Their sign read: "YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER." The pilot smiled, waved, looked at her map, determined the course to steer to SEATAC airport, and landed safely. After they were on the ground, the co-pilot asked the pilot how the "YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER" sign helped determine their position. The pilot responded "I knew that had to be the Microsoft building because, like their technical support, online help and product documentation, the response they gave me was technically correct, but completely useless."

Try telling the first one out loud and see how often you get an audible laugh. Or the second, which is marginally less awful.

Ineffectual jokes, apparently

The others require a sort of tedious mental crank-turning that requires at least one full turn before the punchline bores its slow way into your understanding,

this is pure projection

at least you acknowledge my purity

the logician/beer one is a nice example of a certain sort of problem that models of logic tackle, so it gets high marks from me compared to the rest.

A physicist, a chemist and an economist are stranded on an island, with nothing to eat. A can of soup washes ashore. The physicist says, "Let's smash the can open with a rock." The chemist says, "Let’s build a fire and heat the can first." The economist says, "Let's assume that we have a can-opener..."

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Friday, 20 November 2015 13:35 (7 hours ago) Permalink

my preferred corny econ 101 first day of semester joke:

Two economists were walking down the street one day when they passed two large piles of dog shit.
The first economist said to the other, "I'll pay you $20,000 to eat one of those piles of shit." The second one agrees and chooses one of the piles and eats it. The first economist pays him his $20,000.

Then the second economist says, "I'll pay you $20,000 to eat the other pile of shit." The first one says okay, and eats the shit. The second economist pays him the $20,000.

They resume walking down the street.

After a while, the second economist says, "You know, I don't feel very good. We both have the same amount of money as when we started. The only difference is we've both eaten shit."

The first economist says: "Look on the bright side: we just increased GDP by 40,000$!"

i don't get the unionized one

i don't get halloween and christmas either

un-ionized

oct(al) dec(imal)

unionized (as in part of a union) v un-ionized (as in not ionized)

31 in base 8 = 25 in base 10 (decimal)

oh, xposts there

ah. i prefer that joke in this form

There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't.

the only out-and-out dog in the list is martinus/martini IMO

I figured Argon and Neon's stoicity was endemic to their noble character

A software tester walks into a bar and tries to order 0 beers, then -1 beers, then giraffe beers, then <SQL_INJECTION_HACK_REMOVED> beers.

miffed @ the lack of coruscating mirth for my astounding intellectual joke

unionized (as in part of a union) v un-ionized (as in not ionized)

lol, i thought this joke was just 'plumbers are dumb'

The problem with the Descartes one is

"I think therefore I am" =/= "I think not therefore I am not"

it actually works for this reason, but you have to know that descartes apparently says, sometimes, that as long as he thinks, he exists, which seems to imply that he has to be continuously thinking in some sense or other, or else cease to exist.

but saying that you think not is not the same thing as not thinking, so you can still work some philosopher pedantry in a different direction and everybody wins

science joke I quite like, doesn't involve walking into a bar:

String theory's wife catches him in bed with another woman; as she leaves sobbing he cries "wait, honey! I can explain everything!"

String theory is a punchline by now anyway

At least none of the jokes in this poll have an insufferable and misguided political message.

"A woman in a hot air balloon realizes she is lost. She lowers her altitude and spots a man fishing from a boat below.
She shouts to him, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."
The man consults his portable GPS and replies, "You're in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 2346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.
She rolls her eyes and says, "You must be a Republican!"
"I am," replies the man. "How did you know?"
"Well," answers the balloonist, "everything you tell me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to do with your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you're not much help to me."
The man smiles and responds, "You must be a Democrat."
"I am," replies the balloonist. "How did you know?"
"Well," says the man, "You don't know where you are or where you're going. You've risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise that you have no idea how to keep, and now you expect me to solve your problem. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met , but, somehow, now it's my fault."

― ledge, 20. november 2015 21:31 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I saw this one with a technician and a manager. I think that's the original, it makes more sense that way. The Rep's answer is not very Rep-like. nobody thinks Republicans particularly likes gps-coordinates.

Now, the interesting thing is that the Republican who changed the joke also switched the genders, so that the woman would be the stupid one in the balloon.

I've actually heard that exact joke before with the political parties reversed.

Ive heard it non-gender specific. This is getting really weird.

copy-pasted from some random site on the web:

An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician find themselves in an anecdote, indeed an anecdote quite similar to many that you have no doubt already heard.

After some observations and rough calculations the engineer realizes the situation and starts laughing.

A few minutes later the physicist understands too and chuckles to himself happily as he now has enough experimental evidence to publish a paper.

This leaves the mathematician somewhat perplexed, as he had observed right away that he was the subject of an anecdote, and deduced quite rapidly the presence of humour from similar anecdotes, but considers this anecdote to be too trivial a corollary to be significant, let alone funny.

We have a thread about that, iirc jokes are unfair now

proof of that is left as an exercise to the reader

I heard Richard Thompson tell the hot air balloon joke several years ago. Not with Dems and Reps, managers and workers, probably.

Here's a contrived philosophy joke I just made up:

Plato walks into the Philosopher’s Bar. He says to the barman, “I need a drink. What would you recommend?”
The barman says, “How about the Philosopher’s Bar Cocktail Special? It’s our own authentic recipe, available in this bar only. Accept no substandard copies!”
Plato says, “Ah! That’d be Ideal.”

I thought Plato's ideal was unreachable on this worldly plane. Does he remain thirsty?

martini/martinus one is the only one I'd have the guts to tell someone IRL

I'll try the three logicians one out on Amber.

i like flopson's joke but i think mostly for the relatively unintellectual subject matter of shit-eating

Well, she laughed and said "That third logician definitely wanted a beer"

It's the way I tell 'em...

lol @ wins' string theory one

i made up the following stats joke that i think is hilar but it requires basic familiarity with method of maximum likelihood

why was the constipated estimator inconsistent?
because it failed to maximize its log-likelihood

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Good wins.

Thread is good value.