The Stream of Consciousness Hypothesis of the Evolutionary Purpose of Humor According to an Uninformed High School Student

 "Humor always comes at the expense of other people" - a possibly misremembered quote from the Powerpoint about humor. 

Wow, that's a long title. At least it's descriptive. Anyways, from an evolutionary standpoint, the existence of humor is puzzling. Human instincts tend to promote mutual cooperation, which is arguably responsible for the existence of civilization and the silicon thinking machine assembled by sweatshop laborers in some random south Asian polity that you are viewing this blog post on. 

I feel like getting a time machine and telling Homo habilis to not pick up those

tools sometimes.

Most evolutionary instincts have either have a direct connection to survival or a direct connection to the survival of some long dead ancestor that lived in a different environment. Newborn babies can support their entire body weight with one hand. You can find old pictures of doctors dangling newborns off their fingers, but this doesn't happen much anymore due to pesky modern medical ethics. Our instinctual ability to remember faces and voices are critical to survival even today. You can actually find people who lack the instinctual ability to recognize faces. 

At least someone was ready to catch the baby

How does humor fit into this? I find it hard to imagine a caveman giggling at his friend being gored by a mammoth would directly benefit either party's survival. Maybe humor encourages individuals or groups to reflect on others' mistakes and consider how to avoid them, like that video I saw on Reddit where a woman hi
ts a cactus with a baseball bat and an intact and very spiky section of saguaro decides to embed itself in her thigh. It might encourage people to avoid risky situations because of the fear of being laughed at. Gallows humor, which is common among soldiers and construction workers may help us deal with negative situations by allowing us to deal with stressful situations that may seem hopeless when considered objectively. Laughing about idiots might also facilitate group bonding and cohesion. I actually think that's a decent hypothesis on the existence of humor for a typed monologue. I should do this more and find the meaning of life or something. 

"Stop laughing and help me, Grug!"