Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind

Description: An evolutionary and cognitive account of the addictive mind candy that is humor.

Review Quotes: [O]ne of the most complex and sophisticated humor theories ever presented . . . The authors should be lauded for their thought-provoking and original work.
--Evolutionary Psychology

The theory [the authors] elaborate is a detailed and sophisticated descendant of incongruity theories . . . The learned and even-handed stance adopted by [them] regarding problem cases is... upbeat: they regard their theory as a provisional staging post, and a prompt to further empirical enquiry into these open-ended issues. On balance, that is probably the right attitude to take.
--The Times Literary Supplement

Inside Jokes is the most persuasive theory of humor in the centuries that scientists have been trying to explain why we crack up. Extra bonus: unlike most such research, which is about as funny as a root canal, Hurley's analysis is--and I don't think I'm going out on too much of a limb here--the funniest thing the MIT Press... has ever published (in a good way).
--Sharon Begley, The Daily Beast

Science advances by asking new questions, and Matthew Hurley, Daniel Dennett, and Reginald Adams raise a lot of them . . . Some of these questions have been asked before, but no previous attempt succeeds in answering so many so well.
--Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Science