WTD!

In my research lab I'm currently working toward a theory of betting. Really, I'm not kidding!

Specifically, why do people get such an emotional kick out of speculating on the outcome of some event? There's something deeply human and important about staking a claim on the future, whether you make a comment to a friend about the likelihood of Charlie Sheen to ever find a replacement second-goddess, or whether you "play the stock market". I think this activity -- this impulse to project our views into the real world and then look to see what reality says back -- is very near to the source of every human activity in the broadest sense. I would argue with a somewhat straight face that gossip and politics and scientific research and prayer and cheerleading have this in common.

But I'm not ready to come out of the lab yet with my theory -- and if you have references to working theories on this intersection of play and risk and identity that I may be overlooking, feel free to send them my way. Things like Homo Ludens, especially.

In the meantime, I did come across a very cool theory of humor that was featured in this month's Wired magazine. I found it very inspirational from the viewpoint of my quest for a good betting theory.  And the gratuitous Dmitri Martin illustrations didn't hurt either.

Basically the theory featured by Prof. McGraw in the article improves upon some of the classic theories of humor, the theories you learn at university when your parents think you're getting an education -- i.e. watching someone get kicked in the nuts on youtube, that's funny.. when you get kicked in the nuts, not so funny.. therefore: tragedy + distance = comedy. (QED baby!) McGraw's theory is that humor exists where violation and the benign intersect -- like this:

His example: getting tickled by someone you know and trust makes you laugh, it's a benign violation. However, tickling yourself doesn't really give you a boundary to violate, and getting tickled by a creepy dude in a trench-coat isn't benign -- which explains how you need both conditions to arrive a funny.

I'm cool with that theory as a starting point -- and it certainly explains Dmitri Martin's haircut..

..but I think there's interesting work to do in fleshing out the context variables. As in, why is Dumb and Dumber funny to me and not to some other people? And why wasn't Gentlemen Broncos funny to anyone? To be useful as a theory, BVT would need to say some more about what really is really meant by "benign" and "violation", and what are the boundaries of those circles.

This context problem for humor looks a lot to me like something quite similar that you find with the problem of "cool" and and I would hazard that BVT has some application here too. For example, the manufacture of a cool new acronym like WTD (the What The Duck definition specifically..) certainly gets lift from some BVT-like mechanics in its semantic engine room. For example, WTD gets points for violation on a couple levels -- it's a violation of the already violatin' WTF. And it's benign because "duck" here is a relatively harmless non sequitor waterfowl plus it preserves the original WTF benignification by staying hidden in an acronym. But to deliver the "cool" payload in this case there is a damn short contextual landing strip, i.e. people moving on from WTF. Check out the way Chip Kelly, the coach of the Oregon Ducks football team, gets loads of motivational energy from playing a "cool" double game -- a sanitized version of WTD ("Win The Day"!) for the boosters and the school brass, and then the street meaning of WTD as a subtext, a secret meaning with all that cooler-than-WTF freight for the youts on his football team. Nicely done dude!

So anyway, that load of twisty is my caffeinated way of saying I found inspiration in McGraw's theory of humor and if it applies to cool I may be able to figure out how to lift a part of it for betting too. In any case, I will keep chasing my UBT (Universal Betting Theory) and when I finally land it I've braced myself for y'all to say: um, WTD?