Humor is not that complicated. We laugh because we suffer. What is funny is whatever is in fact tragic. Nothing is funny which is not also a representation of the tragic.
We can understand our suffering, so humor helps us deal with this. it is like a pressure-release valve, or a psychological machine whose fuel is tragedy, suffering, regret, pain, anxiety, hopelessness and whose product is pleasure.
Are you saying there’s something funny about an ice scupltor with no hands?
Yes.
i would imagine,logical, fluid but not sure what it means,innate since if he beleives it cant be done he would not do it, (the rat principle) and wise since he must have some level of control over his emotions as so they do not blur his conclusions.
What’s really awesome and inspiring to me is someone who can provoke other people to genuine conversation and action in a deliberate way by being curious, genuine, and inventive himself.
So my list would include:
curiosity…\
genuineness…> -these traits specifically in the context of relating to others.
& invention…/
Because who cares about the most astonishing genius who thinks in a room by himself and scorns contact with others.
Depends on whether or not this person ends up producing work of some kind which is able to have an impact upon the future.
This isn’t my opinion. In terms of linguistics, humor is the most complicated operation.
Also, you’ve confusing laughing at, and creating a joke.
Perhaps you two are discussing the analoguous difference between gravity and architecture?
Yes, I can respect that kind of intelligence, but I respect it more like a computer that can perform great and useful feats of narrow calculation.
Jokes are jokes because they make us laugh. No confusion here. Jokes work because they induce laughter.
I think it involves a far narrower “calculation” and “performance” to socialize with people out in the world than to cloister oneself away from the world in order to devote one’s life to productive works of “astonishing genius”, as you say. I have far more respect for “geniuses who scorn contact with others” than I do for someone who can “provoke other people to conversation”.
I would rather see something added to the world body of knowledge and ideas and productive work than see a bunch of people “provoked to conversation”.
I’m confused. Are you saying what is required to laugh at a joke is the same as what is required to tell a funny joke? Everyone laughs. Not everyone is funny.
In any case, I can’t speak to which is the ‘highest’ kind of intellect, but humor is the most complicated kind.
I’m not talking about idle chit chat, nor am I just talking about talk. I am not just talking about socializing in any random way. That was kind of the whole point – odd you missed that in your response.
I find it incredible when brilliant people lift others up from apathy, depression, humdrum, complacency, etc., who see the potential for their own growth and the growth of others. This is obviously going to involve special skills and powers of socializing and relating than most people are able to master. When this happens, I think it has a far greater impact on the “world body of knowledge and ideas” than you might at first predict.
I didn’t miss that, I just don’t consider it nearly as valuable or respectable.
Wittgenstein said “a serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes”.
Geeezz…
Do you think a squirrel could accurately describe what the highest intellectual facets of homosapian should be?
Don’t you somewhat have to BE the highest intelligence in order to know for sure that such is it? And then, being so intelligent, I would think that one would realize that they might be merely deluded as they have nothing higher to compare themselves to in order to know that they are at the limit. But then again, I’m not that intelligent. 
Intelligence has the following components;
Intelligence is measured by which types of obstacles it can resolve, how many ways it can resolve them, and how quickly. Maximize those things in order to gain maximum intelligence.
Even though I am a typical English reclusive, my ego will allow me to fit into that other category [at least in potential] ~ because I don’t care if people disagree. …and my room has a window.
I think such people will talk rubbish for much of their lives and then come up with something, …or not.
Yet being out there in the world simply places one in that cesspit doesn’t it?;
Our minds are constantly bombarded with idiocy, we have to think about family, girls/boys, films, theatre, restaurants, pubs and football. ‘Interactive’ brings one to the global medium/average, the lack of that brings a grey freedom.
It would be an easy trap to fall into [being deluded], but where one can see past all or most others, that puts those others below them. Yet I think there is an oligarchy, that there are many kinds of superior intellects from Socrates to Turing for example. You are intelligent.
Perhaps we need a new measuring stick! A computer can hold informational memories, and out perform humans playing jeopardy [so can collate selective and comparative informations, that at school/collage is considered to be intelligence].
I’d say that human brain plasticity gives us the ability to originate new ideas, and to intuit resolutions to problems which don’t have the logical structure a computer requires.
Human intelligence is more than finding the right page of the right book in order to find answers, its writing the books!
If we put a robot with an immensely powerful computer for a brain on an island, how long would it take to arrive at relativity, would it ever do so? In other words if you don’t give it masses of info, just pure processing power and rudimentary knowledge of nature, would it be able to arrive at something which nature doesn’t present itself to be like.
Good quote. Makes me think…
There are people who do not get bogged down by the averageness and idiocy of others. Instead, being with others, they are able to bring out curiosity and thinking in others who have been “asleep” or zombified by the mundane. Not only are these people intelligent in the traditional sense but they also have incredible social abilities. They are apathy killers and beacons of meaning.