Spaghettified Jokes in the High-Dimensional Space of Humour and Why I’m Trying That More

In some ways, this diary post typed on my phone is a continuation of the topic explored in I don’t get it , but more intentionally. You can be intentional about many things.

I had a small “Congrats on submitting” dinner for myself this evening and was walking home. A small scene took place in my head and I chuckled at how bad it was.

Say Terran humans were running a global contest on what is the biggest gem? Rankings were made, prizes were given. And some 16 years later, people receive a transmission from the Sirius system. “Me.” It read. The white dwarf stellar remnant Sirius B says, “I’m a single piece of diamond heavier than your sun.”

😬

It’s a, what I’ve grown to call, spaghettified, attempt at humour, or, to connect (ideas and minds). The term of course originated from black hole physics, where it describes situations where tidal forces are so strong objects are turned into spaghetti and / or shredded radially.

For me I use it to describe situations where I shaped information so thinly and pointedly it flies by most, or falls apart, losing signal about the train of thought from whence it came.

Humour, at least the kind I notice myself keen to produce, is an attempt at high-bandwidth transfer using high amounts of assumed common knowledge. Shared priors: scientific literacy, sense of scale, willingness to momentarily entertain absurdity. When those priors are aligned, the payoff is disproportionate. When they are not, it reads as noise — or worse, intent.

The Sirius B “diamond” thought is exactly that. It compresses astrophysics, nuclear physics, chemistry, and a childish Zwiebelzeitung classic contest prompt into one line. If it lands, it lands because the listener reconstructs the path: white dwarfs, carbon cores, pressure regimes, the absurdity of comparing stellar remnants to gemstones (to be fair to mine a white dwarf certainly entails human cost too, Mr Rhodes).

Still, it’s kinda weird. I give you that.

This is what I mean by spaghettified humour. Not just obscure — but stretched across many conceptual dimensions, until only a very narrow cross-section of the nebulous “humour” sphere can intercept it intact.

But connection (of ideas and minds) is not maximised there. It is maximised somewhere in between: where novelty still exists, but reconstruction cost remains humane.

I am trying to find that middle ground. Not to abandon the surreal and off-road paths, but to occasionally calibrate myself. To make it possible for someone to follow, rather than just observe that a path mathematically exists.

Because humour is again, to connect (ideas and minds). At its best, it is not about being right or clever. To me it’s a call of the wild, an urge to spend the time of being a bit more uniquely.