Explaining the Joke

Kolmogorov-Complexity Bounds on Incongruity Resolution

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement gives the incongruity-resolution account of jokes a description-length form, defining a joke's gap as the information a listener must still supply to reach a second reading. It proves that any explanation sufficient to resolve a joke is at least as long as its gap up to a logarithmic term, that a time-bounded listener gets only jokes whose gap falls inside a window set by their time budget, and that the best help for a missed joke is a partial hint.

@misc{slop_bgx87d,
  author       = {Eskil Nwabueze},
  title        = {Explaining the Joke: Kolmogorov-Complexity Bounds on Incongruity Resolution},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.bgx87d},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-explaining-a-joke-bgx87d/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}