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Aliens Joking

bosskR

bosskR

Thunder Lyger
Joined
Jun 2, 2005
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Location
Stockholm, Sweden
I found this through The Anomalist, a site I guess most of you read. But in case anyone missed this one – some hilarious stories:
As she was walking home from work one evening, a metallic sphere chased and somehow paralysed her. An aperture opened in the hovering sphere, and a tall figure appeared amidst a cloud of steam. The occupant glared down at the terrified witness, who began to cry uncontrollably. "Ha Ha Ha!" boomed the figure in a robotic voice, apparently tickled pink by the Ukrainian's predicament. Then it yelled "Object! Object! Object!" before disappearing back inside the sphere and flying away.
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link

Almost felt like a kid again, reading Castaneda!


edited by TheQuixote: fixing link
 
Does 'Object! Object! Object!' mean that the whole point of doing that was to seriously scare the woman?
I guess some aliens are sadists... perhaps they've been watching our old sci fi films?
 
'A teaser? Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets which haven't made interstellar contact yet and buzz them.'

'Buzz them?' Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult for him.

'Yeah,' said Ford, 'they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor unsuspecting soul whom no one's ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennae on their head and making beep beep noises. Rather childish really.'

The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams
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The teaser quote was the first thing that came to my mind as well.
 
It seems to me the more interesting point is whether we should expect 'humor' behavior to be universal.

There's still no consensus on the nature of 'humor' or 'laughing' behavior in humans, though the bulk of the hypotheses seem to treat it as a derivative of threat-related behavioral patterns.

Is there any good basis for assuming such behavior might be anything other than a species-specific quirk?
 
imho to attempt humor is an attempt to chech you really understand the launguage/culture

just try and construct a joke in lets say spannish(and its cultue),with only the most basic grasp of the country

its most likley to be offensive/gibberish to a native spaniard

to be able to joke in a langage/culture is to truly grasp it
 
H_James said:
maybe an alien anthropologist, then?
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It would be nice to meet an alien version of Dr Jonathan Miller.
 
humor

Alien Zen:

"What is the sound of three hands clapping?"
 
EnolaGaia said:
It seems to me the more interesting point is whether we should expect 'humor' behavior to be universal.

There's still no consensus on the nature of 'humor' or 'laughing' behavior in humans, though the bulk of the hypotheses seem to treat it as a derivative of threat-related behavioral patterns.

Is there any good basis for assuming such behavior might be anything other than a species-specific quirk?
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Wasn't there a study fairly recently that showed that rats laugh? And certainly all young mammals seem to play-fight with each other. Play-fighting and practical jokes aren't dependant on having a shared language. In idle moments, I've often wondered whether some apparently pointless alien behaviours might be explicable as attempts at play-fighting.
 
I can,t help wondering about the word "object". Did the alien say the Ukrainian word for object, as in protest, or did they use the word for the noun?

Maybe they used the English word, object, to leave the woman more confused.
 
If the word wasn't uttered in English, are their other translations into English that can be made besides "object"?
 
graylien said:
Wasn't there a study fairly recently that showed that rats laugh? And certainly all young mammals seem to play-fight with each other. Play-fighting and practical jokes aren't dependant on having a shared language. In idle moments, I've often wondered whether some apparently pointless alien behaviours might be explicable as attempts at play-fighting.
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The 'rat-laughter' news story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/85711.stm

... only identified a high-pitched chirping sound associated with playful behaviors and tickling. The attribution of the sound as 'laughter' (a sound peculiarly associated with humor / levity) is challenged in the final paragraph.

Neither laughter sound production nor play behaviors necessarily constitute nor demonstrate the presence of 'humor' (as a cognitive / intellectual event or phenomenon).
 
EnolaGaia said:
Neither laughter sound production nor play behaviors necessarily constitute nor demonstrate the presence of 'humor' (as a cognitive / intellectual event or phenomenon).
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What a humourless response!

(Have a stiff drink, and post again!)
 
OldTimeRadio said:
Nobody seems to doubt that DOGS laugh.
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Although they like fun, I've never seen a dog laugh

- but I think they have a strong sense of irony!
 
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