I was reading a post recently in which the author commented on her “total lack of a sense of humor.” That statement stuck in my head, and for the past few days I have been ruminating on the question, wondering if such a thing might be truly possible. To start let’s just rule out the unusual cases, the medical oddities, brain injuries, etc. No doubt there are certain disease states or brain injury patterns which can result in the total or almost total erasure of the ability find anything funny. Truly that would be a sad fate, and my heart goes out to any such persons that may be alive out there. I intend to restrict my question to the mentally stable, mentally healthy, or at least as mentally stable and healthy as it is possible for anyone to be in these times we live in. The question is, for a person of sound mind and body is it possible to lack a sense of humor? I believe the answer is no, it is not possible, and in the following discussion I will attempt to show why this is the case through the method of logical analysis. Ironically, logical analysis is the least humorous method of doing anything, which is why I think it is perfect for this particular task.

First we must admit that there exists a huge variety of things that various people find funny (the humor value will be set as “F” for the remainder of this discussion). Let us consider a prototypical example situation or statement or whatever thing that people might or might not call humorous and call it (F1). Let us say for (F1) there exists a subset of people {(F)a} that find (F1) so hilarious that it makes them laugh so hard their stomach hurts. Expressed as {(F)a} = (F1)→∞. Another group of people, call them {~(F)a} (the ~ symbol stands for not or the negation function in logical analysis) that find (F1) so distasteful and gross it actually makes them throw up a little in their mouths. So for {~(F)a} (F1)→0. Humor is also very much context dependent. So, for example, it could be that under the right circumstances, let’s call it (C1), both {~(F)a} and {(F)a} find (F1) the funniest thing ever, expressed as [(C1) [{(F)a} ^ {~(F)a}] (F1)→∞ or that they both find it as close to humorless as is possible without hitting the episode of Love Boat boundary which is the point of zero humor at which the density of not funniness is so great that no laughter can escape, expressed as [(C1)[ {(F)a} ^ {~(F)a}] (F1)→0. The first case I described we will designate as having a context value of (C0). The context dependency of humor complicates the analysis to a very large degree, and it would be desirable to simplify things by removing that variable such that (C0) = (C1) = (Cn…), where n is any possible context. In other words say that for any value of C all people agree on F1. For obvious reasons, this is not realistic.

The question then becomes does there exist a subset of people for whom F1 is always approaching zero {(F1)→0} in any context (Cn) of F1? Let us call this hypothetical humorless subset of people the Love Boat lovers in honor of the episode of Love Boat boundary described above, or {LBl}. Another way of putting the question is, is it realistic to think that there exists a subset of people that find the Love Boat to be funny in any context? In order for there to exist persons who lack a sense of humor this must be true. Since it is obviously false, it is false to say that there exists any persons or subset of persons who lack a sense of humor. Case closed. lol!