[eli5] Why do babies laugh? Are they capable of finding things funny at such an early stage?
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The same reason we find jokes funny.
The core of jokes is teaching, believe it or not. Jokes and teachings show us something we already know and want to introduce something new we don’t know by pointing out similarities between them. At first we feel confusion, moment before we get it, and then, after figuring out how things we expected and things presented are compatible with one another, we actually feel joy of learning something new. Just as now, if I managed to show you a new perspective of “why are jokes funny”, thought you something new, you’d also smile/smirk or whatever. You’ll be “happy to expand your knowledge”.
That’s why you see children age 4-5, when they start asking so many questions and getting answers, learning new things, they laugh, 200 times a day, 20 times more than average adult.
If your question was about babies, the entire world is new to them. So many knowledge to build, so little time. Evolution wants us to learn, to be able to perfect ourselves, so giving a reward in the form of hormones of happiness is evolution’s carrot (withdrawal of happiness on the other hand is stick).
Same reason why making babies is “fun”, if it wasn’t, we wouldn’t have anything to talk about.
Just KID-ding
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I think absolutely babies do find things funny. But their idea of funny is maybe different, just anything that is surprising or unexpected, and incongruent with what they think should happen. So they have to be old enough to have experienced some things to be able to know what’s outside of normal (ie- keys jangling and making noise is unexpected and different from most other things they see that don’t make that noise). Adults similarly laugh at a punchline because it is unexpected or incongruent with how we expect things to be, but our experience is broader so we have more subtle jokes.
Also, dancing. My daughter was just starting to pull herself up on furniture to stand when a song came on the radio. She instantly started dancing. She couldn’t walk yet and she is bopping up and down to the music.
Because they HUMAN. Any human baby will surpass a pet cat or dog at day 3. Most people don’t realize what true human communication is until they have or care for a baby…
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