  We summarize the proceedings of the Workshop on Humor and. The principal type
of humor considered, slippage humor, is defined and contrasted with
aggression-based humor. A variety of slippage humor, based on Hofstadter's
notion of a frame blend, is presented. Given that a frame is a small coherent
cluster of concepts pertaining to a single topic (similar to a script), a frame
blend results when elements extracted from two distinct frames are spliced
together to yield a new hybrid frame. Diverse ways of blending two frames can
produce varying degrees and types of humor. Studies of this phenomenon are
presented. We discuss the connection between frame blends and analogies,
focusing on the Copycat domain: an idealized microworld in which analogy making
can be studied and modeled on computer. It is shown how jokes can be mapped
into that domain, giving rise to a kind of abstract microworld humor. This
highlights the relationships amongst good jokes, defective analogies, and frame
blends. We discuss the notion that many jokes can share the same abstract
structure, and propose the term ur-joke for the most abstract level of a joke.
Several specific ur-jokes are presented, each with a set of fully fleshed-out
jokes based on it. We recount efforts at translating two jokes from one subject
matter to another in an attempt to determine whether a joke's funniness is due
more to its underlying ur-joke or its subject matter. We discuss the
relationship between the Raskin's overlapping-script theory of humor,
Hofstadter's frame-blend theory, and a theory that incorporates multiple-level
analysis of jokes. Finally, a speculative theory about the adaptive value of
humor is presented.
