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Comment by andreasley | Hacker News Reader

Please don't do this here. The topic deserves serious discussion.

Humor is a very sophisticated form of communication. Think of how much was said in so few words, by just poking at shared common knowledge.

Tragedy is for those that feel and comedy is for those that think.

Lots of comedy more or less proves it needn't be thoughtful as opposed to emotional. Laugh tracks, or the particular speaking style of a standup comic, are riding on the feelings they invoke. Being surrounded by real laughter also makes things "feel" funnier. Laughter is contagious. Fart jokes and home-video genital injuries get laughs with no real "thinking" component.

Perhaps you're making a point (that eludes me, BTW) by writing clever sounding twaddle. I hope so.

At least we can conclude: Dark humor is for those who both feel and think

Humor is fine, but when several readers don't recognize it as such, the joke obviously isn't based on shared common knowledge. Some people walk away with wrong information, and that isn't helpful.

This joke is how you separate people who know what they’re talking about from the hopeless optimistic crowd.

People who just take that joke as serious clearly haven’t thought through the consequences of using code you don’t completely understand and has no real author. Therac 25 is often a key topic in any rigorous computer science education.

Exactly, but is it a good thing to separate people into groups? How does that help?

Sometimes satire is the most effective way to make a serious point.

Serious discussion deserves sparse contextual humor.

Therac 25 is so serious that jokes are one of the very few ways to discuss it at all, eh?

AI? Or medical equipment malfunctions?

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