We seem to use the term consciousness very differently. For me consciousness is something that fluctuates all the time for everybody. When I drive a car, I often end up from A to B without recollection about the trip. But still, I drove competently. So I was not conscious about the driving, but I was able to do it anyway.
There seems to be a threshold of consciousness where we are self-aware, but another even higher level where we are more conscious about what happens within us, for example our emotional reactions. With diligent practice such as meditation, it is possible to increase the average level of consciousness.
I am now going on a limb and trying to explain you what I mean by using your own text above as an example. I am not doing it to insult you, but help you understand what I mean.
In your first sentence you talk about "characterizing ALL jokes". But in my comment I said "ONE OF THE reasons why people laugh".
So for some reason, you misread me claiming something more general than I did.
That kind of misunderstandings are very common, and by itself does not say anything about your intelligence etc. But it is very helpful to turn such misunderstandings around, and ask yourself, why did it happen?
Our mind does tricks on us, and it is up to us to try to put our mind in order. In this case, one possible explanation is that my idea ("one of the reasons people laugh") is for some reason not psychologically acceptable to you (it contradicts something you strongly believe), and this is the reason why you misread me saying it is the ONLY reason why people laugh. This allows your mind you "prove" that my idea is wrong, by providing a counterexample.
So to take the first sentence from my comment, your mind decides to "fight" my idea, instead of laughing it off. Both are defence mechanisms of the mind, to allow you to keep your world view constant.
If you would have been a little bit more conscious the moment you read my comment, you would have noticed that there was an emotional reaction in you from reading my comment. And you could have used that emotional reaction as a signal for yourself to look into what that emotional reaction is about.
The emotional reaction happened regardless of whether my original idea was right or not. My idea just conflicts with something you believe. So it signals less about my idea and more about the ideas you have in your own head, and your emotional valence associated with those ideas.
So your reaction does not prove anything. But it is less likely that I can find good critique of my idea from a comment that shows signs that it is based on less than fully consciously explored emotional reaction. It is possible, but less likely.
The theory is not really mine. You can get an introduction to science of laughter by reading the book called Laughter: Scientigic Investigation by Robert Provine.
The researchers found that people very commonly laugh in discussions at things that nobody thinks are funny, often at the the start of a sentence. We are just not very conscious about it. How it relates to consciousness is another story, but there is a large body of "research" done about the relationship between meditation and consciousness.