You’ll have to explain 12, 13 and 14 to me.
14: Pavlovs dog. And it turns out he conditioned himself!
12 octal vs decimal.
Octal 31 is decimal 25.
12. Octal (base 8) 31 is equal to Decimal (base 10) 25.
(3*8) + 1 = 24+1 = 25
13. I don’t get Chomsky either, but Heisenberg is famous for the uncertainty theory.
14. Pavlov experimented with dogs, getting them to associate a bell ringing with being fed. In this joke, he hears a bell (phone) ringing and associates it with feeding the dog. He inadvertently “programmed” himself to respond to the bell.
#12 Count in Octal (0-7) 31 equals decimal 31.
#14 Pavlov has inadvertently trained himself to feed the dog when he hears a bell.
31 in base 8 (oct) is equal to 25 base 10 (dec). FWIW, in math humor that coincidence is really funny.
Octal 31 = Decimal 25, I assume
17a. The Monk hands the vendor a $20, and waits, and waits, and waits.
Finally he says, “I’d like change.”
The vendor says, “Change comes from within.”
12. 31 base 8 (Oct) is the same as 25 base 10 (Dec)
12 and 13 got me too. Also 16. The rest were pretty good.
Heisenberg is the "author" of the uncertainty principle, in which it is impossible to precisely give the state of complementary variables - in this case jokes and funniness. Hence his uncertainty.
Goedel is the "author" of the principle of undecidability - that rules for formal systems cannot contain rules for drafting the rules of formal systems, the way that dividing by zero is indefinable under the rules of basic mathematics. Because the three men are inside the joke, they cannot step outside the joke to decide if the joke is funny or not.
Chomsky is one of the guys responsible for transformational grammar, which says that statements have a surface structure and a deep structure and that the surface structure can be optimized to generate a closer approximation of the deep structure. I.e. you can "tell it right" if you get to that structure.
12 &13 eluded me too.
Oct 32 = Dec 25 means OCTAL 32 (base 8) is equal to DECIMAL 25 (Base 10)
(3 x 8) + 2 = (2 x 10) + 5
Pavlov is known for his experiments where he would ring a bell and feed a dog, after a while the dog learned that the bell meant they would be fed and start to salivate even when no food was present, this has become know as Pavlov’s response. or a Pavlovian response. The joke is a play on his experiment where they are implying he is having a Pavlovian response to feed the dog every time a bell rings.
#13
Heizenberg is known for the uncertainty principal, which is a quantum mechanical concept that relates to momentum and position... and states that the more certain you are to know ONE of these variable, the less certain you are to know the other hence his line “how can we know this is funny or not” in the joke.
Godel is known for the “Incompleteness Theorem”
For a given (non-trivial) formal system, there will be statements that are true in that system, but which cannot be proved to be true inside the system.
Hence since he is inside the Joke he cannot prove its funny or not because he’s INSIDE THE SYSTEM.
Chomsky is know for the Chomsky hierarchy (occasionally referred to as Chomsky–Schützenberger hierarchy) is a containment hierarchy of classes of formal grammars. So he’s arguing its funny you are just telling it wrong, I am interpreting as a play on bad grammar.
I will yeild to others on the chomsky, but that’s what I read it as.