Seth Godin tells the following joke in The Icarus Deception:
Heisenberg looks around the bar and says, “Because there are three of us and because this is a bar, it must be a joke. But the question remains, is it funny or not?”
And Gödel thinks for a moment and says, “Well, because we’re inside the joke, we can’t tell whether it is funny. We’d have to be outside looking at it.”
And Chomsky looks at both of them and says, “Of course it’s funny. You’re just telling it wrong.”
Related: A priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan walk into a bar …
Godin is telling it wrong. It was Schrödinger, Gödel and Chomsky in a bar.
Schrödinger looks around the bar and says, “Because there are three of us and because this is a bar, it must be a joke. Can we tell if the joke is funny without someone else laughing?”
Gödel thinks for a moment and says, “But even if some else laughs at our joke, we still can’t tell if it is consistently funny!”
And Chomsky looks at both of them and says, “Of course it’s consistently funny. You’re just telling it wrong.”
That joke may originate with the writer John M. Ford, who was telling it (at least) as far back as the mid-2000s:
http://nemesis-draco.livejournal.com/23095.html
can someone explain it to those of us who aren’t up to speed on these three? Nobody wants to admit he doesn’t get an intellectual joke☹️
Lou,
The explanation would be a lot longer than the joke. :) I’d recommend looking up Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and Gödel’s incompleteness theorem. I don’t know what to look up for Chomsky.