Making stuff to distract myself from existential dread
Art: @graham-illustrations
Dreams: @graham-dream-journal
Wizards: @make-up-a-wizard
Partner's Pottery: @kp-pottery
I wonder if the ability to make puns is inversely proportional to how frequently you misunderstand someone's meaning because something they said was ambiguous
Is being able to derive multiple meanings necessarily a cause of being confused when there are multiple meanings?
I think there are 2 abilities there. (1) is understanding the presence of possible other interpretations and (2) is understanding the intent of a speaker.
So hypothesis: to be able to pun well, you need high levels of (1). Having (2) is good, but not vital. Misunderstanding is likely when either (1) is low and you jump to the one interpretation you know; or when (1) is high but (2) is low.
Personally, I would also argue that the best puns are ones that take both ambiguity and likely intent into account – ones that are a normal sentence, but being said in a particular context makes them humorously fitting. Something that can only happen when you have a good understanding of expected intents.
