Answering the important questions: An inquiry into Fun
- What is fun?
- What choices of fun do we make for maximum fun?
- Can we dissect fun into its compenent parts and match them to Tongs' ideas of fun for maximum fun? (Perhaps we could make a FunMatrix?)
- Do funs have expiry times, and when is it best to make a new fun?
- Minimax problem: How can we have maximum fun for minimum cost?
- How does the idea of group-fun help and hinder individual-fun? We introduce the concept of Zero-sum-fun; if one person has fun at the expense of another (see SchadenfreudeWorld), do they cancel each other out?
- What small-group social phenomena exist which impacts on the amount of group-fun? Is Belgium a special case?
- How does small-scale, short-lived fun (minifun or microfun) compare with long-term, holiday-style, intensive fun (maxifun or macrofun) with respect the above factors?
- What psychological conditions are necessary for fun? What hinders fun?
- Can we obtain an equation for fun (if so, is it continuous? It would be great to differentiate it for some maximum fun analysis)
- ChrisBrown asked this poser: If we know we are unable to remember it afterwards, is there any meaning in having fun?.
These are some questions in FunResearch, a cornerstone of the work of the TongsInstituteOfSelfreferentialParadigms. The Tongs are actively soliciting grant offers from the major scientific funding organisations (such as Microsoft and the Deptartment of Defence).
Work is ongoing into applications of fun in a military context, building on the translation of the funniest joke every into German by (Palin et al Monty Pythons).
