bayesophilia
Explanation
The Joke
The top of the comic shows Bayes' theorem written out: P(he likes that | he says he likes that) = P(he says he likes that | he likes that) * P(he likes that) / P(he says he likes that). Below, a couple is in an intimate situation. The woman asks, "You like that, baby?" and the man says, "Yes." The woman, wearing glasses and clearly a statistician, responds: "Yeah, you probably like that, you naughty boy." In the final panel the man says, "I DO like that," and she corrects him with "Probably."
The Humor
The joke is about a statistician who cannot bring herself to express certainty, even in bed. When her partner confirms he likes something, she applies Bayesian reasoning: the fact that he says he likes it is evidence that he likes it, but it is not proof -- he could be lying, performing, or mistaken about his own preferences. So she downgrades his definitive "yes" to a probabilistic "probably." The comic plays on the stereotype of the hyper-rational scientist who cannot turn off their analytical brain even during intimate moments. The word "probably" becomes unexpectedly funny as dirty talk because it is the opposite of the confident, assertive language typically associated with that context. The title "Bayesophilia" is a portmanteau of "Bayes" and "-philia" (love of), suggesting a fetish for probabilistic reasoning.
References
- Bayes' theorem, named after Reverend Thomas Bayes (1701-1761), is a fundamental result in probability theory that describes how to update the probability of a hypothesis given new evidence.
- The formula shown is the standard form of Bayes' theorem for conditional probability.