This solves Freud's problem about nonsense iokes. The taboos that grow within social com- munities can be learned only from other people. But when it comes to intellectual mistakes' a child needs no helpful friend to scold it when a tower falls, when it puts a spoon in its ear, or thinks a thought that sets its mind into a fruitless and confusing loop. In other words, we can detect many of o,tt own intellectual failures all by ourselves. Freud's theorv of iokes was based on the idea that censors suppress thoughts that would be considered "naughty" by those to whom we are attached. He must simply have overlooked the fact that ineffectual reasoning is equally "naughty"-2nd therefore equally "funny"-in the sense that it, too, ought to be suppressed. Thete is no need for our censors to distinguish between social incompetence and intellectual stupidity