A writers room of unusually educated people produced unusually informed jokes

The argument

This position holds that the explanation is the simplest one available, namely that the material was written by people who knew a great deal. Proponents point out that writing rooms for this kind of show have long drawn on people with serious training outside comedy, including backgrounds in mathematics, the sciences and the humanities, and that a joke written by someone who understands a subject carries information that a joke written from the outside does not. When such a writer invents an absurd technology, an absurd institution or an absurd political turn, the absurdity is informed by a working sense of what the subject could plausibly become. The argument stresses that this is a claim about knowledge rather than about prophecy. Nobody in a writing room was consulting the future. They were, however, unusually well placed to know which direction a field was already moving, which proposals were being discussed seriously within it, and which currently ridiculous ideas had respectable advocates. A gag built on that knowledge is a compressed piece of expert judgement, and expert judgement about direction is frequently right. Proponents add that the volume of such material compounds the effect. A show written over many years by many such people accumulates a large body of informed speculation rather than a large body of random noise, and informed speculation has a much higher hit rate than noise does. On this account the question is poorly posed. The series was not good at predicting the future in any mysterious sense, but was staffed by people whose knowledge of the present was deep enough that their jokes about the future were often well aimed, and the hits are what well aimed speculation looks like after enough time has passed.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Those who reject this argument hold that it explains the wrong thing. Expertise in a field gives a writer good judgement about that field, yet the examples people cite range across politics, technology, business and sport, which no writing room could plausibly cover with expert depth. Critics also object that the argument sits uneasily with how the material was produced, since much of it was written quickly, to fill time, and chosen for whether it was funny rather than for whether it was well founded, so attributing it to considered expert judgement reads the process backwards. A further objection is that expertise tends to make forecasters conservative rather than prescient, because people who know a field well know how often change stalls, and so the hits that look boldest are the least likely to have come from the best informed hands.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Critics hold that expertise is subject specific, while the cited examples range across politics, technology, business and sport, which no single room could cover in depth. [Rejecting P2] Much of the material was written quickly to fill time and selected for whether it was funny rather than well founded, so expert deliberation is the wrong description of the process. [Rejecting P3] Expertise tends to make forecasters conservative, because those who know a field know how often change stalls, so the boldest hits are the least likely to come from the best informed hands. [Rejecting C] Knowledge in the writing room cannot account for the breadth or the boldness of the apparent predictions.