From user Saboot: “Werner Heisenberg, Kurt Gödel, and Noam Chomsky walk into a bar. Heisenberg turns to the other two and says, ‘Clearly this is a joke, but how can we figure out if it's funny or not?’ Gödel replies, ‘We can't know that because we're inside the joke.’ Chomsky says, ‘Of course it's funny. You're just telling it wrong.’ ”

Why it’s funny: Because Heisenberg is uncertain, Godel sees that the joke is logically incomplete, and Chomsky is an asshole. I mean, because Chomsky distinguishes between the joke itself and the linguistic performance.

HA!

More smart joke explanations: http://www.businessinsider.com/smart-joke-explanations-2013-6?op=1

Example:

A photon is going through airport security. The TSA agent asks if he has any luggage. The photon says, "No, I'm traveling light."

And:

Heisenberg was speeding down the highway. A cop pulls him over and says "Do you have any idea how fast you were going back there?" Heisenberg says, "No, but I knew where I was."

And:

First Law of Thermodynamics: You can't win. Second Law of Thermodynamics: You can't break even. Third Law of Thermodynamics: You can't stop playing.

And:

A linguistics professor says during a lecture that, "In English, a double negative forms a positive. But in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, in no language in the world can a double positive form a negative." But then a voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah, right."

And:

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

Illustrated:

See the original Reddit thread for more, and the comments to Tyler Cowen’s post for still more.

And feel free to add your own.