Why did the chicken cross the road?

Summary

Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road? They tell us that something is waiting for us on The Other Side, that death may be a pilgrimage and not a destination, that the afterlife is a warm awakening after the fretful dream of life. — Death Be Not a Stranger The joke wasn't always about a suicidal bird. By 1847, it had become a well-known anti-joke. Instead of a typical punchline, the chicken joke purposefully delivers a disappointing resolution. In 1899, Henry H. Bliss was struck by a taxicab -- the first recorded car casualty in the US. The US made more cars, faster cars, heavier cars; one could maim/kill oneself by stepping into oncoming traffic. All high-speed roads became portals to The Other Side. Any arbitrary animal could've crossed the road, but we coincidentally chose the "chicken" -- an enduring symbol of cowardice. The way that they did and to grin like lions Upon the pikes o’ th’ hunters. Then began A stop i’ th’ chaser, a retire; anon A rout, confusion thick. Forthwith they fly Chickens the way which they ⌜stooped⌝ eagles; slaves The strides ⌜they⌝ victors made; and now our cowards, Like fragments in hard voyages, became -- Shakespeare, Cymbeline (1623) In games of chicken, players demonstrate courage by yielding later than other players. Game theorists model such payoff matrices like this: Swerve Stay Swerve 0, 0 -1, +1 Stay +1, -1 -∞, -∞ This game normally has three Nash equilibria (i.e. stable strategies): (1) always chicken, (2) never chicken, or (3) match your opponent's stochastic strategy. But not all chicken games are symmetric. When a lone man challenges armored vehicles, it feels callous to cram life into a lopsided payoff matrix. The chicken joke is an anti-joke that morphed into an actual joke, but we've induced jamais vu. Over and over again, humans teach the new humans that pointlessness is the point. But when we search for meaning in the seemingly meaningless, we discover motor vehicles, mathematics, misery, metahumor -- much more than a mere ...