A great Reddit thread asked readers for their favorite “intellectual” joke – some of the high-ranked ones are really good! Q: What does the “B” in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot. (balloseater) It’s hard to explain puns to kleptomaniacs because they always take things literally. (Watch_Closely I’d tell you a UDP… READ THE REST
As has already been mentioned on reddit, most of these jokes are a bit too STEM-centric to count as intellectual in my book.
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There’s one Sartre joke in there. That’s doing pretty good for redditors.
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Over 16,000 comments and rising, not a pleasant experience to read the thread, given Reddit’s unwieldy design - “load more comments” every 20 comments, “load more comments” that are nested.
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My favorite intellectual joke, which I didn’t see there:
How many Marxists does it take to change a light bulb?
None, because the seeds of the revolution are in the light bulb itself.
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How can you tell who the topologists are?
They don’t know the difference between their coffee mug and their donut.
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A tachyon walks out of a bar. The bartender says “We don’t serve your kind here.” A tachyon walks into a bar.
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I still like Victor Hugo’s, Immanis pecoris custos immanior ipse.
A sculptor walks into a bar.
The bartender says, “Hey, what’ll ya have?”
The sculptor orders a bud.
(punch line added later)
Bartender says, “That’s it?”
Sculptor replies that it is not his job to entertain you.
I’ve been trying to comment on that Mandelbrot joke but I keep getting a recursion error.
Schrödinger’s cat walks into a bar…
and doesn’t.
Just don’t look at it.
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There’s a few more here http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/06/whats-the-most-intellectual-joke-you-know.html
This might fit your criteria better:
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Phillip Glass
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Know any good jokes about sodium?
Na.
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Steve Wright, got it right saying, “the thought of killing myself is the only thing that keeps me going.”
I built a peom
without backfilling
It Sank.
There are 10 types of people in this world: those who understand binary and those who don’t.
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If you have an account you can set it to show up to 500 comments per page, and then you’ll want to set it to sort comments by “best” (there’s a drop-down for that on the comment page itself) - which if you just want to casually read a massive comment thread like this is usually better than “top” or any of the other choices.
And then hit “hide all child comments” - the nested comments are people having side discussions (explaining the joke, discussing variations) and there won’t be new jokes there. Well, people will piggy-back on the popularity of another joke by replying to it with their own joke, but whatever.
I do agree that it’s unwieldly, but it just takes some getting used to. I think it’s the best system out there - it handles small discussion threads (as small as those on boingboing) as well as absolutely massive ones equally well (as well as is possible anyway).
But I stopped regularly looking at reddit half a year or so ago, and don’t miss it. Massive time sink, and way too easy to get into arguments there 
I’m not sure if this one counts since it’s from a TV show and TV generally isn’t considered intellectual. But I think it’s probably funniest if you know the ancient Egyptian gods.
A serpent guard, a Horus guard, and a Setesh guard meet on a neutral planet. It is a tense moment. The serpent guard’s eyes glow. The Horus guard’s beak glistens. The Setesh guard’s nose drips.
It might be better if Teal’c tells it.
What constitutes an intellectual joke?
