In Huxley's version of the world, people wouldn't choose to laugh instead of think, but rather not know anything about what they are laughing at, and not knowing why they aren't thinking about things either.  The distinction is that television has caused us to just go with the flow and laugh along with the "laughing" of the audience on the show, and it has caused us to not think about things we see on television. This is bad because if we are just laughing at what other people laugh at, we are not laughing at what we think is funny and we are just accepting what other people laugh at as comedy, which is some cases it isn't comedy but could be just plain harsh. One example of this idea is when Ricky Gervais hosted the golden globes and just ripped on all the nominees, people laughed even thought most of what he said was harsh. The fact that we don't think about things as much as people used to when newspapers were the source of news is a bad thing for us as well, because this shows just how desensitized we are to real news. One major contributor to our lack of thought is when real news is mixed in with celebrity "news," like someone having a baby or what Snooki did the other day.