Is learning for the sake of learning worth it? What about learning for a laugh?

I can understand 'Learning for the sake of learning' as an old term from hundreds of years ago, used when you could gain an education but not use it for reasons beyond your control (class/especially sex/race/age etc.) , but what exactly is 'learning for a laugh'?

They sound like the same thing to me. You can learn for the sake of learning the easy way or the hard way - i am retired now and am being actively encouraged to keep my brain going as an antidote to onset of alzheimers.

I used to learn to better myself at the things that I was good at which gave me a nice sense of achievement.
I try these days to learn stuff I am absolutely clueless about - watch out nuclear phsycicists for the new kid on the scene! getting to grips with a particle.
Seriously I have always felt joy in the learnind process - especially if the teacher was inspiring and had a sense of humour too.

Being a butterfly learner doesnt fit for me as often you have to go through the bit of drudge learning in any one subject in order to understamd the fun of it -
I went to a free school where we learned ot love learning for ourselves and had to work but at anything we chose. I never did any maths at all and I wish someone could have explained to me that it gets better later on when you have some understanding under your belt.

I got GCE Maths at the age of 38 and it was a bit of a lark as I was the only one there from a group of friends at uni who actually didnt need it and I ended up being the only one in the whole group taking it. I still treasure it as my finest hour and its absolutley no use to me at all.

learningfor a LAUGH is tough.(has any tried it?)