I stumbled across an interesting blog posting: "Generalizations, Truth, and Rationality" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=592468 http://news.ycombinator.com

I stumbled across an interesting blog posting: "Generalizations, Truth, and Rationality" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=592468 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=592468 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1396 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1396 that bears a striking thematic relationship to Scott Adams posting on "ridiculous reasons". When an experimenter gave a "ridiculous" (aka "placebo") reason for butting in line at the Xerox machine, "because I need to make copies", the person already at the machine would often let the experimenter in front to copy a "few pages", but would often refuse a request for "many pages". So giving a ridiculous reason can smooth out socially awkward situations, whether butting in line or paying for dinner, ... but when Scott Adams tries to generalize this very minor behaviour to solve problems on a world scale, such as nations being occupied by invaders, ... he is being truly ridiculous. What he may have intended as humour, just comes off as being naive and deeply offensive to people around the world who have been brutally oppressed for decades. ... and there is experimentaly data to show that his "ridiculous reasons work" hypothesis clearly falls apart as soon as the request becomes non-trivial.