Jeremy Stangroom

Agreed, except the wife of a confuso who's having it off in gay bathhouses may well raise "informed" as big issue.

let's reducio ad absurdum. What about personality defects, possible genetic defects, nasty relatives?

Nothing absurd there. No reason to suppose people want to know that sort of thing right from the get go.

argument technique to explore a proposition. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum …

I know what a reductio is - but the conclusion has to be absurd for it to work! :)

Not at all, you merely have to ask, "What would happen if we took this to an absurd extreme?"

No, that's a textbook example of question begging, since we are precisely disagreeing about what is "absurd".

Well, I'm not using a contrary example, so it isn't really reducio ad absurdum I suppose.