Considering Absurd Claims

This is my 150th blog on blogger and so I wanted to discuss something that I have been considering something for a long time, something really important.

Sometimes in debating, versus otherwise, your opposition will make an argument you find completely absurd. This causes people in general to become dismissive immediately, something which seems to me disadvantageous.

So long as it can be agreed that the majority is not always right, there must always be the possibility that something believed by the minority is true regardless of the fervor of the majority's belief or the degree of commonality of the concept.

It seems to me that rationally speaking, the more absurd a claim seems, the more it would behoove the listener of the majority to listen to the reasoning behind it, for intellectual curiosity and purely to see if it is indeed the case. Why not? The more popular one's view is, the more a position of implicit strength the individual is. The more strange and absurd a claim, the more surely the speaker must have some reason to go so against the tendency of the majority.

This goes to it's negative extreme that I most find to my distaste when people dismiss information or even a concept purely on the notion that it goes against the intuition. For us in the versus community, this naturally would apply to versus concepts and information.

But what am I even talking about, concretely speaking? Allow me to give an example with a verse I really like.

Let us say that someone presents the view that Batman scales to the high level justice league members like Superman based off a showing or two. I would view it thus to my duty, if I wish to argue against this to express why this seems like clearly an outlier to me, I would have to explain rationally this, because I could not dismiss this because "obviously Batman is not as strong as Superman." This is an argument purely on the grounds that something is "absurd" which itself implies only that the listener finds it absurd, a statement of subjective view which has no persuasive power besides what the initial speaker wishes to give the listener's views. Claiming that the majority believes something, also is a faulty argument, an appeal to popularity fallacy. For the record I don't actually think Batman scales to Superman. That was just an example.

I will see this all the time on versus sites, with people dismissing the information presented purely out of disbelief that the conclusion is correct.

Perhaps I have some bias here. I find it very easy personally to accept seemingly counter-intuitive information if given evidence. It is perhaps because of that reason that I find it so incredibly annoying. You can ask me for a reason for any of my beliefs and I will present you evidence. You can disagree with the evidence, that's fine, we can discuss that. But simply stating the opposite is not a argument. Your opinion does not carry ANY intrinsic meaning unless you can provide information saying that exact thing.

I am willing to listen to people give their reasoning for any claim they wanted to make, no matter how absurd, even if they are completely wrong. After all, if they are wrong then you can dissect their reasoning with evidence if you know what their reasoning is. And their is perhaps the chance that they are actually right or at least have an argument that will make you reconsider your own position. Just the other day on Youtube I saw a video actually arguing the merits of the much maligned live-action cat in the hat film and I must confess it was actually a very interesting argument. 

That is what I'm saying more then anything. If something seems absurd, be willing to hear the arguments and consider them as possibly being correct before jumping to a conclusion. This to me is very important, because it ties to the root of all debate. If we are to find truth, then we must be willing to acknowledge that our intuitions and our preconceptions might be wrong. The more people believe their intuitions are unchallenge-able, the more we are restricted from potentially finding truth.