Quote Originally Posted by The Stranger View Post
any reason why you would call the former absurd and the latter not? or is that for us to disect? just wondering.

aparantly being absurd is being grossly unreasonable. if you take being unreasonable to mean being irrational and being irrational to mean that people who act in a way that is inconsistent (for example doing something counter- or unproductive) with their other views or goals believing or doing something absurd would be the following: have the goal to get to play A in the fastest way possible and then knowingly take the longest route to place A. Or since doing something absurd is grossly unreasonable thus grossly irrational it would be a more extreme example such as believing that killing people is bad and worship Stalin as your personal hero.
To take "absurd" first: I'm using "absurd" to describe something that is both impossible and culturally/socially inappropriate(which is basically the psychiatric use of the term, which is what I'm using). Ie., it must describe something that simply cannot be the truth, and it can't be a common opinion either. Like September Clues, for example. It's just no way there were no planes on 9/11, that's clearly impossible. It's also clearly socially inappropriate.

As for my separation, yeah, that's open for debate too. I think there's a big difference between the two though, the first list seems much crazier than the second list. Therefore I think they can be explained differently. Still, I'm interested in arguments against that and explanations for the second list too, of course. To continue with the 9/11 example, it's relatively common to believe that some poweful elite group controls a lot of things behind the scenes. Exactly what group that is varies wildly, of course. So, stating that group X were the real perpetrators on 9/11 really isn't that shocking to relatively many. But yeah, it's still pretty damn whacko.