[hschenker]

The "ridiculous reason" scheme works, and Cialdini would probably agree, because people are always looking for the easiest route to a decision. If there's a situation in which they can legitimately turn their brain off because they can defer to a pre-established rule or convention, they'll do so.

A non-human analogy given by Cialdini (see http://www.bainvestor.com/Influence.html) is the mother turkey who simply responds to the cheep-cheep of its young to determine what nearby moving objects needs to be taken care of. The turkey, of course, can be tricked (by human researchers, usually) into responding the same way to an inappropriate animate object by spoofing the sound.

BUT - and this is where Scott Adams's analogy goes awry - in humans, this automatic response to "because X" generally only applies to inconsequential situations.

The marked contrast between the situations he compares (restaurant conundrums and territorial conflicts) is what gives away the flaw in his argument. If the outcome of a bad decision is just a cold bowl of soup, you can risk making a thoughtless choice. If the risk is continued territorial angst and loss of life, a decision is likely to demand a little more scrutiny.

He's either making a poor attempt at humor (which is very possible, since he probably feels compelled to try to write something at least mildly funny every day), or he's not aware that he's coming across as very disingenuous.