Has anyone noticed that when certain people (like Jim T) wish to discredit a perfectly valid line of reasoning, they simply stretch it to the logical limit of absurdity, thus making it look silly? I have.

It's a dishonest debating technique, in my opinion, but it's superficially quite clever. My Father used to use it routinely to win debates in University. Most of the time it worked for him. He was thus able to be basically in error, and still appear to "win" anyway, unless his opponent avoided getting flustered.