While it could have a social function a larger benefit to having an absurdity bias is in limiting the hypothesis space when considering a question to those worth investing cognitive energy in investigating. (Example: when considering the question ‘who ate the cake’ the hypothesises ‘Alice,’ ‘Bob,’ or ‘Carol’ would likely be worth investigating but ‘The president of the united states’ wouldn’t be, and so shouldn’t be investigated.)
While it could have a social function a larger benefit to having an absurdity bias is in limiting the hypothesis space when considering a question to those worth investing cognitive energy in investigating. (Example: when considering the question ‘who ate the cake’ the hypothesises ‘Alice,’ ‘Bob,’ or ‘Carol’ would likely be worth investigating but ‘The president of the united states’ wouldn’t be, and so shouldn’t be investigated.)