I think of irony as being a form of reductio ad absurdum, a powerful thinking tool that is evidently very under used.

I usually think of sarcasm as being a form of insult, where a person says what another person wants to hear but using a tone of voice to make it clear they do not themselves hold the statement to be true.

Both have a number of possible meanings and forms but as a prototype of the entities I use the above simplistic definitions.

Any clarification would be more than welcome because this is a long way outside my area of expertise.

My short stories are often described as having ironic endings. That is to say, in my writing of short fiction I enjoy endings that are unexpected, but are consistent with the plot line. I've been called the O. Henry of Science Fiction. Whether the title is deserved, I can't say. There are, of course, other meanings to the word 'irony', but I don't think one could equate 'irony' with 'reductio ad absurdum'.

I think I understand what you are trying to say here, and I appreciate your approach to the idea, I just think that pulling the two together is something of a stretch. If I'm missing it, please let me know.

The link I made with reducio ad absurdum is it follows an argument through to it's inevitable conclusion and finds it to be absurd, conflicting with reality. Alternatively following a line of reasoning could result in finding it leads to the only possible result.

Irony is making a statement considered to be wrong or contradictory, or which is subsequently shown to be wrong, and having made the statement the audience should then think it through and realize it is wrong.

Although there are many aspects to irony the one I described is the same as reductio ad absurdum.

Anything to get people to think something through is something we badly need to do.

I think you need to go out more, read more and meet more interesting people. Posting here is a start at least.

It works for me and my wife. QUESTION: did we watch that already... I don't think so... hmmm... we watch it again and at the end we realized we saw it last week. Lol.