Counter-examples are progressive

If someone is arrogant this means they hold a false belief. For example someone who thinks that all Scottish people eat porridge for breakfast will be shocked to discover a Scottish person eating something else. They are arrogant because they have assumed a generality. It is easy to show that such people are wrong because we have at our disposal ridicule which means that we can 'laugh' at them.

We might however discover that there is rule which in fact states that only porridge-eaters are truly Scottish and so their claim is correct and we are shocked and in denial to discover they maintain their claim. Our laughter doesn't work. (The size of the group being referenced has changed... it is smaller than what we thought it was.) Only if there is no such rule (no such smaller group) would our laughter and ridicule (our counter-example) have an impact on the object. If the original object of our laughter was not being arrogant but instead making reference to a smaller group than we assumed then jokes don't work.