Actually I do think like you do (thanks to you), but a friend I argue with told me exactly what I wrote to you above (and I sent it to you to see what you’d say), in a discussion with no end in sight. So now I gave up and told him that everyone should just do what they think, and that’s it. Too bad not everyone is willing to hear new things and challenge what they got from school.

I projected onto you, forgive me 🙂

EA, fine—Rabbi Michi is consistent with his own view: if there is a strong enough rationale, one may ignore a clear rule, so he maintains his strong rationale that if there is a strong enough rationale, one may ignore a clear rule, and he ignores the clear rule found in the Talmud and the halakhic decisors (see the comments on column 482). But you—why? 🙂

Hahaha
I also see the rules as something bedi’eved—only after the fact. If there’s another way to choose between the options, then you should follow that way. If not, then go with the rule.
You don’t agree with that?
The comments there are too long and I didn’t read them. If you can, summarize here what you think.

[The phrasing is of course only for rhetorical polish, and who am I to know and to plant myself in place, etc.] In any case, I think that if there were such a joker-card allowing one to rule against a rule stated in the Talmud, it should have appeared masses of times among the medieval authorities (Rishonim). Such a joker-card explains the few exceptions (rulings against the rule) at the expense of the obvious explanation for the overwhelming majority (rulings in accordance with the rule). What was special about the few examples brought, that specifically there such a powerful rationale flashed in Maimonides’ heart that because of it he inclined away from ruling like Rava—and without even bothering to write “it seems to me”? By the way, more examples of this unusual method of sacrificing the rule on the altar of the exception can be found in the comments on column 541.
From a logical standpoint, there is no difference between saying in the Talmud, “the law follows so-and-so, like Rava” (and here Rabbi Michi surely agrees that acceptance of the Talmud is decisive and one cannot disagree), and saying, “the law follows Rava in all these matters.” The explanation for the failure of rules was that a rule is too crude to capture a deep and elusive conceptual point. But in broad rules of halakhic decision-making there certainly are no deep conceptual points; it is simply a summary. Also, conceptual rules are meant for the learner who is analyzing, and therefore there is room there for exceptions. But rules of halakhic decision-making are meant to come from the outside, and if one can dispute the rule, then the rule is almost entirely lost.
And that is exactly the issue discussed in Babylonian Talmud Eruvin 46, in a very long passage (worth seeing there). Rav Mesharshia said: “These rules do not exist,” and Rashi explains: only where one view seems more reasonable do we rule accordingly, and where in another place the other view seems more reasonable, we follow that one. And the Gemara there makes every effort to reject these words of Rav Mesharshia (which, as I understand it, are precisely Rabbi Michi’s position) and sees them as contradicting the very idea of a rule. And when it finds that Rav ruled in one specific case like Rabbi Yehuda and not like Rabbi Meir, even though there is anyway a general rule that the law follows Rabbi Yehuda, it concludes from this that Rav does not accept that rule at all there—that is, he had his own personal rules of halakhic decision-making. And when it finds exceptions in Rabbi Yohanan, it comes up with various devices (which do not look any better than the devices of the commentators on Maimonides). In the end, the rules stand: these rules do indeed exist.