A lot of those examples aren’t “defeating the question”, they’re an honest attempt to understand the motivation behind the question and help with the underlying problem. In fact, that was my intent when I first responded.
You sound frustrated that people are misunderstanding you and answering questions different than the ones you want answered. I would like to help with this, by pointing out that communication takes work and that often it takes some effort and back and forth to draw out what kind of help you want and what kind your conversational partner(s) can provide.
You can be a lot less frustrated by asking questions better, and being more receptive to responses that don’t magically align with your desires.
Does it matter where the question comes from? Why?
Did you misunderstand my original question? It would seem that you understood the question and then chose a different path to resolving it other than the route I was aiming for the direction of the answer to cover.
Assuming that you now (several posts onwards) understand the question—can you turing-repeat what you think the question is; back to me?
I don’t think I fully understand the question (or rather, the questions—there are always multiple parts to a query, and multiple followup directions based on the path the discussion takes). I don’t think it’s possible, actually—language is pretty limiting, and asynchronous low-bandwidth typed discussion even more so. To claim full understanding of your mind-state and desires when you asked the question would be ludicrous.
I think the gist of your query was around feeling frustrated that you often find yourself asking a question and someone answers in a way that doesn’t satisfy you. I intended to reassure you that this happens to many of us, and that most of the time, they’re just trying to be helpful and you can help them help you by adding further information to their model of you, so they can more closely match their experiences and knowledge to what they think you would benefit from hearing.
And in doing so, I was reminded that this works in reverse, as well—I often find myself trying to help by sharing experiences and information, but in such a way that the connection is not reciprocated or appreciated because my model of my correspondent is insufficient to communicate efficiently. I’ll keep refining and trying, though.
A lot of those examples aren’t “defeating the question”, they’re an honest attempt to understand the motivation behind the question and help with the underlying problem. In fact, that was my intent when I first responded.
You sound frustrated that people are misunderstanding you and answering questions different than the ones you want answered. I would like to help with this, by pointing out that communication takes work and that often it takes some effort and back and forth to draw out what kind of help you want and what kind your conversational partner(s) can provide.
You can be a lot less frustrated by asking questions better, and being more receptive to responses that don’t magically align with your desires.
Does it matter where the question comes from? Why?
Did you misunderstand my original question? It would seem that you understood the question and then chose a different path to resolving it other than the route I was aiming for the direction of the answer to cover.
Assuming that you now (several posts onwards) understand the question—can you turing-repeat what you think the question is; back to me?
I don’t think I fully understand the question (or rather, the questions—there are always multiple parts to a query, and multiple followup directions based on the path the discussion takes). I don’t think it’s possible, actually—language is pretty limiting, and asynchronous low-bandwidth typed discussion even more so. To claim full understanding of your mind-state and desires when you asked the question would be ludicrous.
I think the gist of your query was around feeling frustrated that you often find yourself asking a question and someone answers in a way that doesn’t satisfy you. I intended to reassure you that this happens to many of us, and that most of the time, they’re just trying to be helpful and you can help them help you by adding further information to their model of you, so they can more closely match their experiences and knowledge to what they think you would benefit from hearing.
And in doing so, I was reminded that this works in reverse, as well—I often find myself trying to help by sharing experiences and information, but in such a way that the connection is not reciprocated or appreciated because my model of my correspondent is insufficient to communicate efficiently. I’ll keep refining and trying, though.