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army1987 comments on Privileging the Question - Less Wrong
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Often, my mother will ask me "what do you think about [some issue that's been discussed in the media lately]?" and I'm like "how the heck should I know, and why should I even care?" It usually irritates her -- "you surely must have an opinion about that! How can you have no opinion?" (Sometimes I retort by asking for her opinion about some unanswered question about physics or something like that, but then she usually says something to the effect that her question, unlike mine, is so intrinsically important that any good citizen has a duty to form an opinion on it.)
Questions about physics are probably separate enough from the normal person's life that even if they do connect back, it's at a long inferential distance. Have you tried asking about things that are more clearly applicable to her, or are you picking things you consider equally irrelevant? If the latter, in the absence of an explanation, she will naturally consider them much less relevant.
The point is to have her realize how it feels like to be asked a question about which one doesn't give a damn about.
It doesn't seem to be working. I'd suggest a different approach.
(My own response to this sort of thing is usually "well, it doesn't seem important and I haven't been following it because [reasons], but now that you mention it, [rampant speculation]." This gets across that I don't consider it a useful question, but still respects the other person and their desire to have a conversation.)
The problem with that is that IME people will take my rampant speculation way too seriously.
Depends on the person. It's perfectly possible that your rampant speculation is much better than anything they could come up with.
Well, if you get into an argument, you can always say "as I said, I don't know much about this" and change the subject, right?
Have you tried responding to that and taking the conversation a step or two further to see if you can resolve it?
Not that I remember of. By now, she's probably accepted my aloofness as yet another weird quirk of mine, and I'm OK with that.