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Douglas_Knight comments on Stupid Questions Thread - January 2014 - Less Wrong
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I reject the claim that your rephrasing is the "real" question being asked. By rephrasing the question, you are rejecting it just as much as Anatoly. I think it is more accurate to say that you evade the question, while he is up front about rejecting it.
In fact, I think your answer is better and probably it is generally better to rephrase problematic questions to answerable questions before explaining that they are problematic, but the latter is part of a complete answer and I think Anatoly is correct in how he addresses it.
That multiple different people automatically treated hen's question like it were my rephrasing backs me up on this one, I reckon.
Rephrasing a question can be the first step to confronting it head-on rather than rejecting it. If a tourist, looking for the nearest train station, wandered up to me and asked, "where station is the?", and I rearranged their question to the parseable "where is the station?" and answered that, I wouldn't say I rejected or evaded their query.