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Lumifer comments on Open Thread, Jul. 27 - Aug 02, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I am having a crisis in my life of trying to ask people a particular question and have them try to answer a different question. Its painful. I just want to yell at people; "answer the question I asked! not the one you felt like answering that was similar to the one I asked because you thought that was what I wanted to hear about or ask about!".
This has happened recently for multiple questions in my life that I have tried to ask people about. Do you have suggestions for either: a. dealing with it b. getting people to answer the right question
Assuming there isn't something wrong with the question I originally ask and how I present it.
It's a perennial problem. My method which kinda-sorta works is to get very, very specific up to and including describing which varieties you do NOT want. It works only kinda-sorta because it tends to focus people on edge cases and definition gaming.
If you can extend the question into a whole conversation where you can progressively iterate closer to that you want, that can help, too.
Thanks! I am not sure if this counts as a hilarious suggestion of, "ask the wrong question on purpose to get the answer to the question you wanted to find the answer to"
I wonder how I can actually do that...