But if people don’t answer the right question, despite your formulating it as plainly and civilly as possible, it means they are either motivated to miss your meaning or you are not being specific enough.
Perhaps you could ask them a question which logically follows from the expected answer to your actual question, and when they call you out on it, explain why you think this version plausible; they might object, but they at least should be constrained by your expectations. Do you think this would work?
Perhaps the most famous worked example is Have you stopped beating your wife?, an instance of a rhetorical device called begging the question; strictly speaking, this is Dark Arts, but since you are assumedly willing to immediately take a step back and change your mind about the assumption (as in, ‘Oh, you’re single’ or ‘Oh, you’ve never beaten her’ or ‘Oh, you only beat other people’s wives’) it should not be that bad.
But if people don’t answer the right question, despite your formulating it as plainly and civilly as possible, it means they are either motivated to miss your meaning or you are not being specific enough.
Perhaps you could ask them a question which logically follows from the expected answer to your actual question, and when they call you out on it, explain why you think this version plausible; they might object, but they at least should be constrained by your expectations. Do you think this would work?
I am confused by this:
Can you provide a worked example? Or explain it again? Or both?
Perhaps the most famous worked example is Have you stopped beating your wife?, an instance of a rhetorical device called begging the question; strictly speaking, this is Dark Arts, but since you are assumedly willing to immediately take a step back and change your mind about the assumption (as in, ‘Oh, you’re single’ or ‘Oh, you’ve never beaten her’ or ‘Oh, you only beat other people’s wives’) it should not be that bad.