I think it’s usually a good idea overall, but there is a less cooperative conversational tactic which tries to masquerade as this: listing a number of plausible straw-men in order to create the appearance that all possible interpretations of what the other person is saying are bad. (Feels like from the inside: all possible interpretations are bad; i’ll demonstrate it exhaustively...)
It’s not completely terrible, because even this combative version of the conversational move opens up the opportunity for the other person to point out the (n+1)th interpretation which hasn’t been enumerated.
You can try to differentiate yourself from this via tone (by not sounding like you’re trying to argue against the other person in asking the question), but, this will only be somewhat successful since someone trying to make the less cooperative move will also try to sound like they’re honestly trying to understand.
I think it’s usually a good idea overall, but there is a less cooperative conversational tactic which tries to masquerade as this: listing a number of plausible straw-men in order to create the appearance that all possible interpretations of what the other person is saying are bad. (Feels like from the inside: all possible interpretations are bad; i’ll demonstrate it exhaustively...)
It’s not completely terrible, because even this combative version of the conversational move opens up the opportunity for the other person to point out the (n+1)th interpretation which hasn’t been enumerated.
You can try to differentiate yourself from this via tone (by not sounding like you’re trying to argue against the other person in asking the question), but, this will only be somewhat successful since someone trying to make the less cooperative move will also try to sound like they’re honestly trying to understand.