(Note: this refers to nobody in particular, I just want this here for when I need it)
Why? Because we have a fundamental difference about not just taste (about which it is easy for reasonable people to disagree), but about the nature of reality.
This can only be because:
1) We have different underlying assumptions about how the world works. Since I don't know what these differences are yet, they might be interesting, informative, or enlightening to explore (and that exploration might--hey--even change my mind),
or
2) You are insane.
Since me just assuming (2) and moving on with my life is condescending and would put me in a position where I'd have to view anything you said from now on as suspicious and probably not worth listening to and would cut me off from any wisdom or insight you might actually come out with in the future, it is way safer to assume (1) at this point.
Therefore, in order to find out what the assumptions behind (1) are, I am going to ask questions.
...because I am curious about the experiences that lead people to do, say, like, and believe different things. It's one of the very few good reasons there are to talk to people you don't know on the Internet.
If you want to answer these questions and therefore maybe make the world smarter for anyone who reads the dialogue now or in the future, answer them.
If you don't want to, don't. (And if you feel like being nice, tell me that now.)
In the best of all possible worlds (for me and my particular goal here) you'd also want to understand what creates an assumption-gap between reasonable people and you'd want to assume I'm sane and ask me questions, too. If you do, know now that I'll always answer them--but you asking questions is not essential.
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You might assume I am asking you questions in order to change your mind--since asking, essentially 'In the case we're looking at, I just think X, what's wrong with X?" can look more like an attempt to explain the validity of X than an attempt to understand whether there are unexpected-but-reasonable objections to X that I hadn't thought of, but there we are. I am not trying to persuade you of anything, I probably don't even know your name and will probably never meet you.
I just would like to know how a reasonable person came to decide X was a bad idea. It may make me re-evaluate X.
