Ultimately the example was just the quickest hypothetical I came up with in the moment to illustrate the point, but it could have been better and was usually just an off the cuff prompt in which there are potentially facts available but the factual answer is inconsequential. A real example was much more trivial or casually philosophical. I'd ask what they meant when they'd use the word "dynamic" in a specific context, because we seemed to use it slightly differently, and he just googled the definition as if I didn't know it, and he'd get frustrated when I clarified "No, I was asking what you meant, not what the definition is". It's a personal and/or possibly nuanced question (what I meant by human) rather than an objective concrete thing. In another case, they were talking about their interest in learning to sail, talking about possibly joining a sailing club as we happened to walk by a marina on our way to an unrelated activity we both shared an interest in. Trying to build on their topic, I said something like "I wonder what's involved in establishing a Marina, do you think their zoning controls are similar to every pther commerical venture, or is the shoreline controlled differently?". The factual answer isn't important, we're not going to open a marina, but I was hoping he'd just roll with it and speculate. Instead, he just bailed immediately as though I expected him to know the exact numbers, and it stalled. I clarified and said I didn't expect him to know, that's why it's interesting. If he did know, then that's cool too, we could carry on, but there was no aspect of curiosity expressed.

> Just out of curiosity, are you a D&D player, or a Fantasy or adjacent creative? I'm wondering what sort of nature would want to elicit an ungrounded speculative response, and I can imagine an enjoyer or creator of fantasy looking for a creative, speculative, thought exercise with a real world question as a starting point.

Nope, software engineer, interested in creative fields but not so much D&D or fantasy roleplaying, just fantasy video games and TV, but it's not something I think about in terms of character building or lore, just entertainment.