I have always found riddles and ‘hypothetical’ questions interesting. The former, perhaps, usually at least, more than the latter.

Why?

Because the latter often introduces a situation that is either impossible in actual fact, or so profoundly unlikely as to be equivalent to impossibility.

Hypothetical questions often (not always) represent situations in which completely absurd organizing principles, circumstances and participants are woven together to intentionally produce some kind of conundrum.

For example: Joe has a .22 handgun. Tom has a .38 handgun. There are ten men in the room. Each has a gun of greater caliber than each individual man previous to him in order. If you enter the room and are seeking protection, to which man do you address your plea?

Here is the actual number of situations on Earth that match this hypothetical situation: 0

Here is the chance that any person will actually encounter this situation or something closely resembling it in a human lifetime: 0 (+/- .00008263…)

The ‘train switch’ hypothetical, familiar to many of us, is a similar conundrum. It presents a ridiculously absurd question »as if it were a natural concern. This should be called out when it’s going on. The answer isn’t, for example, ‘I save the single person I know, condemning the other 5 to doom’. But rather: I find the person who set this up, and subject them to the consequences that naturally emerge from having done so. Or something resembling this.

Hypothetical questions such as these tell us very little (or nothing at all) about actual circumstances, value judgments, and so on, because they place the subject of the question into a situation that is a: not actual, and thus subject to broad forms of distortion or linguistic confusion, and b: often so incredibly unlikely as to comprise the form of decision that nearly zero humans in history were ever faced with making.

When hypothetical questions appear authoritative — while at the same time presenting an absurd, bizarre, or intentionally composed conundrum, we should be ready to dismiss them formally, overtly. »After having done so, if we so desire, we may explore their ramifications… unencumbered by their seeming necessity or urgency, as well as the the moral, ethical and/or value-based conflicts they may propose…