[lmm]

> That's just opinion. :)

Well sure, but do you actually disagree? IMO a lot of people are overthinking this and skipping the obvious explanation.

> The indisputable fact is that it is sometimes unhelpful and wrong.

Everyone, and every answering strategy, is "sometimes unhelpful and wrong". (So are AI helpers). So that's not a useful way to compare approaches.

[rezonant]

Well if you can answer both X and Y, then in the case they really wanted X the answer is helpful, and in the case that they overlooked Y, the answer is still helpful. I'd say that's wrong less than either X or either Y

[lmm]

Sure. But cost/benefit; you can always spend more time and effort making a better answer, but at some point life gets in the way. And sometimes you're not up to answering X.

[wokwokwok]

There is no situation where a genuine attempt to answer both X and Y is unhelpful and wrong.

Even if it's wrong, it'll still be helpful to see an attempt at answering both the question and your interpretation of a solution to the problem.

Only an incorrect and wrong attempt to answer an imagined problem (ie. Y) is actually useless.

[lmm]

Why? If an attempt is always helpful, then an attempt to answer Y is always helpful. It's true that sometimes you might be wrong about Y being the real problem, but answering both X and Y doesn't solve that - sometimes the real problem is Z.