I've encountered this kind of response before and have been similarly frustrated, and I think you're describing a real thing, however: in my own experience, sometimes these sorts of seemingly nonsequitur counterpoints are not meant to be counterpoints against my original normative point. I only realize this if I ask what they meant by it. Surprisingly often, I learn that the person who made that comment just sort of wanted to add some adjacent context and decided to drop it in without explaining their intent. Then I had reasonably but wrongly assumed it wa... (read more)
I've encountered this kind of response before and have been similarly frustrated, and I think you're describing a real thing, however: in my own experience, sometimes these sorts of seemingly nonsequitur counterpoints are not meant to be counterpoints against my original normative point. I only realize this if I ask what they meant by it. Surprisingly often, I learn that the person who made that comment just sort of wanted to add some adjacent context and decided to drop it in without explaining their intent. Then I had reasonably but wrongly assumed it wa... (read more)