Oh, so you mean to say that people stop trying to make sense and just spit out whatever sounds clever to them. It's bad faith, but we could grant the charity that they acted in bad faith due to their impression that I was acting in bad faith. Is that what you mean?

Could you expand on what you are saying in the "Egregious examples" section of your post? I'm a bit lost on what you are suggesting there.

I think there's a typo where you first typed "x, y, and x." I think you meant to have a 'z' there. I tried to submit an edit suggestion, but the system required more than 6 char to submit it.

he was refusing to listen to what the question was, because, as he explained "it's a hypothetical." Under the premise of wanting to have a rational dialogue, charity is required. It's not a right that gets demanded by me. It's an observation that you cannot both be rational and refuse to follow the principle of charity.

The typical situations I find this retort in are moral claims like, "Your vote supported Trump because you didn't vote for HRC in 2016." In that example, they claimed that you must vote your conscience during the primaries and vote strategically during the general election. Their justification: "Because that's just the way it is." Hypotheticals were meant to see if they would ever apply their strategic argument during the primaries.

That actually would be a great situation to use the argument, "I will not answer that hypothetical question because I'm not arguing that my claim is necessarily true."

@Bread well, the questions I've asked were hypotheticals and were hoping to get an answer that would clarify or show consistency.

I would counter that with the principle of charity. I did what I could to communicate.

To add some clarification, an example where I have encountered this retort was in reference to me trying to make sure if my interlocutor was serious about their claim and would be consistent with it. As he claimed that it would be irrational to not vote strategically during an election in the US (insincere voting), I asked if he would have voted for a candidate he didn't like (Sanders) during the primaries if he had good evidence to believe that they had a better chance against his opposition. This he refused to answer, as he said it was a hypothetical. I've encountered many like this before.

@Conifold On that note, I have been thinking, if a person refuses to consider all hypotheticals, how can they ever use the word "if?" I guess they would never consider that contradiction less someone pointed it out while knowing they refused to answer hypotheticals. Oo, the word "unless" would have to be stricken from their vocabulary too.

The ease of making an argument does not determine the validity of the argument.

The question here is based on whether it being a hypothetical question is what makes it valid to refuse an answer. If you don't have a rule that makes hypothetical questions bad, even if that rule is based on clear conditions, how can you argue that being hypothetical in itself is a justification for refusing to answer it? Interlocutor: "I refuse to answer your question because it is a hypothetical question." The heart of this question: "How does being a hypothetical question make it justified to refuse to answer it?"

@Richard Could you please expand? What fallacy are you arguing is the case with this or other hypothetical questions?