I’ve found (on both sides of the conversation) it’s really effective to find a third party that consistently asks what X is: when I’m on the “answering” side of

I’ve found (on both sides of the conversation) it’s really effective to find a third party that consistently asks what X is: when I’m on the “answering” side of this problem, I’ve generally found that saying something like “Y is impossible” or “Y can be done this way but that’s usually a bad idea, why do you ask?” Goes a long way to being effective at answering the question.