It's also just "not a question", but really a puzzle. And I think that's what's happening in "discourse-decoupling" also. I do think they might well just be the

It's also just "not a question", but really a puzzle. And I think that's what's happening in "discourse-decoupling" also. I do think they might well just be the same. Ie., in ordinary conversation when one says, roughly, "heres some information, what do you think?" one doesnt expect the question itself to be a puzzle -- ie., that the answer is in some formal sense about the information as information. I think likewise, in ordinary conversation, "shall we just kill all the ants?" means kill all the ants. It is a very unusual (academic) conversation in which the question is read as a sort of "ethical puzzle". If you just told people in both cases, "this question is a puzzle" -- then I imagine it would trigger the decoupling mechanism more reliably.