I guess my point is that in the inevitable arguments, whether they are in advice columns or HN comment threads or around dinner tables, sometimes seem to their

I guess my point is that in the inevitable arguments, whether they are in advice columns or HN comment threads or around dinner tables, sometimes seem to their participants to be about how math works, when they're really about the problem description. Sometimes the disagreement amounts to "I agree that those constraints make sense and I wasn't properly accounting for them" and other times it amounts to "I was actually picturing a scenario where MH might have shown you a car". Either is ok, and there might be room for more discussion after getting there, but it feels like a big waste for either of these to get confused with a fruitless argument where both sides think the other is just doing the math wrong.