As someone who often tries to "answer the bigger question", let me respond.
Perhaps in 9 out of 10 cases, the person really has thought things through. (I don't believe that, but I won't argue the made-up statistic.)
I don't have to because in more than 9 out of 10 cases I don't respond that way. In fact I only choose to respond that way when I see what I take to be cues that indicate that in this case the person hasn't thought things through. And I've hit the mark often enough that I am convinced that trying to answer the larger problem is worthwhile, despite the fact that I miss the boat sometimes.
(An incidental side point. In your made-up example, the chorus of responses would be to just use Perl's built-in sort.)
