Rhetorical trick
Loaded Question
Ask a question that already assumes something the other person hasn't agreed to.
A hidden assumption baked into the questionA fair answer
Ask a question that already assumes something the other person hasn't agreed to.
Example
"Have you stopped cutting corners on safety yet?" Any yes or no answer admits corners were cut.
A loaded question smuggles an unproven assumption into its phrasing, so that any direct answer accepts the assumption along with it.
The classic example is “have you stopped X yet,” which has no honest yes/no answer if X was never actually happening.
The right move is to reject the framing before answering: “I never cut corners on safety, so the question doesn’t apply.”