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Maybe you do but I consistently find that the sorts of people who resist thought experiments tend to have deeply conflicted world views that they never examine. As I said, if you're being accosted by some rude stranger feel free to dodge out and stick to small talk. But With people you know well who are curious about how you think? On a discussion forum where the whole purpose is battling out ideas? What's the point? You could just go do something else with your time.
Do you not understand that this is just like fourth wall breaking and pointless? The person asking you is just going to come back with some added contrivance to make this "actually I start a rebellion" dodge impossible because whether you're clever or heroic enough to overcome the scenario isn't what anyone cares about in this sort of conversation.
They're trying to see how other people think about certain value trade offs, would you do something horrible and disgusting to save a life? Does it matter if it's an elderly life you're saving? If your answer is no then that's a fine answer and you can justify it. Whether you'd then go and try to overthrow the society that put you in that situation is just not very interesting. Yes, very good, everyone agrees it'd be horrible to be put in that situation. Because we all agree with that you elaborating on just how angry you are at this imaginary entity forcing the least bad option is just kind of boring, especially if you're doing it to dodge that actual question.
What is your understanding and assessment of the loaded phrase "just asking questions"?
I think what you are seeing here is a more general application of the ideas behind the phrase.
Just asking questions is when someone is pretending to just be interested in a topic asks pointed questions designed to poke holes in some narrative, central example being a holocaust denier trying to make the holocaust seem implausible by "just asking questions" about how many train cars could plausibly carry how many ect ect.
I'd say there are two major distinctions.
I just don't really think aella is a pedophile. She's not pretending to be interested in how people answer these questions. These are classic examples of "what's worse and why" questions. If someone really wanted to JAQ pedophilia I don't think they'd start with "is one instance of it better or worse than torture murdering grandma?"
Hypotheticals aren't really the same structure as JAQing off. JAQ offs don't really give you open ended questions. They have a narrative that they want to drive down without variance. They aren't interested in your moral reasoning, they want to use pointed questions to force your to answer one way or the other. They're doing a kind of dishonest persuasion rather than trying to find understanding.
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Where it's genuinely battling out ideas? That's fine. But too often it's "tell me your stupidly wrong notions so I can lead you by the hand to the Only True Correct Beliefs which I happen to hold" instead, so those kind of questions can go hang.
If you and someone else believe different things then this is the process of finding out where the underlying disagreement is. Seems pretty reasonable, if you're confident in your beliefs you should be able to object to the part of the hypothetical that is wrong. This is a perfectly fair way to investigate someone's beliefs.
Investigating, or trying to change? One of the rules of this joint is "no building consensus" and I think that's fair enough. If A wants to know why B thinks/doesn't think X is right or wrong, fine. If A is trying to persuade B that of course X is right (or wrong) and that B should change their mind, now we're getting into a grey area.
Because I've seen my share recently of "well of course all right-thinking people believe X is normal, moral, and good" with no room for "some people think X is wrong in good faith and with solid reasons".
There are some things I am not going to change someone's mind on and they're not going to change mine. I've had those arguments and those rows, more or less civil depending on how heated both parties got. So when "just askin' why" query number 999 comes along, I'm not interested in fighting over that old fight again.
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