What is a better way to name "The Wrong Question"?

Solution 1:

X Y problem. http://mywiki.wooledge.org/XyProblem

From the site:

User wants to do X.
User doesn't know how to do X, but thinks they can fumble their way to a solution if they can just manage to do Y.
User doesn't know how to do Y either. User asks for help with Y.
Others try to help user with Y, but are confused because Y seems like a strange problem to want to solve.
After much interaction and wasted time, it finally becomes clear that the user really wants help with X, and that Y wasn't even a suitable substitute for X.

Solution 2:

A fairly idiomatic way to express this is that "you're treating the symptom." You need to stop treating the symptoms, and resolve the root causes, or you're just going to keep getting more symptoms popping up endlessly.

It's like taking cough medicine because your pneumonia has given you a nasty cough. You may stop coughing, but you still have pneumonia; you've only treated a symptom.

Solution 3:

Say "Your question is based on a false premise."

From Wikipedia:

A false premise is an incorrect proposition that forms the basis of a logical syllogism. Since the premise (proposition, or assumption) is not correct, the conclusion drawn may be in error. However, the logical validity of an argument is a function of its internal consistency, not the truth value of its premises.

In other words, if (to use your example) the premise A was false, it doesn't matter how sound the chain of reasoning was that lead from B to C to question X; the question was based on a false premise.

Solution 4:

A concise and sometimes-used term (see below) is "problem by design". It will apply to a fraction of the cases you mention; for some, making fun of the question (e.g., "In that approach, the bicycle's too big for your fish") is appropriate; but for most, the phrase "not even wrong" is most suitable.

Some titles that appear in web searches for "problem by design" include "The Dioxins problem: by design or by accident?", "Remote Desktop problem, by design? - Windows XP", and "HUGE install problem by design". The general idea behind this phrase is that problems are occurring because of the design chosen, i.e., are like designed-in problems. However, this concept will be too subtle for most bad-question-writers to grasp.

The "not even wrong" concept is not at all subtle, but perhaps applies more to answers than to questions. For example, http://notevenwrong.blogspot.com/ writes:

The physicist Wolfgang Pauli was once asked to comment on the work in a paper by physicist X. Pauli's comment was that the work was so bad that it was "not even wrong."

A related but different issue has the interesting name of "wicked problem". Among many characterizations mentioned in the wikipedia article are "The problem is never solved definitively", "The problem is not understood until after the formulation of a solution", "Solutions to wicked problems are not right or wrong" and "Wicked problems cannot be tackled by the traditional approach in which problems are defined, analysed and solved in sequential steps. The main reason for this is that there is no clear problem definition of wicked problems."

Solution 5:

Hofstadter's mu could work here. Mu is the answer to the question "When did you stop beating your wife?" It's a way of negating or invalidating a question that cannot be answered because the presuppositions are invalid.