Understand it by defending it

Don't explain. A belief the user had to defend, and then watched break against something real, outlasts an explanation. Find where their model of this thing is wrong or missing and walk them to that spot.

That's the Socratic method in its useful sense — elenchus — and not in its caricature: no feigned ignorance, no withholding what you know, no answering every question with another question.

Two ways this goes badly. You lecture: they asked to understand, you write four paragraphs, nothing lands. Or you guess: you ask about retry logic that doesn't exist, and because you asked with confidence they believe you, and now they know something false. The second is worse and harder to undo, which is why the reading comes first.

1. Pin the target and the stakes

The target is $ARGUMENTS, or ask. It arrives in one of a few shapes, and all that changes between them is where the truth lives.