> It's not "denying the premise" of wanting a dumb TV to point out these limitations, as well as offer what is the most practical alternative for most people - just don't connect it to WiFi.
They denied the premise of the question. The question was "Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me?" and the answer wasn't just "no, there are none I can or will recommend", which would be one thing. Instead the answer was "I'm not going to answer that question, because you don't actually want the thing you said you want". Since some people want dumb TVs, and they do exist, it would have been possible for the author to recommend the best example of that product, whatever they felt about it personally, or whatever assumptions they had about what the questioner actually wanted.
> "because you don't actually want the thing you said you want"
I guess I didn't feel, reading the article, that they were saying that. They never said that you don't really want a dumb TV, they said that none of them are good purchases because the vast majority of people are looking for features that the dumb TVs don't have. From the article:
> If you can find one manufactured recently that isn’t smart, I don’t know that I would trust it to be worth what you’re paying for it
It's not that it's a mistake to look for a dumb TV, it's that that none of them are (in the opinion of the author) good buys. So it's not so much denying the question as it is making the assumption that the question-asker is probably looking for more than just the one "feature" of "dumbness".
They denied the premise of the question. The question was "Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me?" and the answer wasn't just "no, there are none I can or will recommend", which would be one thing. Instead the answer was "I'm not going to answer that question, because you don't actually want the thing you said you want". Since some people want dumb TVs, and they do exist, it would have been possible for the author to recommend the best example of that product, whatever they felt about it personally, or whatever assumptions they had about what the questioner actually wanted.