When someone asks you a rhetorical question, do you answer?

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When someone asks you a rhetorical question, do you answer? Do you recognize it is a rhetorical question or only recognize it in hindsight, if at all without the other person specifically stating so?

I have trouble determining which questions in a conversation are rhetorical and which are literal questions. Can I assume this is an issue most on the spectrum have?

if it's a question that makes no sense to answer, then I won't answer it. I have an egotistical professor who always asks people questions to literally repeat what he said because it's "important". it's a huge waste of time.

Yeah. I think I tried answering rhetorical questions pretty often as a kid.
Nowadays I mostly don't respond to them though. But it's not always obvious.
There's often part of me that wants to answer despite it being pretty clear that no answer is expected.

It's not so often that I don't "know" that it's a rhetorical question in hindsight or even as the person is saying it, I just play the "question-answer game" differently.
Whenever I understand something as a question, I feel prompted to answer. It's quite mechanical, actually.

(Bad ) Example:
"What's up?" can often just mean "Hi!", and I know that, but I see the words of the question and feel very compelled to answer to it in some way.

There's a guy at work who likes to tease me by asking really strange questions, knowing that whatever he asks, I will do my best to relate his weirdness to an actual real world experience of mine and come up with a logical answer. Then he seems to get both amused and annoyed at the same time because my answer actually does make sense.

So in my case, if you ask a silly question
you'll get a serious response
which is far more than you bargained for,
and you never know
what I'm gonna say next.

...

Rhetorical questions are stupid. I just ignore them.

i answer every question i can answer.

I seem to have the opposite problem, thinking questions are rhetorical when they aren't. Maybe I'm overcompensating. :p

I usually give a lengthy discourse in response to a question, until I realize after a bit that it wasn't what was required

I get asked questions periodically that I don't understand, but feel compelled to find some sort of rational.

I don't know why I feel I should answer something, but I always do.

I simply ask about it if I'm not sure whether or not the person asking the question actually wants me to answer. "Do you want me to answer that?" works quite well.

Almost always. I don't always know. Why ask??? I can't even remember a time this has happened, but similar situations have happened when someone makes a statement and I respond in a way that gets a weirder response from them.

My mum asks a lot of rhetorical questions, and I nearly always answer them. The problem is she asks them when she's complaining about something, and that means she has a problem, and problems are to be solved, so I try to come up with a solution. But really she just wants to b***h about her problems and not really look for answers. It tires me out SO. MUCH.

If I had a dollar for every time I have been told, "that was a rhetorical question," after I had answered it, I would not be having half the stress I am having now! But often times I do recognize it. I actually don't know what makes the difference in whether I recognize it or not. That is a really good question.

Happens to me all the time.
It happened just the other day at work. I was half way through answering when I realized, I wasn't meant to answer.
Oh well. Ho hum!

Something funny happened as well but I can't remember what that was.