However, I agree in corporate meetings it's common to give a five minute weasel word discourse devoid of any real content instead of saying "I have no clue".
When someone asks you, "Have you ever programmed in X language", or "Have you ever used Y technology", I encourage them to not just stop at "No, I haven't", but rather go-
"No, I haven't worked with that language, but it's a fairly similar language to Q, so I'm familiar with a lot of the design patterns you use when programming in that type of language. I'll need to pick up the syntax and learn from the team how you use the language, but I'm confident I can pick it up."
So, that's how to respond to it as an interviewee. If you're a company and you're interviewing candidates, you're likely bouncing good prospects who aren't good at interviewing because you're asking the question too close-ended. A better question is:
"At Acme Corp, we tend to use Scala whenever possible. What has been your experience so far in your career with programming in functional languages such as Scheme, Lisp, Scala, etc.?"
Instead of getting a binary answer, Yes / No, you're now asking an open-ended question that gives the interviewee an opportunity to share their experience, rather than feel gutted because they lack direct experience in X. Some people don't need to be asked questions in this format, but some people take questions very literally and won't elaborate despite having a totally reasonable response.
Then I'm always surprised there are so many people willing to take some random guess and stretch it hard, until some Socratic questioning let them falls into paradox.
Also, and I understand completely if you don't want to share your magic toolbox of secret interview questions, would you mind sharing an example of the sort of question you'd use here?
As a result, the second type of candidate has to decide whether to enter into a debate with the interviewer (and risk losing the job opportunity if the interviewer turns out to be ignorant), or try to appease them with a best-guess answer. If the candidate is desperate for a job, they might choose the appeasement option.
You have no way of knowing if your candidate falls into the first or second bucket because interviews involve power asymmetry. In my opinion, this type of questioning is counterproductive -- you're looking for honest people by being dishonest.
Honestly, trying to bullshit your way towards an answer isn't a bad strategy in this circumstance.
Because when you're being interviewed, you're not always dealing with another engineer. If you're being interviewed by a non-technical person with a business degree, then you are dealing with a person who is used to guessing/bluffing their way through things, rather than sitting down to the hard task of problem solving.
This may not be true of all business people, but it's quite common to those who might say they hated math in school. Math, and the sciences that heavily lean on it, are the only subjects where you can't get very far by bluffing or guessing.
Maths is no panacea but it is a tool of rigorous thinking. A certain kind of bluffing and even self-deception (people think this business idea is crazy but it’s not) is can be quite useful when it’s part of a rigorous framework.