(July 24, 2015 at 11:04 pm)Chad32 Wrote: When someone wants you to do something you haven't done before, the best, most honest thing you can say is "I'll do my best". Yet somehow some people see it with a negative connotation. They don't want to hear that you'll do your best. They want to hear you say you'll do it. As Master Yoda says "Either do, or do not. There is no try". When did this start? Why is "I'll do my best" not good enough for some people? Does anyone else find this odd? Annoying?
Many people don't want honesty. They want results to magically occur.
Also, in this case, some people say "I'll do my best" when they mean "I won't get it done." So how one will react to such a phrase is likely to be affected by one's past experiences with it. And since different people have different experiences with people saying such things, they often feel differently about such phrases.
If my wife says, "I'll do my best," I know she means it and is not using it as a euphemism for "I won't get it done." With other people, it depends on who it is and the context in which it is stated.
Also related to this are all those ideas about "the power of positive thinking."
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
