This is part of the point. Many of us are pedantic nerds. I had to train myself out of the exact same habits (the &quot;what if&quot;s, the &quot;but you actually asked&quot;s), but I could only do that once I realized when people habitually &quot;lie&quot;. I also had to realize it wasn&#x27;t exactly lying, it was cutting off the outliers... it&#x27;s assumed that your answer to whether you will show up at 10 has silent riding disclaimers regarding being hit by a bus, being offered brunch with Beyonce, buildings collapsing due to earthquakes, etc.<p>These are important questions to revisit from time to time, though. We train ourselves to give the easy answer in social and even medical conversation (or maybe you always knew to do that), but in some situations this is bad. I&#x27;m working on projects right now that focus on risk analysis -- focus on identifying and quantifying those outlier events. I now have to train the people I&#x27;m working with not to say, oh (I&#x27;m 95% sure) we&#x27;ll be fine! but instead look at how bad things could be if they went bad, and think of all the creative ways things could go bad. I&#x27;m finding I have a bit of a talent there ;)<p>And last, you don&#x27;t seem to understand that in her&#x2F;my &quot;academic&quot; circle, this is in fact a common trait. What does academic have to do with communicating, anyway? It has to do with writing papers!