Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2021 February 6

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February 6

Information

Does saying something like "there is no information to share at this time" imply there is nothing to share regarding when there will be information to share? It seems like a reasonable thing to ask given the conditional "at this time" phrase, but the time at which there will be information to share could itself be considered information. 66.234.210.119 (talk) 05:01, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Which would be why they don't say it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:19, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

So does saying something like that imply there is nothing to share about when they will have information or not? 66.234.210.119 (talk) 06:37, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

By itself, that's correct. You can't make any assumptions. They may not know when or if they'll have anything to share. But if they do know, they aren't willing to share that either. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:35, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

The wording "to share" is ambiguous. The information may either (1) not exist or (2) just be inaccessible at the moment. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:13, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Reading your question again more carefully, I see that I haven't answered it above. New answer: It would be very odd to infer this has something to do with the timing of when it might be available. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:17, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Often (or even usually) the most literal interpretation of some verbal enunciation is not the most accurate approximation of what a speaker intends to convey. If the speaker knows there is no information of interest now, and, moreover, is certain that none will be forthcoming in the future, they are strictly speaking not lying if they say that there is no information to share at this time, but it is a "lie by omission". The words imply that the speaker has a reasonable hope that such information will be available later. The wording also carries an ambiguity which may be intentionally being exploited: there may be information known to the speaker that is of interest to the audience, but the speaker deems sharing this information at this moment to be inopportune, so for now it is information that is "not to be shared". Assume that an audience wants to know what a committee has decided, and a spokesperson knows they have reached a decision, but the scribes are still in the process of formulating it, something that should not take more than an hour. The speaker could then say, "there is no information to share at this time, but you can expect an announcement within an hour". Taking this again completely literally, the part before the comma is not true, because it is immediately falsified by the second part, which does convey information and in fact implies the committee is past the stage of deliberation. If a spokesperson appears reluctant to provide information about when information of interest will become available, a very likely reason is that they don't know themselves and do not want to appear making a promise that then cannot be kept. Accordingly, a commonly given response to the when question is along the lines of, "we hope soon".  --Lambiam 09:01, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I assume such a statement would come from an organisation rather than an individual. But either way it is language not maths. I interpret it as saying ONE of "There may be information, but for some reason I don't want to tell you about it yet" OR "There is no information yet". And which option applies cannot readily be determined. -- SGBailey (talk) 12:10, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Multiple possible interpretations are often intended by the speaker of such phrases, which are a form of doublespeak. --Jayron32 14:55, 8 February 2021 (UTC)