If you have a meeting scheduled for Wednesday . . .

[Plains-Cow]

The phrase "push a meeting back" usually means moving it to later time in the day or another day later in the week/month. So I picked Monday.

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

I'm guessing something bad happened at work...

 

[Gori the Grey]

No. Here's the backstory to my question.

I've read an article in a psychology journal that reports a series of experiments that have the question I asked you all as their basis.

As several of you have observed, the statement is ambiguous. It could mean either thing. The psychologists first asked the question of a group of 200-odd people, just to get a baseline for how many answer which way. Here, it's looking like about a third of people think Friday, 2/3 Monday.

They make the observation that people's answer depends on how they imagine time, whether they imagine themselves moving forward into future time, or future time coming toward them.

So then what they did, was re-ask the question of people in various circumstances, e.g. people who have moved forward in a line, people who are travelling on a train, people who are waiting for someone at an airport. And they establish that those physical experiences impact what percentage of people answer the question in either of the two possible ways. They say these physical experiences prime the mind to have a different mental conception of the abstraction time.

As they're setting all of that up, they have the following comment about the starting question: "Most people have very strong intuitions about which answer to the question is correct." That made me wonder what CFCer's "strong intuitions" might be. I chuckled to myself when the very first response said categorically, "Monday is the correct answer." That seemed to confirm the researcher's claim that people have strong intuitions which answer is correct.

I was fascinated to see where you all went with the question after that, though. Into reflections on other related phrases. It is absolutely the case that "pushed back" has a much stronger connotation of deeper-into-future-time, and so if you work backward from that, you favor Monday. Some of you speculated on the probability of a meeting being moved one direction or another, and answered based on that. For a while I thought maybe we'd get a shouting match on the order of "Is a Hamburger a Sandwich?" or "Which is Better, Chopsticks or Western Cutlery?"

I appreciate all who voted and posted their rationale.

 

[Quintillus]

This reminds me of one of my pet peeve ambiguous time phrasing - it's Tuesday and someone says, "We're going to the amusement park next Saturday, do you want to join?"

Do they mean they are going to the amusement park in 4 days or in 11 days?

IMO the correct answer is "4 days". 4 days is quite literally the next Saturday, so that should be what it means. But some people ask that question meaning "11 days".

I think the 11 day people think of 4 days from now as "this Saturday" and I'll grant that if you ask, "We're going to the amusement park on Saturday", it's clear. But if I said on February 7th, "I'm going to Hawaii next month" no one would think I meant April, so just like how the month is literally the next month in that case, so too should "next Saturday" mean literally next Saturday.

I have less strong feelings about the actual question in the poll, but would agree that the person stating the meeting has moved should clarify the day.

 

[Hygro]

I literally voted wrong like a dumbass

 

[Gori the Grey]

There's no wrong, Hygro.

If you voted, you voted for one of the two correct answers.

Easiest quiz you ever took. Everyone gets 100%.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

What I learned is that I will never schedule a meeting with anyone here unless we specify time of day (using am/pm), making sure everyone knows how to calculate it for their particular time zone. We don't all live in Eastern Standard or Pacific. We also need to specify the date (ie. Thursday, February 2, 2023).

 

[Gori the Grey]

And that we're using the Western calendar!

That's probably implicit in the words used for days and months. But one can never be too careful.

Words are slippery things. It's a wonder people ever manage to meet up.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

And that we're using the Western calendar!

That's probably implicit in the words used for days and months. But one can never be too careful.

Words are slippery things. It's a wonder people ever manage to meet up.

I'm sure Google can offer the equivalent. If someone wants to tell me the date in French, that's fine.

That said, Google translate isn't very reliable a lot of times.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Just schedule meetings for Wednesdays. Nobody had any trouble back when the meeting was on Wednesday.

 

[uppi]

It is absolutely the case that "pushed back" has a much stronger connotation of deeper-into-future-time, and so if you work backward from that, you favor Monday. Some of you speculated on the probability of a meeting being moved one direction or another, and answered based on that.

If you used the opposite, not very idiomatic "pulled forward", I would guess everyone would assume its Monday. And the probability of a meeting being postponed, certainly has an influence. At first I did not even think of the meeting being earlier (huh? Monday next week? How is that two days?), because I was already thinking about delays within the context of meetings being moved.

What I learned is that I will never schedule a meeting with anyone here unless we specify time of day (using am/pm), making sure everyone knows how to calculate it for their particular time zone. We don't all live in Eastern Standard or Pacific. We also need to specify the date (ie. Thursday, February 2, 2023).

I don't know how many meetings I would miss if the calendar entries sent by email were not automatically converted to my timezone.

 

[uppi]

Just schedule meetings for Wednesdays. Nobody had any trouble back when the meeting was on Wednesday.

Except for me, who is already triple-booked on that slot on Wednesday.

 

[AmazonQueen]

What I learned is that I will never schedule a meeting with anyone here unless we specify time of day (using am/pm), making sure everyone knows how to calculate it for their particular time zone. We don't all live in Eastern Standard or Pacific. We also need to specify the date (ie. Thursday, February 2, 2023).

And if they use a numeric date does 12/3 mean 12th March or December 3rd.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I literally voted wrong like a dumbass

Your answer was "perfect." And Friday meetings are best (certainly when compared to Monday ones) unless they start at 4:00.

 

[Gori the Grey]

If you used the opposite, not very idiomatic "pulled forward",

Or "brought forward." While that part of the discussion was going on, I thought of that possible clarifying phrasing.

Except for me, who is already triple-booked on that slot on Wednesday.

Bummer. What if we moved it forward two days? Could you make it then?

 

[bernie14]

i voted Friday yesterday, agreeing with BJs logic. But upon thinking about "the language", i thought about what it means for meetings and deadlines getting "pushed back", so i changed my vote before reading the explanation

 

[Birdjaguar]

From the original Wednesday day, which is the starting point, moving the meeting two days earlier to Monday is moving it backwards in time. Moving it to Friday is moving it forward in time. Time only moves in one direction. The whole "forward means closer to me" is connected to the idea that the person who is reading the message is the important part and not the meeting that is under discussion. If I am reading about the change on the Friday of the previous week, then yes the meeting is moving towards me now, but that movement is actually going backwards in time from its original date. Those who think Monday is the answer are focusing on themselves rather the meeting which is what it is all about.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Further evidence for the researcher's claim that our intuitions on this matter are strong!

You're so stalwart in defense of this position, Bird (mine as well, by the way), that we might yet get a "Is a Hamburger a Sandwich?" out of this.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I don't know how many meetings I would miss if the calendar entries sent by email were not automatically converted to my timezone.

I'm reminded of a late-night conversation with a friend on the Forum I Won't Name, when he asked me, "What time is it in Canada?"

Um, what? I asked him which time zone - we have 6. But if he wanted to know what time it was for me, to just look at his own clock - we live in the same time zone (me in Alberta, him in Utah).

You're so stalwart in defense of this position, Bird (mine as well, by the way), that we might yet get a "Is a Hamburger a Sandwich?" out of this.

There's already a thread for that. I don't recall how many pages it took to reach an agreement of "usually, unless ______".

 

[bernie14]

Further evidence for the researcher's claim that our intuitions on this matter are strong!

You're so stalwart in defense of this position, Bird (mine as well, by the way), that we might yet get a "Is a Hamburger a Sandwich?" out of this.

But are these intuitions or just plain ol' assumptions?