I was just reading a great discussion about how "academics use qualifiers as to how confident they are in the information" and you can see similar trends in spaces like hacker news.
But using "uncertain" language seems unconvincing to people outside of these types of cultures.
Also of course the power dynamics.
Oh yeah, I've certainly seen this before. I'll assess my ability to complete a project under a time frame as "reasonably confident."
In my mind, I'm thinking "so long as a meteor doesn't cause an extinction event," but the manager graciously pushes the target date back a week.