“there is no try” means “I am going to make an attempt at this but it’s not guaranteed to succeed” in sentences like “I’m going to try to bench 400 tomorrow”, “I’m trying to solve the Birch–Tate conjecture” and “I’ll try flipping the circuit breaker and see if that helps”
The latter is actively good epistemics and agentiness and we shouldn’t invoke a weapon aimed at “yeah I’ll get to the gym eventually” on them.
“Do or Do Not: There is No Try”
Like all short proverbs each word is doing a lot of work and you can completely flip the meaning by switching between reasonable definitions.
I think “there is no try” often means “I want to gesture at this but am not going to make a real attempt” in sentences like “I’ll try to get to the gym tomorrow” and “I’ll try to work on my math homework tonight”.
“there is no try” means “I am going to make an attempt at this but it’s not guaranteed to succeed” in sentences like “I’m going to try to bench 400 tomorrow”, “I’m trying to solve the Birch–Tate conjecture” and “I’ll try flipping the circuit breaker and see if that helps”
The latter is actively good epistemics and agentiness and we shouldn’t invoke a weapon aimed at “yeah I’ll get to the gym eventually” on them.
OOOOH it’s maybe encapsulated in “I’ll try to do action” vs “I’m trying this action”