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by 6d0debc071 4582 days ago
> You're basically advocating lying and not honoring your promises.

Yes, obviously. There are situations where you ought to lie. The typical example: "Are there any Jews in your basement?"

Decency is more than keeping to the words, sometimes it even requires you break them to keep the spirit of promise. We generally give promises contingent on implied good behaviour from the other parties. When others break their promises the stack built on that mutual honour collapses.

And I'm fine living in the world where that's the way people treat promises, I massively prefer it to the world where people can be tricked into promising something and then have to keep to it when it turns out to be abhorrent.