Exercise 3: Why "We'll See What We Can Do" Is the Same Category as backup1's Warning — Possible Solution ==================================================================== WHAT backup1's OWN WARNING WAS ABOUT ------------------------------ backup1's Chapter 9 warned against telling someone their permanently lost data "might still be recoverable" when the honest answer was that it genuinely wasn't - vague, hopeful language standing in for a definite no, specifically because it lets the person believe recovery is still possible when it isn't. WHY "WE'LL SEE WHAT WE CAN DO" DOES THE IDENTICAL THING ------------------------------ When the technician already privately knows the honest answer is no - the feature genuinely isn't supported, the fix genuinely isn't coming - saying "we'll see what we can do" creates the same false impression that a positive outcome remains genuinely open, when it doesn't. The mechanism is identical: known information (the real answer is no) is replaced with vague, hope-preserving language instead of being stated directly. WHY THE DIFFERENCE IN STAKES DOESN'T CHANGE THE CATEGORY OF THE PROBLEM ------------------------------ Per this chapter, "this is the same category of dishonesty backup1 warned against for permanent data loss - just at lower stakes, not a genuinely different kind of problem." Permanently lost data and an unsupported feature request differ enormously in how much the outcome matters to the person - but the structural failure (concealing a known no behind hopeful-sounding language) is exactly the same act in both cases. The magnitude of the consequence differs; the nature of the deception doesn't. WHY TREATING IT AS "JUST A HARMLESS SOFTER VERSION" WOULD BE WRONG ------------------------------ If lower stakes made this a fundamentally different, more acceptable practice, it would suggest honesty is only required above some threshold of severity - which undermines the whole principle rather than genuinely limiting it. Per Exercise 1 and 2's own reasoning, the same delayed-and-compounded-disappointment pattern applies regardless of how significant the underlying bad news is; a small instance of this dishonesty still produces the identical structural harm, just at a smaller scale. WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER ------------------------------ It restates what backup1's own warning targeted, explains why "we'll see what we can do" performs the identical function of concealing a known no, and explains why differing stakes don't change the underlying category of the problem, only its scale.