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10.) One failure mode: There's a thing you REALLY don't want to be obliged to do. You REALLY SUPER don't want to accidentally "promise" to do it, or be misinterpreted as promising it. So you kind of "overcommunicate" but your point doesn't get across.
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11.) think of, like, the Satanism/Christianity relationship. The "point" of Satanism is anti-Christianity. Upside-down crosses = "I really, really don't want anyone to mistake me for a Christian. I'm the OPPOSITE of Christian."
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12.) but Satanism isn't relevant to a non-Christian, and in the same way, attempts to communicate "I DIDN'T promise X" can be superfluous/irrelevant or offputting to people who didn't expect X
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13.) Or the attempt to communicate "I DON'T promise X" can fail because you're so passionate that you become imprecise, and nobody understands what it is you're not promising
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19.) the subtler, more consequentialist version would be "do the thing that has the best expected outcome, but then let the actual outcome fall as it may, you're not on the hook for how a dice roll comes out."
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