Viewed as an abstract hypothetical, preferring to have believed a comforting lie rather than an unpleasant truth just isn’t compatible with rationality; more importantly, it’s incompatible with the desires that cause people to be rational.
Perhaps, if everyone were perfectly rational, you would be right that lying is inherently hostile.
Only all else being equal is the truth clearly preferable to deceit. If the choice of deceit allows to save the world, it’s inevitable for any notion of human morality to prefer deceit.
It’s not inevitable. Nor is it likely, in balance, that deceit would have such large and positive effects. Far, far more probable is a shallow but wide flood of corrosive harms.
Perhaps, if everyone were perfectly rational, you would be right that lying is inherently hostile.
Only all else being equal is the truth clearly preferable to deceit. If the choice of deceit allows to save the world, it’s inevitable for any notion of human morality to prefer deceit.
It’s not inevitable. Nor is it likely, in balance, that deceit would have such large and positive effects. Far, far more probable is a shallow but wide flood of corrosive harms.