Consider this recent column by the excellent Matt Levine. It vividly describes the conflict between engineering, which requires people communicate information and keep accurate records, and the legal system and public relations, which tell you that keeping accurate records is insane.
It certainly sounds like a contradiction, but the spin that article puts on it is unconvincing:
In other words, if you are trying to build a good engineering culture, you might want to encourage your employees to send hyperbolic, overstated, highly quotable emails to a broad internal distribution list when they object to a decision. On the other hand your lawyers, and your public relations people, will obviously and correctly tell you that that is insane: If anything goes wrong, those emails will come out, and the headlines will say “Designed by Clowns,”
This argument is essentially “truth is bad”.
We try to pretend that making problems sound worse than they really are, in order to compel action, is not lying. But it really is. This complaint sounds like “we want to get the benefits of lying, but not the harm”. If you’re overstating a problem in order to get group A to act in ways that they normally wouldn’t, don’t be surprised if group B also reacts in ways that they normally wouldn’t, even if A’s reaction helps you and B’s reaction hurts you. The core of the problem is not that B gets to hear it, the core of the problem is that you’re being deceitful, even if you’re exaggerating something that does contain some truth.
(Also, this will result in a ratchet where every decision that engineers object to is always the worst, most disastrous, decision ever, because if your goal is to get someone to listen, you should always describe the current problem as the worst problem ever.)
This is similar to the simulation hypothesis, and in fact is sometimes used as a response to the simulation hypothesis.