Tact: It’s Okay to Sugarcoat
From the Unknowable Truth Glossary.
If you’ve ever had to tell someone an uncomfortable truth and wanted to be nice about it, then you’ve used tact. Tact means being sensitive when dealing with difficult issues. Sometimes that means “sugarcoating” a hard-to-swallow message. Sometimes it means omitting details or outright lying. To some degree, any use of tact is an attempt to obscure the truth for the sake of getting along.
In the Christopher Nolan science fiction film Interstellar, a robot named TARS reveals it has an “honesty setting” set to 90%. TARS explains, “Absolute honesty isn’t always the most diplomatic, nor the safest form of communication with emotional beings.” TARS is willing to lie a little to maintain crew morale for the sake of the mission.
Humans are social creatures. Evolutionarily, our ability to work together in groups allowed us to thrive. For people, survival means getting along with the people in our tribe, even if that means using tact and telling a small fib to be polite.