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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on The Parable of the Dagger - Less Wrong
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And if the king wanted to be particularly nasty the other box would also contain a dagger
No, that the king specified couldn't happen. One of the morals of the parable is that the king didn't lie.
What, it doesn't count as a lie if it's in writing? That's a hell of a system of contract law they've got in this allegorical kingdom.
A statement that's neither true nor false can't be false...
Yes, but lies needn't be falsities, any more than honest statements need be true.
Definitions matter. If you define a lie as an intentional deception attempt, then the king lied, if you define it as uttering a falsehood, then he didn't. The modern legal tradition is hazy on this point, and intentional deception without actually making false statements sometimes invalidates a contract, and sometimes doesn't.
I could make up a new language for every sentence I utter, and claim that 2/3 of the words I am merely speaking to myself in an unrelated monologue.
Communication is so context-dependent that I see the utterance of "it was assumed, not implied" as an admission to deceit.