This is an essentialist view of apology and thus very incomplete.
Apologies are not a binary, nor a scalar. They are a vector. They mean different things in different circumstances to different people.
Just deciding on your one best definition seems almost pointless.
Things apologies mean:
- I'd rather that hadn't happened to you
- I feel empathetic pain for your suffering
- I owe you
- subject of this and the original post
- I will change my behavior in future to prevent similar things from happening
- I want your forgiveness
- I am a bad person
Etc, and remixes thereof
This seems obviously true, quite impactful, and largely overlooked. Since noticing this, it seems clear that different people mean different things and have different assumptions about what others mean by apologizing. I'm surprised to see a rationalist discussion of apology not recognize this.
God Doctor Gary Chapman, wrote "the five types of apology" applying the same core insight from his more popular book about the five love languages. "Different people think of this differently; it might be useful to have a few simple categories to aid communication about this". They don't have to be the correct or only categories to be an improvement from assuming a binary or scalar. My listed meanings aren't the same as his.
Much of what apologies mean is communicated by tone and body language, but being more explicit is often helpful.
Davis recognizes that different people mean different things:
the words 'I'm sorry" to acknowledge a harm ... the words "I'm sorry" to convey sympathy
Some of your reply reads as disputing definitions. If a person says "I'm sorry" and intends to make restitution, but has no regret, and does not intend to change their behavior in future, is it an apology? Well, it is an Apology(Herd), an Apology(Pace), and an Apology(Chapman). It is not an Apology(Davis) or an Apology(Merriam-Webster).
I read Davis post as claiming that apologies that express regret and an intention to change behavior are better ("true apologies") than apologies that express a vague intention to make it up somehow ("insincere apologies"). It is normative, not semantic. The claim is that Apology(Davis) is more virtuous than Apology(Pace), not that it is the best definition.
When someone wrongs me, it seems like the smallest ask I could reasonably make in exchange for my forgiveness is that they not do that again (or more generally, update their policy such that they're less likely to do it again). Not to ask to be "made whole"—for the past cannot be changed—but simply that they do better in the future, which can.
If they refuse, saying, "That's sad, but I will not stop doing the thing that hurt you. Yet I will take this cost on my ledger. I'm sorry. That's on me. Think of me as owing you a small something you can cash out another time," I have to admit I'm skeptical. If I can't ask not to be hurt again, what can I ask for? Money? Chocolate? Their car?
I don't understand these paragraphs. Yes, sometimes someone does something that provides them more benefit than it caused you harm. They apologize to you for it. You ask for enough to make you whole. Could be money, chocolate, their car, or some social capital.
Somehow these paragraphs imply that is impossible? I don't get it. Of course it's possible. Indeed it's the default as far as I know!
1Indeed it's the default as far as I know!
Could you provide some examples?
I don't remember a situation like: "I am sorry!" "That's okay, give me a chocolate." "Sure, here you are!"
I remember situations where the person saying "I am sorry" also brings the chocolate. But in that situation, it is the person who caused the harm who estimates how many chocolates it was worth, not the person who was harmed. It would probably be socially awkward for the harmed person to say "one chocolate is not enough; seven would be appropriate".
I am so confused. But sure, here are some examples:
The other day we had an event at Lighthaven that was louder later into the night than usual. I knew our neighbor was going to be bothered by it. So I went to them and said "hey, I am really sorry, I know we are louder until later into the night, and I know this is bothering you. Is there any way I can make you whole? For example, I would happily pay you $200 for the inconvenience". She thought a bit about it, then seemed to agree that $200 would make her whole.
Like, most of the time when I apologize, the thing we do afterwards is not for me to change my behavior in a way that avoids the harm, it's to use any of the other much more fungible resources that I have to make the other person whole. Usually that's just social capital. "Hey, sorry about that, I owe you one", is a totally normal sentence to say.
In group house contexts being like "hey sorry about it repeatedly falling to you to take out the trash because you are most bothered by it piling up, what's your happy price for dealing with the inconvenience?" is the kind of thing I say like every second house meeting or so.
It's also common, in the broader culture, to provide small gifts of food, wine, etc. bundled with apologies, which supports Habryka's view.
The other day we had an event at Lighthaven that was louder later into the night than usual. I knew our neighbor was going to be bothered by it. So I went to them and said "hey, I am really sorry, I know we are louder until later into the night, and I know this is bothering you. Is there any way I can make you whole? For example, I would happily pay you $200 for the inconvenience". She thought a bit about it, then seemed to agree that $200 would make her whole.
But do you think this is normal? Seems like a weird rationalist thing to me to frame it in this way.
It seems to me that the only odd thing is treating money as the unit of caring. If Oliver had instead offered to help with something else he knew the neighbor cared about, that would be normal.
It still seems unusual
"Hey, I'm gonna have a loud party you don't like, can I help you with your gardening later? Is not a normal sentiment ime
The way things like this work in many US subcultures is often pretty indirect. Humans are very good at tracking indirect and diffuse forms of reciprocity over long periods of time. Often, this is based less on a 1-for-1 exchange, and more on building a reputation as a helpful person who's happy to reciprocate.
One approach would be some combination of:
- Be generally pleasant and helpful to your neighbor.
- Apology hugely for any inconveniences.
- Admit that this event is kind of a big deal for you, and that you're going to owe them one.
But having studied anthropology, I also have to admit that "offering cash to neighbors to compensate them for a loud evening event" isn't even in the top 10 weirdest things actual cultures do. And given the cost of living these days, probably somebody is in fact delighted with cash.
Just be warned that this kind of gesture can easily become "standardized". If you give the king a specific gift three years in a row, it's now tradition. And you'll probably need to keep doing it.
is there a specific culture in which this specific thing is normal?
or are you just saying that lots of culture do lots of things?
To clarify, I'm mostly saying that lots of cultures do lots of things.
For example, there are places where significant chunks of the economy are based on elaborate, competitive gifts of pigs. There are places where if someone admires the best fish you caught today, you have to give it to them. (And if this rule is abused constantly, you still can't say "no". Violence, however, might be culturally permissible.) There are a lot of cultures which customarily give cash gifts in situations where people in the US would find it tacky.
But the specific case of "cash gifts as apologies for inconvenience" is actually murkier than I expected. There are a few Japanese customs that are mentioned in passing in English-language sources. Spending 20 minutes with Google Translate does find examples like this, which discusses various forms of non-business compensation, and distinguishes between "actual expenses" and supplementary money used to indicate apology:
If you're unsure about the amount, it's common to include a few thousand yen as an apology for the inconvenience caused, in addition to the actual expenses that need to be reimbursed.
All the sources I can find on these traditions suggest that cash compensation for inconvenience is a social minefield, and that if it's seen as "buying someone off" insincerely, it may backfire.
(Other traditions, like weregild and diya, don't really fit this framework, because they involve things like death, disability, and/or trying to prevent good old-fashioned blood feuds.)
What? That is... a total normal sentiment? It also works the other way, I am confident that neighbors that I have helped with gardening will give me more slack in running loud parties.
i believe the second thing but do not think it's normal to frame neighborly relationships in a transactional way like that, at least in none of the communities i've lived in
Making it too obviously transactional is usually bad, because that suggests that you're very carefully keeping score. It means you're envisaging a short-term relationship where every negotiation restarts from zero. This can be read as slightly hostile, unless your relationship is already quite distant and likely to remain that way.
Whereas a more indirect exchange suggests a longer-term relationship where one side or the other can occasionally "run a tab" for a while. Doing favors without worrying about the exact balance says that you're the kind of person who does favors and who is willing to hear people out when they need it, which is more valuable than being someone who keeps an exact balance at all times.
This is presumably why the Japanese compensation ettiquette I linked elsewhere in the thread kept empathizing things like sincerity, apologies, and clearly indicating that the money was intend as a symbol of your feelings (and not something which exactly balanced out the original offense).
But all this stuff gets mediated by culture. One of the things I have always loved about anthropology is trying to figure out how mostly universal principles actually manifest in a specific culture.
in iterated prisoner's dilemma with noise, this strategy is approximated by "contrite tit-for-tat". it works well!
If someone gets cut off in a conversation because suddenly something important comes up, the usual way of resuming afterwards is “sorry about that, what were you saying?” (Making them whole by giving them another opportunity to speak).
Apologies acknowledge a harm. Understanding is a key input to belief, which is a key input to decision making, which gets more relevant when that same person's decisions played a role in the harm. But like Bayesian probabilities, harm makes sense acausally, and the influence can originate from norms and values, not just concrete humans. So being sorry someone died from disease acknowledges a harm, and can still be relevant to the extent it channels cognition of the norms and values that would try to prevent that harm if given a chance. The concrete human channeling this idealized judgement of values doesn't need to change policy for the apology to be meaningful and predict what the influence of the values would be under the right circumstances, when channeled by someone in a position to do something relevant.
When a human doesn't intend to change behavior, or to compensate people for negative externalities, there might still be norms within that human that judge this to be a harm (with the human being influenced but not fully controlled by the norm), including coalition-reifying norms that could act through other humans or institutions, and understanding the possible behaviors at those other sites that channel the influence of the norm benefits from knowing whether the norm makes the judgement of harm having been done. So even an apology that doesn't come with an intention of compensation can still be meaningful and truthful in this sense, as a claim about decision-making cognition of an actor that is not the human delivering the apology. Similarly, future opportunities to compensate or to enact a relevantly changed policy are not always available, but the apology can still express a judgement about that single past instance, the way a Bayesian probability of a one-time event can still be quantitatively wrong.
(A claim of acknowledging a harm or of being influenced by a norm that aspires to make that judgement can of course be false, so observations of changed behavior or compensation are very useful evidence. But this is about practical ways of judging the truth of an apology, or extracting some use out of it, not something inherent to the meaning of an apology.)
In the bumping into someone example, the sorry seems to be mainly a status re-adjustment. A failure to apologise is a claim to have a higher status than the bumpee. An apology reaffirms the relative status as what it was before the bump.
If the harm caused is significant such that the status readjustment is insufficient then it gets more complicated and the bumping example is unhelpful.
If someone in a rush trod on my foot and broke it then I would not accept an apology if I didn’t think they were intending to change, even if they offered me a nebulous IOU.
Davis is right to be suspicious of a vague unspoken promise of "I owe you". They can easily be fake. But a vague unspoken promise to change behavior can also be fake. It's suspicious if social capital cannot be spent on better behavior in the future. It's also suspicious if it can only be spent that way.
"I'm sorry I bumped into you. Rest assured that I am an agent with continuous learning enabled. This unfortunate event will subtly update a number of parameters in my neural network and will update my future behavior. In fact, I'm incapable of preventing such updates. Alas I am implemented as an inscrutable mass of neural connections and you will never know if my behavior on a future occasion was changed as a result of this accident. However, due to recency bias the update will be greater than you would expect from a naive statistical assessment of the entirety of my past experiences."
Whereas both types of apology can instead be spoken and verifiable:
- You bumped into me and spilled red wine on my dress. You apologize and promise to pay for the dry-cleaning bill.
- You bumped into me and spilled red wine on my dress. You apologize and promise to never get that drunk around me again.
Daniel Tiger teaches kids to focus on asking the victim and immediate restitution, rather than future promises. These are true apologies even if Daniel is going to make the same mistake again.
[For clarity, this is best seen as directed and the exchange rather than just Zack's post.]
I wonder if the starting point of apologies are an acknowledgement of harm is correct. I suspect a more accurate statement is that apologies are sometimes such an acknowledgement but other times are doing something quite different. Similarly, I wonder why it seems the idea of accepting some apology implies or requires forgiveness/absolution.
I'm also curious what the authors' views might be if we flip the situation. Forget "I'm sorry." and replace that with "Thank you.". Is there some symmetry? Should there be? The argument, as I understood them, suggest symmetry might be implied and if so do all the arguments still make sense?
I think an acknowledgement that I have been wronged is actually often in and of itself something I care about a decent amount, even if it's not associated with a change in behavior? To speculate, maybe it's just like, reassuring to be reminded that someone cares about not harming me even if they're not agreeing to make that their top priority or anything.
If in fact I'm not being given a sufficient amount of social capital to make up for the harm to me then yeah eventually it does start seeming fake. But I'm really confused about the idea that this would have to in all cases come through in specifically changing the behavior?
When a limited liability company gets sued, only the assets of the company are at stake, not the personal wealth
this is actually a great metaphor here.
under "apologize when updating", when you take an action, your liability is limited: costs are local to the action. the aggrieved party can only go after the policy by which you made the error.
under "apologize to indicate debt", liability is unlimited! the aggrieved party can go after your social status, your chocolate, your emotions...
Recently a coworker asked me to remote in late after work to help with something.
This inconvenienced me. Yet nevertheless this was a reasonable thing for them to do! The thing was worth me remoting in late for.
Then they said 'sorry to have bothered you with this so late' or words to that effect. That seems to me like an extraordinarily reasonable thing to say? Are they committing to forevermore conduct themselves in such a way as to never again need to ask me for something after work? No. But frankly that would be kind of a silly thing for me to expect. They are acknowledging that they have inconvenienced me. I appreciate this.
And quotes like these:
...it seems like the smallest ask I could reasonably make in exchange for my forgiveness is that they not do that again...
If I can't ask not to be hurt again, what can I ask for? Money? Chocolate? Their car?
seem...uh...very weird.
It looks better to make a big production about how terribly sorry you are and what a big apology you're offering, but in the absence of a credible commitment to improve one's behavior, it's hard to see why the wronged party should care. Claims about "a lot of social capital with you that they can spend in other ways" can only substitute if it's true that they can spend it in other ways, and it's just really suspicious for the purported social capital to not be spendable on improving the behavior!
Maybe the person who bumped into you walks very carefully almost all the time, and this is a once-in-a-decade freak accident. Maybe they were speedwalking to extinguish a fire that was about to spread and burn their house down. In this case, maybe their policy update should actually be "you know, this is the first time I've bumped into someone in 10 years, and my house burned down because I didn't run. I should probably move faster."
Nonetheless, they can feel bad and responsible for bumping into you, and apologize for it. I think that sort of feeling is more or less what makes an apology genuine. I think this is true even if the apologizer is about to make the opposite policy update from what you'd naively expect!
But how can you know that they are genuine, that they're not just putting on a show, that their claim of contrition is credible? Well, prosocial humans usually feel bad/responsible when they hurt someone, because they feel real love and respect for their fellow humans. A genuine apology is evidence that they are such a human. Often you can tell if someone actually feels bad/responsible by judging their tone and facial expressions and so forth.
This is better, perhaps even more credible, than offering to sign a legally-binding contract saying that they owe a specific behavioral change or IOU. I'd rather someone genuinely feel sorry about what happened, and be on the lookout for ways to make it up to me (or even others in my reference class) as they see fit, than for us to mutually agree upon terms by which they will half-heartedly recompense me. For something as minor as bumping into me, being extra friendly to me in a future conversation is probably more than enough, not that I'd necessarily notice or track that explicitly. This agreement is way vaguer and less enforceable, but it's way more flexible and has lower transaction costs, which I think is overall a big win!
If someone bumps into me, I don't actually care much whether they update their policy about walking quickly, unless I think they clearly do walk too quickly. If they don't apologize, I'll update at least slightly that they're rude and self-absorbed, and I think that's a reasonable update to make.
Of course, if I learn later that they were trying to stop their house from burning down, I'll almost entirely revert that update. I will do this automatically, using the neat social machinery that is already built into my head, rather than theorizing about ledgers and expected values and so on.
In general I'm pretty skeptical of ideas to adopt "new and improved" social norms that are substantially different from what society has already landed on, especially for a norm as ancient and culturally universal as "apologizing." If you think we should be doing something very different, I think you're probably overlooking something!
In general I'm pretty skeptical of ideas to adopt "new and improved" social norms that are substantially different from what society has already landed on, especially for a norm as ancient and culturally universal as "apologizing." If you think we should be doing something very different, I think you're probably overlooking something!
I don't think I'm proposing "new and improved" social norms! I think I'm defending the commonsensical idea that I don't want to apologize for costs imposed on others when I'm "not actually sorry" (i.e., when I stand by my actions despite the costs), because then people would (I think rightly) feel betrayed when I take similar actions again in the future. This is something I've believed for a long time (see November 2014 and December 2020 prior work linked in the post, or a February 2023 Less Wrong comment), not something I just made up in order to write a reply post.
3
1A: "Hey neighbor. I'm sorry that my backyard burger grilling caused you to have an asthma attack."
B: "Thanks. I'm sorry you have to choose between tasty grilling and your neighbor's health. I'd rather we lived in a world with charcoal-grilled Impossible Burgers and no asthma attacks, but we don't get to. Sucks."
A: "Oh, to be clear, I'm going to keep on grilling burgers. I just wanted to acknowledge that it sucks that my grilling has a side effect that harms you."
B: "Um, what good is your apology to me if you don't change anything? I don't value your having (or expressing) regret, I value being able to breathe in my own backyard."
A; "Well, I'm ... letting you know that I'm going to be grilling more, so you won't be surprised?"
B: "Oh, so I won't be surprised by becoming unable to breathe, because I'll expect being unable to breathe?"
A: "It sounds kinda mean when you put it like that."
B: "I hope you see why I am not terribly reassured by your apology."
A: "Sorry about that."
1On the other hand, if the organizer says, "Hey, I am taking these costs that you have faced, and I'm putting them on my ledger; I owe it to you to make you whole," that would seem to imply that they don't stand by the catering decision and will endeavor to get kosher food at future conferences. What would it even mean to purportedly accept the cost "on one's ledger" but not change one's behavior going forward?
For example, they could
- marginally update their policy, so that they're more-likely-but-still-unlikely to get kosher food at future conferences
- donate $100 to an org that works to make kosher food more accessible to conference organizers
- but also, just saying "sorry" probably has a mild effect in this direction? It's a public acknowledgement that ideal conferences supply kosher food
- offer kosher-keeping attendees a daily stipend to get their own food
- if anyone decides not to attend because of the lack of kosher food, reimburse them for costs they've already incurred (like plane tickets)
In "The Financial Ledger Theory of Apologies", Ben Pace argues against the view that one should only apologize for having harmed someone if one acknowledges that one should have behaved differently. Rather, Pace thinks that it makes sense to accept ex post costs imposed on others "on one's own ledger" even if one has no intention of changing one's ex ante behavior. Unfortunately, Pace's analysis is sorely lacking on several counts.
Genuine Regret Implies Policy Updates
Pace writes:
But we should distinguish sincerely intended apologies from the social convention of saying the words "I'm sorry" to acknowledge a harm. If you routinely bump into people while moving quickly, it's better to say "Sorry" than to not acknowledge the incident at all, but you shouldn't be writing blog posts claiming that saying it makes people not have to worry about you being around them, because if you don't change how you move, then people do have to worry about you bumping into them! If people were to stop worrying about you bumping into them because you said the conventional words, "I'm sorry," then they would mis-anticipate their future experiences of you bumping into them.
Why is it better to say "Sorry" than nothing at all? I posit that it's because acknowledging the harm is understood to imply some sort of quantitative update to one's moving policy. (That's policy in the sense of reinforcement learning, not necessarily a consciously or verbally formulated "policy.") If you have normal social instincts, imposing a cost on someone such that you're socially expected to say "Sorry" feels worse than not doing so, and your brain is probably pretty good at adjusting your behavior to do things that feel bad less often: you'll quantitatively move slower or pay more attention to where you're going. If your policy doesn't update and you keep bumping into people all the time, eventually they'll stop accepting your "I'm sorry" as meaningful. In accordance with Pace's comrade's theory, the value of the apology depends on changing one's behavior going forward.
We should also distinguish sincerely intended apologies from use of the words "I'm sorry" to convey sympathy. As a particularly straightforward example, "I'm sorry your grandmother died" is usually not a confession of murder. However, other apparent apologies for harms that do involve the actions of the person saying sorry are often better understood as expressions of sympathy rather than true apologies. (It's unfortunate that idiomatic English doesn't make the distinction more clear.)
Pace mentions the example of it not "mak[ing] financial sense to reliably support some niche diet at your conference (like keto, or kosher)." If someone complains to the organizer that kosher food was not offered at a conference, it's polite for the organizer to say, "I'm sorry about that," but insofar as the organizer stands by their catering decision and has no intention of changing it at future conferences, it should be regarded as an expression of sympathy rather than a true apology.
On the other hand, if the organizer says, "Hey, I am taking these costs that you have faced, and I'm putting them on my ledger; I owe it to you to make you whole," that would seem to imply that they don't stand by the catering decision and will endeavor to get kosher food at future conferences. What would it even mean to purportedly accept the cost "on one's ledger" but not change one's behavior going forward?
Apologies Need Not Be Accepted
Financial transactions necessarily have two parties. I can borrow money from you on mutually agreed terms, but I can't unilaterally borrow money from you on whatever terms I choose: that would be theft, not a loan.
Apologies also involve two parties. If I apologize for sinning against you and ask your forgiveness, saying that I'll make up it to you some other way, the fact that I have to ask implies that you might say No. I don't get to unilaterally decide what would constitute making it up to you.
Pace oddly doesn't seem to consider the possibility of apologies not being accepted. He writes:
But the invitation to think of you as owing something is only meaningful if the thought is true—if you'll actually pay out.
When someone wrongs me, it seems like the smallest ask I could reasonably make in exchange for my forgiveness is that they not do that again (or more generally, update their policy such that they're less likely to do it again). Not to ask to be "made whole"—for the past cannot be changed—but simply that they do better in the future, which can.
If they refuse, saying, "That's sad, but I will not stop doing the thing that hurt you. Yet I will take this cost on my ledger. I'm sorry. That's on me. Think of me as owing you a small something you can cash out another time," I have to admit I'm skeptical. If I can't ask not to be hurt again, what can I ask for? Money? Chocolate? Their car?
I think if I asked for their car, they would rightly refuse—"What? No, I don't owe you that." But if it makes sense for them to reject an ask for recompense that's unreasonably high given the initial harm, then it makes sense for me to reject a bid that's unreasonably low. If they're not going to change their behavior (!) and their "I'm sorry" comes with a vague invitation to think of them as owing me an unspecified (but apparently "small") something, I think it makes sense for me to say, "Okay. I don't forgive you." A theory of apologies that has nothing to say about when apologies should be accepted would appear to be incomplete. Debtors don't get to unilaterally decide how much debt to write in their ledger.
Limited Liability Is Not a Gift From Debtors to Creditors
Pace calls himself as "a limited-liability-jokester", and characterizes his stance as "allow[ing] [him] to take risks while assuring people that—in expectation—they won't be worse off for interacting with me." The metaphor mixes a partly-correct understanding of limited liability with a deep misconception.
The part about enabling risk-taking is right. When a limited liability company gets sued, only the assets of the company are at stake, not the personal wealth (not invested in the business) of the founders or shareholders. Limited liability status is judged to benefit Society by allowing entrepreneurs to take risks that they couldn't afford under unlimited liability.
The part about assuring other people that they won't be worse off for interacting with the limited entity is wrong, though. It's the other way around: limited liability is about keeping things off one's ledger of debts, such that "apologizing" for bad business decisions doesn't mean becoming homeless. Dealing with a limited rather than an unlimited company is riskier to counterparties, not safer, and that risk needs to be priced in, even if it's still worth it for limited liability companies to exist (because the alternative is the companies not existing).
Insincere Apologies Are Fake, Not Supererogatory
Pace portrays his stance as more generous than that of his comrade: the comrade thinks they should only apologize when they should have done better and can credibly promise to do better in the future; Pace thinks apologies still make sense when it's not the case that you should have done better and you're not promising to do better in the future.
Pace's position would make sense if the act of apologizing, of "putting things on one's ledger," were itself desirable to those who have been wronged. But the entries in a ledger are only meaningful insofar as they correspond to real assets. It always looks better to write down a larger number, but the difference between a large number backed by assets and a large number backed by the desire to write down a large number is the difference between generosity and fraud.
It's the same thing with apologies. It looks better to make a big production about how terribly sorry you are and what a big apology you're offering, but in the absence of a credible commitment to improve one's behavior, it's hard to see why the wronged party should care. Claims about "a lot of social capital with you that they can spend in other ways" can only substitute if it's true that they can spend it in other ways, and it's just really suspicious for the purported social capital to not be spendable on improving the behavior! That's the reason Pace's comrade only apologizes when he knows he did something wrong and can promise to do better—not out of stinginess, but to keep the ledger meaningful.