BOJACK: Hey, I wanted to talk to you about—you know—I feel bad about
what happened.
HERB: So, you’re apologizing.
BOJACK: Yes. I’m sorry.
HERB: Okay. I don’t forgive you.
BOJACK: Herb, I said I’m sorry.
HERB: Yeah. And I do not forgive you.
BOJACK: Uh, not sure you get what’s happening here. This could be the
last time that you—
HERB: No. I’m not going to give you closure. You don’t get that. You
have to live with the shitty thing you did for the rest of your life.
You have to know that it’s never, ever going to be okay.
BOJACK: I really think that we’d both feel better if we just—
HERB: I’m dying! I’m not going to feel better. And I’m not going to be
your prop so you can feel better.—Bojack Horseman, “The Telescope”
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:
If I’m running around because I have somewhere important to do and quickly, and I bump into someone, my response isn’t “I understand that I imposed a cost on you but I’m not going to be changing my policy of moving quickly when things are important and time-sensitive.” I say “Oh I’m sorry!”. The policy I’m running isn’t to externalize the costs, it’s to internalize them. This makes people not have to worry about me being around them.
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:
My comrade from above recommended only apologizing if I am going to change my behavior going forward. While I agree that’s an appropriate time for the costs to be on your ledger, I disagree that’s the only time. If your mood is worsened because of my attempt to make a joke, that’s sad, but I will not stop trying risky jokes. Yet I will take this cost on my ledger. I’m sorry. That’s on me. I’ll work to undo whatever local unpleasantness I caused, and if I cannot, think of me as owing you a small something you can cash out another time.
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.