{"id":2486,"date":"2026-06-18T09:43:33","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T16:43:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/?p=2486"},"modified":"2026-06-18T09:46:49","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T16:46:49","slug":"contra-pace-on-when-to-apologize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2026\/06\/contra-pace-on-when-to-apologize\/","title":{"rendered":"Contra Pace on When to Apologize"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOJACK: Hey, I wanted to talk to you about\u2014you know\u2014I feel bad about
\nwhat happened.
\nHERB: So, you\u2019re apologizing.
\nBOJACK: Yes. I\u2019m sorry.
\nHERB: Okay. I don\u2019t forgive you.
\nBOJACK: Herb, I said I\u2019m sorry.
\nHERB: Yeah. And I do not forgive you.
\nBOJACK: Uh, not sure you get what\u2019s happening here. This could be the
\nlast time that you\u2014
\nHERB: No. I\u2019m not going to give you closure. You don\u2019t get that. You
\nhave to live with the shitty thing you did for the rest of your life.
\nYou have to know that it\u2019s never, ever going to be okay.
\nBOJACK: I really think that we\u2019d both feel better if we just\u2014
\nHERB: I\u2019m dying! I\u2019m not going to feel better. And I\u2019m not going to be
\nyour prop so you can feel better.<\/p>\n

\u2014Bojack Horseman<\/em>, \u201cThe Telescope\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In \u201cThe Financial Ledger Theory of Apologies\u201d<\/a>, 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<\/em> costs imposed on others \u201con one\u2019s own ledger\u201d even if one has no intention of changing one\u2019s ex ante<\/em> behavior. Unfortunately, Pace\u2019s analysis is sorely lacking on several counts.<\/p>\n

Genuine Regret Implies Policy Updates<\/h2>\n

Pace writes:<\/p>\n

If I\u2019m running around because I have somewhere important to do and quickly, and I bump into someone, my response isn\u2019t \u201cI understand that I imposed a cost on you but I\u2019m not going to be changing my policy of moving quickly when things are important and time-sensitive.\u201d I say \u201cOh I\u2019m sorry!\u201d. The policy I\u2019m running isn\u2019t to externalize the costs, it\u2019s to internalize them. This makes people not have to worry about me being around them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But we should distinguish sincerely intended apologies from the social convention of saying the words \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u201d to acknowledge a harm. If you routinely bump into people while moving quickly, it\u2019s better to say \u201cSorry\u201d than to not acknowledge the incident at all, but you shouldn\u2019t be writing blog posts claiming that saying it makes people not have to worry about you being around them, because if you don\u2019t change how you move, then people do<\/em> 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, \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d then they would mis-anticipate their future experiences<\/a> of you bumping into them.<\/p>\n

Why is it better to say \u201cSorry\u201d than nothing at all? I posit that it\u2019s because acknowledging the harm is understood to imply some sort of quantitative update to one\u2019s moving policy. (That\u2019s policy<\/em> in the sense of reinforcement learning<\/a>, not necessarily a consciously or verbally formulated \u201cpolicy.\u201d) If you have normal social instincts<\/a>, imposing a cost on someone such that you\u2019re socially expected to say \u201cSorry\u201d 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\u2019ll quantitatively move slower or pay more attention to where you\u2019re going. If your policy doesn\u2019t update and you keep bumping into people all the time, eventually they\u2019ll stop accepting your \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u201d as meaningful. In accordance with Pace\u2019s comrade\u2019s theory, the value of the apology depends on changing one\u2019s behavior going forward.<\/p>\n

We should also distinguish sincerely intended apologies from use of the words \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u201d to convey sympathy. As a particularly straightforward example, \u201cI\u2019m sorry your grandmother died\u201d 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\u2019s unfortunate that idiomatic English doesn\u2019t make the distinction more clear<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Pace mentions the example of it not \u201cmak[ing] financial sense to reliably support some niche diet at your conference (like keto, or kosher).\u201d If someone complains to the organizer that kosher food was not offered at a conference, it\u2019s polite for the organizer to say, \u201cI\u2019m sorry about that,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, if the organizer says, \u201cHey, I am taking these costs that you have faced, and I\u2019m putting them on my<\/em> ledger; I<\/em> owe it to you to make you whole,\u201d that would seem to imply that they don\u2019t<\/em> 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 \u201con one\u2019s ledger\u201d but not change one\u2019s behavior going forward?<\/p>\n

Apologies Need Not Be Accepted<\/h2>\n

Financial transactions necessarily have two parties. I can borrow money from you on mutually agreed terms, but I can\u2019t unilaterally borrow money from you on whatever terms I choose: that would be theft, not a loan.<\/p>\n

Apologies also involve two parties. If I apologize for sinning against you and ask your forgiveness, saying that I\u2019ll make up it to you some other way, the fact that I have to ask implies that you might say No<\/a>. I don\u2019t get to unilaterally decide what would constitute making it up to you.<\/p>\n

Pace oddly doesn\u2019t seem to consider the possibility of apologies not being accepted. He writes:<\/p>\n

My comrade from above recommended only apologizing if I am going to change my behavior going forward. While I agree that\u2019s an appropriate time for the costs to be on your ledger, I disagree that\u2019s the only time. If your mood is worsened because of my attempt to make a joke, that\u2019s sad, but I will not stop trying risky jokes. Yet I will take this cost on my<\/em> ledger. I\u2019m sorry. That\u2019s on me. I\u2019ll 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But the invitation to think of you<\/em> as owing something is only meaningful if the thought is true\u2014if you\u2019ll actually pay out.<\/p>\n

When someone wrongs me, it seems like the smallest<\/em> 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\u2019re less likely to do it again). Not to ask to be \u201cmade whole\u201d\u2014for the past cannot be changed<\/a>\u2014but simply that they do better in the future, which can.<\/p>\n

If they refuse, saying, \u201cThat\u2019s sad, but I will not stop doing the thing that hurt you. Yet I will take this cost on my<\/em> ledger. I\u2019m sorry. That\u2019s on me. Think of me as owing you a small something you can cash out another time,\u201d I have to admit I\u2019m skeptical. If I can\u2019t ask not to be hurt again<\/em>, what can I ask for? Money? Chocolate? Their car?<\/p>\n

I think if I asked for their car, they would rightly refuse\u2014\u201cWhat? No, I don\u2019t owe you that.\u201d But if it makes sense for them to reject an ask for recompense that\u2019s unreasonably high given the initial harm, then it makes sense for me to reject a bid that\u2019s unreasonably low. If they\u2019re not going to change their behavior (!) and their \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u201d comes with a vague<\/em> invitation to think of them as owing me an unspecified<\/em> (but apparently \u201csmall\u201d) something, I think it makes sense for me to say, \u201cOkay. I don\u2019t forgive you.\u201d A theory of apologies that has nothing to say about when apologies should be accepted would appear to be incomplete. Debtors don\u2019t get to unilaterally decide how much debt to write in their ledger.<\/p>\n

Limited Liability Is Not a Gift From Debtors to Creditors<\/h2>\n

Pace calls himself as \u201ca limited-liability-jokester\u201d, and characterizes his stance as \u201callow[ing] [him] to take risks while assuring people that\u2014in expectation\u2014they won\u2019t be worse off for interacting with me.\u201d The metaphor mixes a partly-correct understanding of limited liability<\/a> with a deep misconception.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t afford under unlimited liability<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The part about assuring other people that they won\u2019t be worse off for interacting with the limited entity is wrong, though. It\u2019s the other way around: limited liability is about keeping things off<\/em> one\u2019s ledger of debts, such that \u201capologizing\u201d for bad business decisions doesn\u2019t mean becoming homeless. Dealing with a limited rather than an unlimited company is riskier<\/em> to counterparties, not safer, and that risk needs to be priced in, even if it\u2019s still worth it for limited liability companies to exist (because the alternative is the companies not existing).<\/p>\n

Insincere Apologies Are Fake, Not Supererogatory<\/h2>\n

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\u2019s not the case that you should have done better and you\u2019re not promising to do better in the future.<\/p>\n

Pace\u2019s position would make sense if the act of apologizing, of \u201cputting things on one\u2019s ledger,\u201d 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<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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\u2019re offering, but in the absence of a credible<\/em> commitment to improve one\u2019s behavior, it\u2019s hard to see why the wronged party should care. Claims about \u201ca lot of social capital with you that they can spend in other ways\u201d can only substitute if it\u2019s true<\/em> that they can spend it in other ways, and it\u2019s just really suspicious for the purported social capital to not be spendable on improving the behavior! That\u2019s the reason Pace\u2019s comrade only apologizes when he knows he did something wrong and can promise to do better\u2014not out of stinginess, but to keep the ledger meaningful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOJACK: Hey, I wanted to talk to you about\u2014you know\u2014I feel bad about what happened. HERB: So, you\u2019re apologizing. BOJACK: Yes. I\u2019m sorry. HERB: Okay. I don\u2019t forgive you. BOJACK: Herb, I said I\u2019m sorry. HERB: Yeah. And I do … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2486"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2486"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2490,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2486\/revisions\/2490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}