Content note: this is written as part of a daily writing challenge for myself.

I have a comrade in rationalist event organizing, who once explained his theory of apologies. He said if you hurt someone, it only makes sense to apologize if you should have known better. If, looking back, you see that you should have run different heuristics, or followed different policies, and you had enough information to know it at the time, then you were in the wrong, and should apologize.

Sometimes you have to make difficult decisions. Perhaps it doesn't make financial sense to reliably support some niche diet at your conference (like keto, or kosher). Perhaps you have to kick everyone out of the venue early because the venue charges crazy rates past 10pm. You make the tradeoffs as best you can, and assuming you stand by them, it's still making a great event and you shouldn't feel bad about that. He recommends against apologizing if you are not going to change your behavior going forward.

I replied that this analysis is sorely lacking.

In thinking about ethics, a frame I've gotten a lot of mileage from, is by analogy to a financial ledger. If you go into a shop and break something, you have to pay for it. They had something, you imposed costs on them that can be estimated as the cost of the value of whatever you broke, you can make them whole by paying for it.

Criminal courts can be thought of as analogous to this. With many costs imposed on people, you cannot be made whole, but we have come up with prices for them that you can pay, that at least incentivizes the right behavior. For misdemeanors this is often literally a fine, for more serious crimes, you can't undo the hurt, but your debt to society is paid in prison time.

Most costs people can impose on each other are not prosecuted by any court of law. Being annoying, for one. The analogy here is to having a ledger that tracks these costs. Sometimes we have pre-agreed rules about what is admissible as a cost, and who pays for it. That's what criminal law is substantially about. Sometimes cultural norms determines these things. If you see your friend across the street and shout to get their attention, people might be annoyed by the shouting, but can do little about it. If you do the same in a library, people will be annoyed at you, and you may be asked to leave.

But sometimes an individual 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."

I think this is often the case when the person is inviting you to take a risky venture with them. This can be literally the case, as in a business venture where the founder is asking people to quit their jobs and/or invest capital, he is saying that even if it goes poorly, he will take personal responsibility for them not being worse off than before they joined. This can also be the case in other risks. "Come camping with me. I know you're concerned you won't have fun, but I am assuring you that I will take responsibility for your bad weekend if you don't have a good time. I will make it up to you somehow."

It is often the case that you want to be the sort of person who assures people they won't be worse off for interacting with you. Personally, I like saying things that make people laugh. Often I take social risks in the attempt. Maybe the risk is that I will just look very silly; maybe the risk is that it's bringing up something dark and unpleasant that will worsen people's mood; sometimes the risk is that it will be taken as mean.

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.

This allows me to take risks while assuring people that—in expectation—they won't be worse off for interacting with me.

(One could think of me as a limited-liability-jokester.)

This move of taking risks and putting other people's costs on one's own ledger, is constantly happening. Often when I impose a cost on someone, I apologize. 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.

Taking the costs you impose on other people on your ledger is part of what it means to be an upstanding citizen. We can't always ensure that we don't cause other people problems, but we can promise to clean up for ourselves afterwards, or at least to mark it in some more abstract concept of social capital.

(Analogous to how I don't give the local supermarket any goods or services in exchange for food, and instead give them some more abstract concept of financial capital.)

(Also known as 'money'.)

To conclude, let us return to my comrade's theory of apologies.

In the financial ledger analogy for social capital, an apology is an acceptance of a cost to someone else, as being stored on your ledger.

My comrade says that you should only take the cost on your ledger if you could have and should have avoided imposing the cost. If you had the information to avoid imposing the cost, and will change your behavior in the future to avoid imposing the cost, then you are definitely responsible for the cost you have imposed so far, and are in that person's debt.

But I disagree this is the only appropriate time to take the costs on your ledger.

The most common reason is that you want to assure people that you being in their lives is not going to cause them costs in expectation. You take the costs you naturally impose on your ledger.

Another reason is because you want them to join you on a risky venture of some sort, and you want to make assurances that limit their downsides. You aren't promising to make them whole, but you are saying that you will either try to or else they will have a lot of social capital with you that they can spend in other ways.

Taking responsibility for the costs you impose on others, and being a responsible leader of risky ventures, are natural and good, but will sometimes lead you to be responsible for bad outcomes you couldn't prevent and cannot rectify.

And that's a good time to say you're sorry.