“Not invoking the right social API call” feels like a clarifying way to think about a specific conversational pattern that I’ve noticed that often leads to a person (e.g. me) feeling like they’re virtuosly giving up ground, but not getting any credit for it.
It goes something like:
Alice: You were wrong to do X and Y.
Bob: I admit that I was wrong to do X and I’m sorry about it, but I think Y is unfair.
discussion continues about Y and Alice seems not to register Bob’s apology
It seems like maybe bundling in your apology for X with a protest against Y just doesn’t invoke the right API call. I’m not entirely sure what the simplest fix is, but it might just be swapping the order of the protest and the apology.
It also helps to dedicate a complete sentence (or multiple sentences if the action you’re apologizing for wasn’t just a minor mistake) to your apology. When apologizing in-person, you can also pause for a bit, giving your conversational partner the opportunity to respond if they want to.
When you immediately switch into the next topic, as in your example apology above, it looks like you’re trying to distract from the fact that you were wrong, and also makes it less likely your conversational partner internalizes that you apologized.
When you immediately switch into the next topic, as in your example apology above, it looks like you’re trying to distract from the fact that you were wrong
Yep. Reminds me of the saying “everything before the word ‘but’ is bullshit”. This is of course not universally true, but it often has a grain of truth. Relatedly, I remember seeing writing advice that went like “keep in mind that the word ‘but’ negates the previous sentence”.
I’ve made a habit of noticing my “but”s in serious contexts. Often I rephrase my point so that the “but” is not needed. This seems especially useful for apologies, as there is more focus on sincerity and reading between lines going on.
Words are a type of action, and I guess apologising and then immediately moving on to defending yourself is not the sort of action which signals sincerity.
Well technically since it does take energy and time to move the vocal chords, mouth, tongue, etc..., but it’s such a low cost action that even doing something as simple as treating someone to lunch will outweigh it by a hundred fold.
I think what I was thinking of is that words can have arbitrary consequences and be arbitrarily high cost.
In the apologising case, making the right social API call might be an action of genuine significance. E.g. it might mean taking the hit on lowering onlookers’ opinion of my judgement, where if I’d argued instead that the person I wronged was talking nonsense I might have got away with preserving it.
John’s post is about how you can gain respect for apologising, but it does have often have costs too, and I think the respect is partly for being willing to pay them.
It’s more that an apology is a signal; to make it effective, you must communicate that it’s a real signal reflecting your actual internal processes, and not a result of a surface-level “what words can I say to appear maximally virtuous” process.
So for instance, if you say a sentence equivalent to “I admit that I was wrong to do X and I’m sorry about it, but I think Y is unfair”, then you’re not communicating that you underwent the process of “I realized I was wrong, updated my beliefs based on it, and wondered if I was wrong about other things”.
I’m not entirely sure what the simplest fix is
A simple fix would be “I admit I was wrong to do X, and I’m sorry about it. Let me think about Y for a moment.” And then actually think about Y, because if you did one thing wrong, you probably did other things wrong too.
“Not invoking the right social API call” feels like a clarifying way to think about a specific conversational pattern that I’ve noticed that often leads to a person (e.g. me) feeling like they’re virtuosly giving up ground, but not getting any credit for it.
It goes something like:
It seems like maybe bundling in your apology for X with a protest against Y just doesn’t invoke the right API call. I’m not entirely sure what the simplest fix is, but it might just be swapping the order of the protest and the apology.
It also helps to dedicate a complete sentence (or multiple sentences if the action you’re apologizing for wasn’t just a minor mistake) to your apology. When apologizing in-person, you can also pause for a bit, giving your conversational partner the opportunity to respond if they want to.
When you immediately switch into the next topic, as in your example apology above, it looks like you’re trying to distract from the fact that you were wrong, and also makes it less likely your conversational partner internalizes that you apologized.
Yep. Reminds me of the saying “everything before the word ‘but’ is bullshit”. This is of course not universally true, but it often has a grain of truth. Relatedly, I remember seeing writing advice that went like “keep in mind that the word ‘but’ negates the previous sentence”.
I’ve made a habit of noticing my “but”s in serious contexts. Often I rephrase my point so that the “but” is not needed. This seems especially useful for apologies, as there is more focus on sincerity and reading between lines going on.
Typically people show genuine sincerity by their actions, not just by words…
So focusing on the ‘right social API calls’ seems a bit tangential.
Words are a type of action, and I guess apologising and then immediately moving on to defending yourself is not the sort of action which signals sincerity.
Well technically since it does take energy and time to move the vocal chords, mouth, tongue, etc..., but it’s such a low cost action that even doing something as simple as treating someone to lunch will outweigh it by a hundred fold.
I think what I was thinking of is that words can have arbitrary consequences and be arbitrarily high cost.
In the apologising case, making the right social API call might be an action of genuine significance. E.g. it might mean taking the hit on lowering onlookers’ opinion of my judgement, where if I’d argued instead that the person I wronged was talking nonsense I might have got away with preserving it.
John’s post is about how you can gain respect for apologising, but it does have often have costs too, and I think the respect is partly for being willing to pay them.
I think “API calls” are the wrong way to word it.
It’s more that an apology is a signal; to make it effective, you must communicate that it’s a real signal reflecting your actual internal processes, and not a result of a surface-level “what words can I say to appear maximally virtuous” process.
So for instance, if you say a sentence equivalent to “I admit that I was wrong to do X and I’m sorry about it, but I think Y is unfair”, then you’re not communicating that you underwent the process of “I realized I was wrong, updated my beliefs based on it, and wondered if I was wrong about other things”.
A simple fix would be “I admit I was wrong to do X, and I’m sorry about it. Let me think about Y for a moment.” And then actually think about Y, because if you did one thing wrong, you probably did other things wrong too.