(whispering, wheezing) kill me father, for i have read the comments
some of the content I’ve found most inspirational comes from high status people (the Dalai Lama, Sam Harris, etc)
Their mistake is not grokking contrition. An apology ought either to be contrite or to justify why contrition is impossible.
To be explicit, contrition is the part of an apology where the apologizing party promises to change something. Without contrition, apologies are worthless, since they do not amend any social contract.
What the author proposes instead is indeed “Machiavellian” and “hacking social APIs;” we should recognize it as a form of deceit or lie. They are clearly more interested in appearing to be decent than in improving society, and should be marked as confidence scammers.
their mistake, as usual, is not grokking that genuine human interactions might be ritualised, but are not rituals.
And indeed, the other crucial piece is that… apologizing isn’t a protocol with an expected reward function. I can just, not accept your apology. I can just, feel or “update my priors” howmever I like.
We apologize and care about these things because of shame. Which we have to regulate, in part through our actions and perspectives.
Why people feel the way they do and act the way do makes total sense when
one finally confronts your own vulnerabilitiessorry, builds an API and RL framework.deleted by creator
True, there’s value. But I think if you try to measure that value, it disappears.
A good postmorterm puts the facts on the table, and leaves the team to evaluate options. I don’t think any good postmorterm should have apologies or ask people to settle social conflicts directly. One of the best tools a postmorterm has is the “we’re going to work around this problem by reducing the dependency on personal relationships.”
Shame is a such an important concept, and something that I’ve felt - for a while now - that TREACLES/ARSECULTists get actively pushed away from feeling. It’s like everyone in that group practices justifying every single action they make - longtermists with the wellbeing of infinite imagined people, utilitarians with magic math, rationalists with 10,000 word essays. “No, we didn’t make a mistake, we did everything we could with the evidence we had, we have nothing to be sorry for.”
Like no, you’re not god, sometimes you just fuck up. And if you do fuck up and you want me to be able to care about you, I need to be able to sympathize with you by seeing that you actually care about your mistakes and their consequences like I would.
The original poster just can’t fathom the idea of losing something as precious as social status, and needs the apology to somehow be beneficial to him, instead of - y’know - the person they’re apologizing to. It’s just too shameful to lower yourself to someone else like that, he needs to be gaining ground as well. So weird.
I feel like there’s a total lack of grokking period. Using reductive phrasing like “social API” suggests that there are actual rules to human interaction we understand and can currently define. While there might be a semblance of provincial rules (take the notion of justice, imo tightly coupled with apologies, and see how it differs across the world), there’s nothing universal and certainly nothing that rises to the level of a fucking application programming interface.
Finally LW blogists have perfected the apologizing API from the Scott Alexander classic, stop talking like you are a robot.
updating…
face goes slack for a few seconds then returns to a polite smile
“My bad.”
jesus. this is korvax from the “no man’s sky”. korvax are uploaded efective altruists.
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I suspect that this is less about using language with which one’s audience is familiar to convey a message accurately, and more about making the message sound obviously right and affirming the smartness of the audience because Computer Words.
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Dont think they even need google scholar, I think various progressive groups have also talked about how to do a proper apology for a while.
But both are not first principles.
Jfc thank you
I totally agree
bro apologizing is like, a social API that the neural networks in our brains use to update status points
It’s funny that using computing terms like this actually demonstrates a lack of understanding of the computing term in question. API stands for Application Programming Interface - you’d think that if you stuck the word Social in front of that it would be easy to see that the Application Programming part means nothing anymore. It’s exactly like an API except it’s not for applications, it’s not programming, and it’s barely an interface.
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In the “Rationalist Apologetic Overtures” skill tree we got:
- Denying wrongdoing/incorrectness (cantrip)
- Accusing the other side of bad faith (cantrip)
- Mentioning own IQ (cantrip)
- Non apology (1st level) (e.g. I’m sorry you feel that way)
- Empty apology (3rd level)
- Insincere apology (5th level)
- Acknowledgement of individual experience outside of one’s own (7th level)
- Admission of wrongdoing/incorrectness (9th level)
- Genuine guilt (11th level)
- Actual complete apology (13th level)
- Admitting the other person is right (15th level)
The first footnote makes me want to give myself a lobotomy with a no. 2 pencil:
I wish to note here that Richard took this “as evidence that John would fail an intellectual turing test for people who have different views than he does about how valuable incremental empiricism is”. Of course I couldn’t just ignore an outright challenge to my honor like that, so I wrote a brief reply which Richard himself called “a pretty good ITT”.
If this guy doesn’t masturbate his successful polemicizing every 1.5 paragraphs, he’ll go into septic shock.
I’m proud of them for independently discovering the idea of “insincere apology”. Not to brag but I discovered this idea as a preteen. While the technique per se failed to prove itself as useful as I had expected, it proved a useful intermediate step in developing a more sophisticated model of other people as actual moral and social agents who could not always be fooled by magic incantations. On the other hand, I took inspiration from my peers to mold the crude form of insincere apology into a sarcastic tool for exhibiting disrespect towards contemptible people.
Deepest apologies to any rationalists who find my deliberate and unrepentant condescension towards them objectionable. I pwomise weally hawd not to do it again. 🥺
Love how the poster frames making an apology not as “the ethically and morally right thing to do” but as “this one weird trick will increase your karma on LW”
Normies go crazy for this one neat rationalist trick!
Finally, utilon maxing your apology api calls is entering the mainstream. Social status should trend upwards. Stonks!
