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Comment by zozbot234 | Hacker News Reader

The Life Pro Tip should be to avoid mistakes in the first place. An apology is an express acknowledgement that you've screwed up that first part, for the avoidance of doubt; hence, it is best kept short and to the point. "Apologizing" simply has no meaning otherwise.

That's why you see people often saying things like "I'm sorry that you seem offended" and the like. It's a way of clearly stating that you don't think an apology is called for in the first place, without being outright insulting or burning bridges in the process.

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> That's why you see people often saying things like "I'm sorry that you seem offended" and the like. It's a way of clearly stating that you don't think an apology is called for in the first place, without being outright insulting or burning bridges in the process.

Nah it's blatantly insulting for anyone who can hear and has half a brain.

It's not an acceptable "apology" if you even want to call it that. It only proves that whoever said that is self absorbed, tone deaf, and not someone worth interacting or doing business with as they're only looking out for their own bottomline and saving face.

In my experience, people are generally offended over minor stuff that shouldn't bother them. I rarely apologize for offending people because I think they're in the wrong/I just don't care.

That’s often called a non-pology and is considered a dick move. Everyone knows what you’re doing and saying and it only serves to make you look like a fool.

This seems logically incoherent to me. Maybe I’m reading it wrong. But anyway here’s my version:

Avoid making mistakes that harm others. Be aware that you will make some anyway, and you won’t always recognise them as mistakes at the time. (If you take pride in having a spotless record, you’re liable to deceive yourself.) And when, on reflection, you realise you have harmed someone by mistake, figure out what you can do to 1) fix the harm and 2) prevent it happening again. And then tell them this plan in a way that commits you to it. That’s an apology. This way you make fewer and fewer harmful mistakes over time. The idea that someone can just “avoid mistakes in the first place” to avoid needing to apologise is dangerously lacking in humility, in my opinion.

It's not about taking pride or lacking in humility, but simply about not considering it "normal" to screw things up. If you don't think of screwups as something "everyone does anyway", fixing them and making damn sure they won't reoccur becomes second nature. You don't need more than a simple apology, because everything else is implied and a spoken commitment would be meaningless anyway.

What I’m not getting is how you get from “making damn sure screwups won’t reoccur” to “you don’t need more than a simple apology” when a screwup occurs. These seem like opposing sentiments.

My principles aren’t contingent on how other people feel. I don’t accept “never hurt feelings” as a moral imperative so it’s not something I’d apologize over alone. That’s not to say that violating my principles couldn’t also hurt feelings, it often does. Also, from a getting cooperation perspective hurting feelings can have pretty low utility. But imprudent and immoral are different.

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