“The Financial Ledger Theory of Apologies” by Ben Pace

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. [...] --- First published: June 17th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xhePNvxamTKPcobhB/the-financial-ledger-theory-of-apologies --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.