Episode 216: Oral Judgments

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist Dave Pizarro having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say and knowing my dad some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:17] I got two hard rules I live by, pop. I don't fuck with the devil. And I never do tag teams with blood relatives.

[00:00:55] Anybody can have a brain? You're a very bad man. I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston.

[00:01:17] Dave, this is so last month, but while I was off the grid, Richard Dawkins started a tweet storm by dissing Kafka's metamorphosis. Is he just trolling us at this point? I like to think that he was thinking of exactly us, that he had listened to the episode and

[00:01:33] he was like, fuck these guys, I'm gonna sub-tweet them. But wow, you were really off the grid. That feels like forever ago. Were you off the grid because Houston doesn't have power usually? No, I mean, that's not why.

[00:01:46] No, I was camping in Big Bend and there was no internet access or phone. See the things you miss? I know. This is why you shouldn't do that. But for reals, you didn't miss it, right? Doesn't it feel good to not be on the internet for a while?

[00:02:02] Oh my God, it's the best. It's so great. You just realize, oh, all this stuff that I do pretty much every day I don't actually care about. Yeah, it's true and it doesn't matter in any way to your life. Not at all, exactly.

[00:02:18] Whatever is in the news cycle. No, it doesn't matter at all. And the problem is I would like to live an internet life where I'm divorced from the news cycle, but I can nonetheless look at things that I want to look at.

[00:02:31] Like, you know, I was watching videos on lock picking because that's what I do. But then... You pick a lot of locks? I'm not good at it. I have a little lock picking kit.

[00:02:42] There's this guy named the lock picking lawyer who has this channel with millions of followers where all he does is pick locks and tell you how to do it. Do you like rob houses? Is this a guilty confession?

[00:02:53] I just break in and leave a note like I got in just so you know, I can get it. Any time I want, I can get in. I'm watching you. Sean, you close. Can I just read the Dawkins tweet though? Oh yeah.

[00:03:09] Were you aware of this when it happened? I was all over that cycle. Govges metamorphosis is called the major work of literature. Why? If it's science fiction, it's bad science fiction. If like Animal Farm, it's an allegory. An allegory of what?

[00:03:24] Scholarly answers range from pretentious Freudian to far-fetched feminist. He's looked at a lot of the scholarship on the metaphor of this clearly. I don't get it. Where are the emperors' clothes? To even think that there's an answer, it's so ridiculous. It's just art. Like fucking...

[00:03:42] Who asks that of art? It's the fundamental misunderstanding of art. I would pay though to see like a master class of Richard Dawkins discussing the great works of literature. Yeah. That would be amazing.

[00:03:56] It would have a lot of unintentional comedy, much like what we're going to discuss in our opening segment. Sorry, we were having an offline conversation about segues. Tamler just hit me with that.

[00:04:10] Yeah, I mean I don't know if you have anything more to say about the Dawkins thing. All I was going to do was be kind of like snobby and say like really Animal Farm? Like that's his example. If like Animal Farm it's an allegory.

[00:04:25] That was one of my favorite replies to this. Antoine Wilson, I don't know who that is, but if it's a rock opera where are the songs? If it's a railroad track what train would run on it? If it's a cheesecake which part is the crust? Yeah.

[00:04:43] But it's art, that's the thing and if you can't understand it, if you can't come up with a really tidy like... I mean we were saying this I think on our episode right?

[00:04:51] Like that we wanted to stay away from like this is the definitive interpretation of the metaphor. Right, and if you can't find value, you know, I don't think everybody has to agree that it's a great work of art. But for other reasons.

[00:05:07] And these are your people. These are your people. You're the scientismist or whatever like, scientism... You're like this is the kind of company that you keep. If it's not rock hard science then it doesn't exist and it has no value. No ontological status.

[00:05:29] Let's just remind our listeners that you worshiped at the feet of the new atheists for a while and then you went in the complete opposite direction, you know, decrying them. I'm a man of balance. I'm a man of reasonableness. You know, I like art, I like science.

[00:05:45] Alright, let's talk about what is undeniably a great piece of art. Published in Personality and Individual Differences. Good journal right? It's okay. Oral sex as infidelity detection.

[00:05:58] We should say by the way so that you don't have to splice it in what we're talking about in the main segment. Yeah, go ahead. We're going to be talking about apologies. Something we wanted to talk about for a long time but we're finally getting around to apologies.

[00:06:09] So this is an evolutionary psychology paper. Maybe the last one we'll ever discuss because I don't think we can top this. Like that's it, it's the end of an era for us I think. This kind of evolutionary psychology has just taken to its logical conclusion.

[00:06:24] Don't underestimate the power. No, but this is what makes me extra mad. Is that evolutionary psychology, like there is some good stuff. And whenever we criticize it, people who are like these evolutionary defenders are like why are you being so unfair?

[00:06:44] But like this is just a terrible, terrible study. But it is so funny. It is one of the funniest things I've read in a very long time. This is like up there with the Confederacy of Dunces. So the title again is somehow I didn't write it.

[00:07:03] Oral sex as infidelity detection. I don't know, you want to describe it? Sure, it's a very brief paper. We'll put a link to it. The argument is that well look, oral sex exists and specifically conilingus exists from men doing it to women.

[00:07:22] So obviously there is an adaptive explanation for why it exists. And what might that be? Well, if you know evolution and you know that there is a very, very clear function that it might serve.

[00:07:39] And that is for the male to use as a way to detect the sperm of competitors. So on this account there is a lot of sperm competition in the natural world where multiple males are having sex with the same female.

[00:07:59] Whoever's sperm gets in there deeper and can swim faster is going to win. And so presumably mammals have adapted all sorts of strategies both physiological and perhaps psychological to deal with this competition. Let me just read the quote. It's like a cream pie or whatever.

[00:08:47] Providing cues to a woman's recent sexual history. That's the hypothesis that they set out to test.

[00:08:55] Yeah, now when Neuroskeptic tweeted this out, the evolutionary psychologist Jeff Miller responded with an accusation that he was mocking this just because it's sex and he was basically sex negative saying, ooh, it's gross. And I just want to say that's not why this is ludicrous to me.

[00:09:15] But like, okay, let's just unpack this a little bit. If this is true, you have to have, I think, a theory as to what would happen if a man did detect rival sperm.

[00:09:29] And you have to have some theory that there is some recognition that there is rival sperm in the woman. Right. That's the part that I got hung up. They completely underspecify what's supposed to happen once you taste the funky spunk of like your best friends, you know, inside.

[00:09:45] Well, no, not that, but just like how are you're supposed to really know? Assuming it's not like, you know, right afterwards, right?

[00:09:52] Well, this is the thing with the sperm competition theory is that it has to be under conditions where females have had sex in close temporal proximity or else it doesn't matter. So this has to be, yeah. This was just to detect infidelity in general.

[00:10:09] No, it's literally like that's why they say recent sexual history. It has to be there within the time that the sperm could be doing something. Right.

[00:10:20] So there are these theories like that the penis is shaped like as a mushroom shape because it confers the advantage of scooping out rival semen. Right. So, so, but all of those really require that the the female be copulating within a matter of hours today with other men.

[00:10:39] So then what do you do though? So like what goes on here? I would think that you would need a conscious awareness that you've detected the sperm of somebody else. And as far as I know, that doesn't happen.

[00:10:53] But then also like you would still have sex with the woman because it's better than nothing, right? That's exactly. That's why I thought like it has to be that it's the goal is more long term here is to note. Oh, I have a cheating woman.

[00:11:08] That means I might be a cuckold and raise a child that doesn't have my genes and that's yeah. But then but then there's no chance at really detecting this in in the vagina. Well, that's right. Yeah. So maybe we're phrasing this in terms of a dilemma.

[00:11:23] So, so okay. But but here's the way that they tested because intriguing but probably wrong like I feel about the theory that theorizing like I don't I don't find that it's a compelling.

[00:11:33] No, I don't understand it because like you said like if you don't register it consciously then you would have to register it unconsciously. Yeah. And therefore what like right? So here's the. Yeah. So like a lot of adaptations are obviously non conscious.

[00:11:46] So you know it just so happens that whatever you know like we behave in a certain way I suppose but like this one seems to require some level of awareness. But here's one way in which I can see like theorizing around this.

[00:11:58] So suppose that you do detect it at some level like pheromone, scent, whatever you don't consciously encode it but there is something sort of niggling in you and you break up soon afterwards. But you don't know why but like you just stop liking her as much. Yeah, right.

[00:12:13] So that I would get but that's more than the long term thing. No, no, no, it still requires the sperm competition thing still requires the long term thing. Still requires the presence of sperm.

[00:12:23] But you're breaking up could be in the long term but it would be like that you consistently are tasting something and you're encoding it somehow. So how long are we talking about here? At what point do you stop being able to recognize?

[00:12:35] I will personally say right now that I have never to my knowledge detected the scent of ribosemen. Yeah, so my understanding is that it can be up to a few days that sperm are doing their work.

[00:12:51] So like five days or something like that but that doesn't necessarily mean that there is scent and that there's seminal fluid that you would taste. But anyway, this isn't even the paper. No. This is the hypothesis that has motivated the paper.

[00:13:07] Yeah, and I actually find the methodology to be the more ludicrous part of the paper because like again, like I might be a disbeliever in the hypothesis but then I'm like reading it and I'm like, oh, I wonder how they're going to test this.

[00:13:18] And so here is a summary. In the present study we test the infidelity detection hypothesis of oral sex. If cunnilingus functions to detect rival semen, then men at greater recurrent risk of sperm competition will report greater interest in performing cunnilingus on the partner, prediction one.

[00:13:37] And will perform cunnilingus for a longer duration to better detect rival semen, prediction two. How long do you have to do it? You think to be able to detect rival semen. Yeah, I don't know. It's an important question.

[00:13:53] So here's, so the key part of this is men at greater recurrent risk of sperm competition. So that's basically saying if their partners are actually like the chances that they're fucking other dudes is higher than these guys are going to want to pussy more.

[00:14:11] And the way that they operationalize this is by asking the men how attractive they think their partner is or how attractive other people think their partner is. So I'm sorry to spoil this all this build up.

[00:14:23] But the finding is men who find their partners more attractive are more likely to want to go down on them. That's the finding. That's it. If you have a hotter girlfriend, you're going to be more into going down. Yeah.

[00:14:44] So, you know, and they asked about relationship satisfaction and controlled. So the really the only explanation for this. So, okay. So the obvious to me, the obvious explanation is, well, if you're more attracted to somebody, you want to go down on them more right?

[00:15:02] And so they might mention this as a possible alternative theory, but then in the discussion when they're mentioning alternative. No, no, the alternate that's where this goes into like pure genius is the alternate explanation.

[00:15:14] An alternative explanation for the current results is that kind of Lingus facilitates sperm retention via orgasm and that men at greater recurrent risk of sperm competition may be particularly likely to perform kind of Lingus women who receive oral sex are more likely to experience orgasm at a given copulatory event than our women who do not receive oral sex.

[00:15:34] And women retain more sperm when they experience an orgasm temporarily near their partner's ejaculation. So for that to be true, you have to have fucked her first and then gone down on her. And I am willing to put money on that. That's not the usual order of things.

[00:15:50] No. And also if you do do it before you copulate with them, you're just pushing that rival sperm up in them. If you make it.

[00:15:57] But then they conclude this alternate explanation with by saying the sperm retention hypothesis, which is the rival hypothesis, but not the infidelity detection hypothesis. Depends on conilingus resulting in orgasm. Future research therefore may be able to disentangle these hypotheses by securing data on whether conilingus resulted in orgasm.

[00:16:22] That's that's the that's brilliant. That's art right there. Like Richard Dawkins wouldn't understand this way better than Animal Farm. Why like why isn't the alternative hypothesis that like men who are who find their partner more attractive want to go down and why?

[00:16:40] Like how is that not the first like who who reviewed this paper that that wasn't like just the review. It's this is not a pay to publish journal.

[00:16:50] Okay, another explanation for the current results is that men perform conilingus on their partner to quote unquote sexually satiate her sexually dissatisfied. Why is that?

[00:17:00] Well, sexually dissatisfied women are more susceptible to infidelity and the frequency with which men perform conilingus on their partner is positively related to their partner's sexual satisfaction. Therefore, conilingus may be a tactic menus to minimize the likelihood that their partner will be sexually unfaithful.

[00:17:16] Future research might investigate whether sperm competition risk predicts men's interest in and time spent performing conilingus after statistically controlling for their partner's sexual satisfaction. By the way, like I love that.

[00:17:28] Like just the codes of this are future research might investigate whether sperm competition risk, which by that they just mean whether your girlfriend is hot or not. That's all according to you right? According to you. Right. But that's how they describe just like attractiveness. Right.

[00:17:50] Not to mention like the finding that if you're in a satisfied relationship, you actually rate your partner as more attractive than other people do. Like no, that couldn't be. This explanation unlike the other one like makes some sense. Like it's probably like wrong but not entirely wrong.

[00:18:07] You know, like, you know, yeah, if you sexually satisfy your partner, then they're less likely to leave you and like, you know, I would say forms of satisfaction. Absolutely. If you emotionally satisfy her, she looks like a baby. Here. Okay.

[00:18:24] So here's another reason that I'm disappointed in this.

[00:18:26] If their hypothesis is true, then what you should find is that these men who are in relationships with more attractive women or whatever the partner risk, whatever measure they're using ought to want to engage more in conilingus but not other sexual acts. Right.

[00:18:44] So if your hypothesis, you just want to hook up more with your partner because you're attracted to them. So like they didn't go, they didn't bother to ask like how often do you finger like ass play. Right. Do you lick her booty?

[00:18:58] You know, like, no, no, they didn't ask any of that, which you would think would be crucial to their high boss. But I'm sure you would think. This is as they note the first study to test an evolutionary explanation for oral sex in humans.

[00:19:13] They say at least the results support the hypothesis that conilingus may function to detect female infidelity because they will be more likely to eat out their partner and also do it for a longer period of time. Yeah.

[00:19:29] So I think explain oral sex that women give to men, although I find that as a much more plausible mechanism to detect cheating. Yes. Right. Exactly. I think the big question though that they just never even address is how this would like actually work.

[00:19:45] If we're going with the absurd idea that there has to be some evolutionary explanation, just one of these standard like Evo psych explanations for conilingus, like there needs to they need to connect the dots in terms of like why this is beneficial.

[00:20:00] So like to and how it then functions to motivate more adaptive behavior and there's just none of that. Right. So does is there an increase in jealousy? Like what like is the behavior of like, yeah, exactly.

[00:20:17] What is the behavior if it's functional at all has to have some impact on the behavior of one or other the other person. So yeah, they never lay that out.

[00:20:26] I find it frustrating to this kind of approach to evolutionary psychology where everything that exists must have a function. And I feel like it's often sort of thrown back at the critic to say, are you saying that human sexuality isn't a product of evolution?

[00:20:42] Where it's like, no, I'm like, you don't have to say that to think that there are aspects, there are ton of aspects of human sexuality that clearly serve no function that could be the side effect of something that adapted, could be a completely novel invention, right? Like obviously,

[00:20:55] Culturally shaped in ways that you couldn't analyze like this. Right. There are cultures in the world. No, but it's like, oh, so you're a creationist. You don't think there's an evolution explanation for.

[00:21:07] Yeah, no, it's sad, but this is the kind of work that gives evolutionary psychology just just a terrible reputation. And you know, like it's just embarrassing.

[00:21:16] Like you can't have a field which is already teetering on the edge of being like a legitimate subject of constant ridicule, like to have all these things being published, you know? Yeah.

[00:21:31] It turns into, this happens with a lot of little subdomains of research where you can have just this in group of people who are all working on like, they have a really similar approach and they just sort of like big up each other and accept each other's papers.

[00:21:45] And before you know it, it's sort of insulated from the rest of the same, well, some degree another same world. I just want to mention by the way. This is a lot of academia. Yeah, it's not just evolutionary psychology at all.

[00:21:57] So moral development, when I started studying moral judgment in grad school, a ton of what was being done was in one little corner of the world. Like this is like Neo-Kohlbergian moral development people, they were using the same methods doing the same kinds of studies.

[00:22:13] There's just it gets a little incestuous and ideas sort of can get bad that way. I just wanted to read though this.

[00:22:21] I spent, I don't know why I was just intrigued by some, I was like, I want to know what these references that they're using to build this hypothesis are. So there is the sentence you read where he said this hypothesis was inspired by research.

[00:22:37] I think you read it on non-humans documenting the increased frequency of male genital licking and sniffing during female asterisks. As well as one study in humans documenting that men rate vaginal fluid as more pleasant smelling when the woman is at peak fertility.

[00:22:52] So they cite a paper from 1975, Doty Ford, Freddie and Huggins, and I was like, what is this paper? How did they do that? I went and looked it up. This was published in science, like just hop journal, just science.

[00:23:07] And it was sort of interesting but here's what they did. They actually had women wear tampons throughout the month and had both men and women sniff those tampons.

[00:23:22] They had like 400 men and like 400 women, if I'm recalling correctly, sniffed the tampons and they broke up like the women's cycle into like 14 chunks or something like that. And here's what they found.

[00:23:37] They rated the scale was like negative five to positive five, with positive five being pleasant, negative five being unpleasant. No period during the month did it ever even get to the pleasant. It never got above the negative numbers.

[00:23:51] And so them citing this as saying one study in humans documenting that men rate vaginal fluid is more pleasant smelling when the women is at peak fertility. I thought you're not supposed to have a tampon in if you... Well this was in 1975.

[00:24:02] So there was just, you could do whatever you wanted. Like half of them got toxic shocks and you know, like... You could just put a couple, get toxic shock, exactly. But that was when you could just put people in jail for two weeks. That's right.

[00:24:18] Like some videos and like sexually humiliate them for two weeks. It was fine. Those were the days. This, this is in science. I like, but it is really funny and it at no point is intentionally funny. Like it's played so straight. Yeah.

[00:24:37] There's no recognition that like look we're talking about sex and even making some kind of joke or just some kind of recognition that this is going to sound weird. But it's just... Why don't like Peter Bogosian and Helen Plocke-Rose and James Lansing?

[00:24:53] Why don't they do fake articles on this? You know? And like this could be a parody. Like I mean, they would have had to fake the data but... That wouldn't fit their agenda. No. Alright. Alright.

[00:25:10] When we come back, we will talk about apologies, the philosophy and the psychology. This episode of Very Bad Wizards is brought to you once again by BetterHelp at betterhelp.com.

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[00:27:39] Welcome back to Very Bad Wizards. This is the time that we always like to take a moment and thank all of our listeners who get in touch with us, who contact us, who write to criticize us or sometimes to thank us.

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[00:33:39] If you have any ideas for what you would want in that tier within reason let us know. Nothing that might be like an infidelity detection or anything like that. Okay. And so I think I replied to someone's tweet that's how I know when Tamler's been on another podcast.

[00:33:56] Yeah, so thank you to everybody for your support. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Oh I'm so very, very, very, very, fuck you! I'm... I'm very, very, I'm so very, very, very, very, very, very. Alright well let's get to our topic for today which is apologies.

[00:34:33] This is something that we've been like a topic that we've been wanting to talk about for a while and I think we're... you know it's interesting. It has a really deep psychology. There are very interesting ethical dimensions to it.

[00:34:49] It touches popular culture in all sorts of ways, interesting ways. But it is hard to find a lot of literature that is focused on it so I don't know maybe that's why we haven't talked about it yet but we found some good stuff, right?

[00:35:04] Yeah. I think there's like sort of an increase in interest in psychology maybe in philosophy as well. I was more surprised... I knew that there was a little bit of work in psychology on apologies. I was more surprised at how little there appears to be in philosophy.

[00:35:19] Which it strikes me as actually one of the areas of philosophy where you act like where it could actually matter. As a topic for applied ethics there are few things that would actually I think have an impact in people's day-to-day lives

[00:35:38] as clearly as sort of talking about what a good apology is and what isn't. You know this is something you find that's common in philosophy or analytic philosophy these days. I remember one of my colleagues, Justin Coates saying to me,

[00:35:53] there's so much literature on promises but how often do you make promises to people? But there's so much philosophical literature on it even though it's something that we rarely do and we understand pretty well when we do do it.

[00:36:07] But then something like being a good friend, there's so little about that which is like a huge deal in our day-to-day lives. Something that we face, something that we value, something that we're aspiring towards. And I think apologies is another example of that.

[00:36:24] There is some stuff on it but a lot of it is generated by this one philosopher, Nick Smith, who wrote a book called I Was Wrong. And at least in the intro to that book he claims it's the first real treatise on apologies in philosophy since like 1180.

[00:36:39] Yeah, my monities. Oh good, I never know how to pronounce that. My monities is that how you say it? Yeah, my monities. There are other things that I think, so I think one now that public apologies are so common, what with social media,

[00:36:54] there's almost a subgenre of YouTube video of which is like the YouTube apology. We had the Me Too movement where a ton of people had to issue apologies. I think that it's more common to see them and scrutinize them.

[00:37:07] Everything from corporate apologies, just apologies on Twitter that people offer up. We're faced with a lot, like way more apologies than we would be if we were just living in it. Bean Dad apology, remember? Bean Dad apologies.

[00:37:21] And then the woman who said, here's why I don't accept Bean Dad's apology. A threat. And it was just like, just some random person not accepting the apology of some random person. So yes, we're in a stage where apologies, the meaning has been deluded a little bit.

[00:37:40] There's also for me, like an academic interest, it hits a kind of a sweet spot for its moral issues about moral responsibility. Because as pointed out in the article that you shared with me on apologies and Hamlet,

[00:37:57] apologies often are sort of on this, they're in this sort of neat little nexus of claiming responsibility for a wrong that you did, but asking for it to be not taken as an offense anymore.

[00:38:10] Like a request for forgiveness can be paired sort of at odds with the admission of guilt, like the confession, at least according to my actions. So that's interesting because there is a philosopher that tried to actually on that basis say that there's a paradox of apologies,

[00:38:29] which is that you're on the one hand accepting blame, but on the other hand, asking for forgiveness. I think though that like the forgiveness part is not a necessary aspect of apologies.

[00:38:43] Like it would be nice to be forgiven, but a lot of the time when you're apologizing, especially if it's for a serious wrong, you don't expect necessarily to be forgiven, but you want to apologize anyway.

[00:38:57] Yeah. And in fact, like I would argue that the better apologies are ones that don't request forgiveness. They don't have like this instrumental goal on the part of the apologizer.

[00:39:08] Right. Because that's part of it. We'll talk more about this, but that's part of I think understanding what you've done to the person that you're apologizing to, which is like you don't expect them to be able to forgive you.

[00:39:19] Like that you understand that what you did was damaging in a way that they might not be able to get over just because you said, right, sorry, wait, are you not over it? I said sorry.

[00:39:31] Right. And when you do that, that's not that that's not a good apology. So we looked at like two kinds of literature, some of the philosophy on it and there's some good philosophy on it.

[00:39:42] In particular, one paper by Nick Smith and another by Andrew Escobedo called Unsincere Apologies, Saying Sorry in Hamlet. And these just talk about what are the characteristics, the features of an apology it doesn't get into.

[00:40:01] In fact, both authors reject the idea that the goal here is to say when something is an apology and when isn't it like some sort of necessary conditions or sufficient conditions. They're not trying to do that.

[00:40:14] They're just talking about like features of apologies, dimensions of it and what makes a good one and so forth. And then some psych research on which I think is interesting why apologizing is so hard or what are the barriers or obstacles to apology? Yeah.

[00:40:33] Which I think is another interesting question that the philosophical literature doesn't deal with that much. Right, right. The the the role of the person who was transgressed upon like is it's interesting that that one paper by Corinna Schumann.

[00:40:47] It's a review paper. We'll put a link to it that deals with that. Like I hadn't seen that really in even in the apology literature on in psychology.

[00:40:57] I was going to say, yeah, so I actually think that there is a bit of a paradox in some apologies, but we can get to that.

[00:41:04] But I really did like the Nick Smith article. So he had so why don't we talk about that what he calls a categorical apology? I don't know why he calls that. Yeah, you would think that it had some kind of connection to like content.

[00:41:19] I guess it does in a in a distant sense. But yeah, let's talk about some of the features of it corroborated factual record is the first one which is so a categorical apology.

[00:41:30] He says will corroborate a detailed factual record of the event salient to the injury reaching agreement among the victim offender and sometimes the community regarding what transpired.

[00:41:42] He says such a record will often include honest accounts of the mental states of the apologizer at the time of the offense when such information would prove relevant. So I think this is a really important one.

[00:41:54] This is what I think maybe a lot of apologizers don't emphasize enough. He is just saying exactly what happened and what your role in his was.

[00:42:04] Yeah, it's a huge part of what people get wrong and it matters a great deal because the minute you your account of what happened is different than whatever the victim is. The apologies just on those grounds I think falls flat. Right.

[00:42:24] And there is there is some research on from Roy Balmeister actually from the late 90s.

[00:42:31] It's one of the I think the more interesting papers I didn't share with you, but it was basically showing that like people's memory of transgressions is very different like from victim to perpetrator, which is totally right.

[00:42:42] So like I you know you can screw the event differently remember it differently and to get on the same page about what you're apologizing about. Especially because it matters like the severity of the the offense matters. Right.

[00:42:54] Like if I minimize it and I'm like well remember that time I kind of disjunior like no you fucking insulted me in front of everybody like.

[00:43:01] And also like I think if you are wronged, there is a nagging suspicion that you have that maybe you know, like you're overreacting or maybe, you know, like you misinterpreted something or maybe it's you that's the one that's.

[00:43:18] Somehow like misjudge the situation and the reason this is so important is because it dispels those natural doubts that you might feel when when you feel wronged. You know what I mean?

[00:43:32] Yeah, I think one of the worst kinds of apologies is one where you're sort of implying that the person is overreacting.

[00:43:43] And I think that happens a lot where where you're you're saying like look I'm sorry and there's a hint of I'm sorry that you reacted so strongly to what you probably shouldn't have reacted that strongly to like.

[00:43:55] Now I don't know if the corroborated factual record can sort of settle whether you reacted appropriately but I think. But it's necessary. That's the goal. Yeah, it's necessary because one thing that I think does happen is well I think you're kind of crazy for having taken offense.

[00:44:11] Because I actually think what I did was different than what you think I did. That's like one way where it can go wrong. Yeah, so like here's a great example of this.

[00:44:18] So an apology that we've talked about quite a bit is Dan Harmon's apology that he made on his podcast to Megan Gans who was a writer on community when he was a showrunner there. And we can talk about that apology in more detail.

[00:44:34] But the reason why it was so effective and Megan Gans wrote that it was effective is she said what I didn't expect was the relief. I'd feel just hearing him say these things actually happened. I didn't dream it. I'm not crazy.

[00:44:49] Ironic that the only person who could give me that comfort is the one person I'd never ask. Right? So like that perfectly captures why this is so important is because you could see that.

[00:45:01] So this was a writer that had been sexually harassed by Dan Harmon in all sorts of different ways, not like an obvious he tried to like sexually assault her or anything like that.

[00:45:13] And I think like, you know, and this was one of the good things about me too is it sort of made people realize that no there is an actual problem here.

[00:45:22] But to get it from the person is like that is exactly what you need if you are the offended party.

[00:45:30] You need to know that these things happen and that you're not a little, you're not crazy because sometimes we do get a little crazy and feel insulted when we weren't insulted or wronged or harmed or something like that. Right?

[00:45:45] There's a lot I think that's really good about this Dan Harmon apology that I think can can can serve as sort of a template to talk about these good apologies.

[00:45:53] But yeah, before launching too much into something else we should go down the list a little bit more but yeah. Yeah. So I have the next one I have is acceptance of blame or responsibility. The offender accepts causal moral responsibility and blame for the harm at issue.

[00:46:11] So you know, you don't try to make excuses for what happened.

[00:46:16] Well it wasn't really me or you know if it was me like it was an accident or something like that you're not only accepting causal moral responsibility but also I think just blame like this is it was your fault that that you did it.

[00:46:30] And this is the part where I think people fuck this up a lot in a way that I kind of find hilarious because it's such an obvious error to make which is to kind of get defensive and like sneak in there that it really wasn't your fault.

[00:46:47] Which just the whole point the whole point is is in many ways accepting responsibility for what you did.

[00:46:53] And so to to imply that it was either excusable or justified or that you're not in fact blame worthy in the moral sense or in the causal sense is just skirting out of it which I always think surely they knew when they were doing that that they're undermining their own apologies like they can't some people just can't.

[00:47:15] They can't let it go. They just can't. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't know it was you. How could I know it was you? How could you expect me to guess? Stupid jerk. I mean what the fuck are you doing robbing your own house you asshole.

[00:47:32] You stupid stiff pompous English. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. So here's a great example. Kevin Spacy's. Oh man. Which is just a master class and just like the how not to apologize. But so here's the first sentence.

[00:47:50] So we should say he was accused for sexually molesting Anthony Rapp when he was 14 years old. Yeah, I owe rap this in serious apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior. And I am sorry for the feelings he described as being a bad person.

[00:48:10] I'm sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these years. It's like it's so funny like I just even though I'm sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these years. That just sounds like I mean he's making this up kind of.

[00:48:28] And and like I like I guess that there is just legal liability. It's like what what sometimes happens is that the lawyers say no, no you can't you shouldn't say this because you're admitting that it happened or whatever. Right. Then just don't apologize.

[00:48:44] I feel like yeah exactly a more subtle one is in that paper the sincere apologies paper the Tyson apology to Evander Holyfield after he bit off a chunk of his ear during one of their fights. Yeah. So here was his public apology.

[00:49:01] I am sorry you are a champion and I respect that.

[00:49:04] I am only saddened that this fight did not go further so that the boxing fans of the world might see for themselves who would come out on top when you but it in that first round accidentally or not I snapped in reaction and the rest is history.

[00:49:17] So I mean he's just not accepting blame in that statement right like he's saying he snapped which makes it sound completely involuntary he's saying it's kind of your fault because you had it but it me.

[00:49:28] And then he and then even when he says he's sorry he says he's sorry that the fight you know like didn't go further so that the fans could see that I would have kicked your ass essentially right.

[00:49:40] At like any time there's sort of like a qualifying statement after the I'm sorry it's like raises red flags but yeah this is clearly a non apology like it should other than that the words I am sorry are technically in there. It's just not an apology at all.

[00:49:57] Right. Right. I mean that was one of the things about Louis C. K. is which I think like we can go over but does meet some of the criteria or a lot of the criteria listed here.

[00:50:07] He didn't say I am sorry in it in like in that very explicit way so clearly that matters in a lot of cases but this is one where I am sorry is the only aspect. All right what's the next one.

[00:50:26] I have the list from the clear thinking article that you sent me.

[00:50:30] Oh OK so they're going to be titled something differently and more plain speak but the third one here is be the right person if an apology is about accepting responsibility of follows that the apology has to come from a person who can credibly take responsibility.

[00:50:43] This is tricky and I think this is one of the hardest aspects of public apologies and I think it does not come across as sincere almost in most cases to me which is when a corporation offers an apology for the actions of a corporation.

[00:50:59] I find it really hard to believe in the sincerity of any of their apologies. Hello I'm Tony Hayward president and CEO of BP our accidental drilling spill again in the Gulf is a tragedy that should have never happened.

[00:51:13] And to all those affected I want to say we are deeply sorry. We're sorry. We're sorry. Sorry.

[00:51:28] There's a great South Park where the CEO of BP apologizes for the oil spill and a series of commercials which was based on something that was real like he did these like commercials that were public apologies for BP and the oil spill.

[00:51:44] It's like what why like this is completely meaningless to us. Yeah I guess it's partly because we have no way of verifying their sincerity and we have every reason to think that it is insincere and written by their PR people and yeah. Yeah absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:52:05] So there's a nice distinction in this article on the effectiveness of public apologies for sexual misconduct. She's a recent one by Karen Schumann and Anna Dragada.

[00:52:15] And it's really in the context of the me too apologies but she draws a distinction I guess site somebody somebody who draws a distinction that there is there are one to one apologies like straight up interpersonal like Taylor apologizing to me for being an ass.

[00:52:33] And there's many to many apologies like intergroup and corporate apologies or like you know you could to governments might. Turkey to our yeah. Sorry about the genocide.

[00:52:44] There's the one to many apology which is also tricky which is the sexual misconduct having to apologize essentially to all people and the many to many ones because there's I don't you know like you said there are many reasons why to be cynical about corporate responsibility.

[00:53:01] But even just group apologies are tricky because there's no agent. There's no clear agent taking responsibility. Right.

[00:53:11] Yeah I think actually this feature is also geared towards something more personal like if you know your child harms another child like do you have the standing to apologize for your child or your brother or like we get listed.

[00:53:31] And then the listeners emailing us all the time offended by Dave's anti-semitism like do I have the standing to apologize to them on his behalf. No I think he has to do it. I'm a boy. Those just get shuffled.

[00:53:46] I have a Gmail filter anti-semitism complaints preparation for this I was watching like these YouTube videos where they were just listing bad apologies.

[00:53:57] And I don't know how good or bad this one was but there was a tweet that Burger King UK sent out that the tweet was women belong in the kitchen period.

[00:54:09] That was the answer and then they followed it up with a second pre where it was like just the whole you find out it's revealed that this was a comment about the ratio of women to men in the chef in kitchens how many chefs there are is.

[00:54:26] And then they were like this is a social injustice and they're trying to address it which I don't know how Burger King can address that.

[00:54:31] And it's clear that the Shmuck who wrote it is probably a social media intern but like the PR people are the ones apologizing so it's just clearly not. You see I think that one though there was a theory that this was all just completely planned.

[00:54:47] Well there's the cynicism. It's hard to take any actions by a corporation seriously. There's no way that some like you know social media intern decided like oh I'm just going to say on Burger King's Twitter official Twitter account women belong in the kitchen.

[00:55:04] They knew that this would be just so much free press. I think maybe that's the case but if so they definitely didn't clear it through PR because I can imagine in corporations the PR people being so upset that this happened.

[00:55:19] So they're the ones that need to be apologized to if anybody does. Yeah the next one is identification of each harm. Identifying each harm taking care not to conflate several harms into one general harm or to apologize only for a lesser offense or the wrong wrong.

[00:55:36] I don't know what he means by that but I think that the general idea here is and this is again something that Dan Harmon's apology did so well as it just goes through sort of bit by bit saying the different ways that his wife was being.

[00:55:48] His actions were harmful and that shows I think it shows in a sense that you're not like trying to sugar coat this at all. You are aware of what you did and you're aware of what you're apologizing for.

[00:56:03] Yeah yeah and I think here's one thought I was having as I was reading just this literature which is I don't think that it's it's a paradox in the way that we were talking about previously between forgiveness and apologizing.

[00:56:15] But there is an inherent tension I think I wanted to get your thoughts on this in that when you're apologizing for something you are admitting to having done something wrong.

[00:56:30] So at that point you know that it was wrong because you're apologizing you presumably know at this point but imagine that I just slapped you and then right afterwards I'm like I'm really sorry I know I shouldn't have slapped you.

[00:56:40] Like what immediate question would be like why didn't this great moral thinking of yours prevent you from slapping me in the first place. Like what has changed in your mental state and what can explain why you would knowingly do something bad.

[00:56:56] One of the things that Dan Harmon gets really right is that he explains how it's not that he was like you know this was a two year period where he was basically being an ass to this woman.

[00:57:06] It's not like had you asked Dan Harmon then it's not that he didn't realize that he was intentionally acting like it wasn't like he lost control that day.

[00:57:16] It wasn't that he didn't understand what harassment was so he goes by in a very detailed way explains what his mental state at the time was and what his mistakes were and how he realized them.

[00:57:28] He's not saying who would have known that this was wrong two years ago or whatever. He's actually saying I clearly knew something was wrong but I didn't really get a deep sense of how wrong it was until like this reflection.

[00:57:41] Like he went in depth to try to understand exactly what he did to the victim and he's so well focused on the victim make the person that he harmed and it's not kind of about him but it's explaining his understanding over time of how he affected that person.

[00:58:00] Yeah so there's something where he says like I wouldn't have been able to do this if I had fundamentally respected women.

[00:58:09] But I you know I didn't you know like I had the sort of outward appearance of somebody who did but there's no way that I could have done this for two years.

[00:58:18] Again I think that's like it's like part of this is just the victim isn't like being gaslighted here it's the opposite.

[00:58:25] It's like no no no like not only did I do it but I'm responsible for it and I'm actually like I was a bad person when I did it.

[00:58:34] Like these are really bad things you know whatever the paradox might be is that like why are you apologizing now how could you do it then.

[00:58:42] He's saying well right like you said I've changed as a person and then even that he's like but it's only like you're like I probably would have just let it go. It wouldn't for your tweet that like made me have to reckon with this.

[00:58:56] Yeah he also really goes into detail about the layers of justification and minimizing that he was engaging in right. Because like it actually is super rare and I think very difficult to actually not only say but believe that you were a bad person.

[00:59:15] Like I think most of us have this sense that like well but you know deep down I'm a good guy right right and and he's going into. He's explaining how he probably considered himself a good guy at the time and here's how I did it.

[00:59:28] I kept minimizing this. I kept like justifying it. I thought I didn't do it you know all that self deception at least how he sees it now he's explaining how it could happen.

[00:59:38] Yeah this is a real reckoning with but in that in every way validates like the feelings of the person who is wronged and I think this is exactly what you're looking for if in an apology is this sort of this recognition that you know the person acted in this way

[00:59:59] and a plausible story about how the person could have acted that way that's consistent with the fact that the person is apologizing now.

[01:00:05] Yeah so Dan Harmon sort of gives a moral journey he like lays out a moral journey that he went on and I do you know Megan Gantz is relief that she couldn't predict like I so get it when when you just so much of the time you just want.

[01:00:23] I find this interpersonally I just want someone to show that they understand like how I feel about it like I just want like yeah there's just an epistheological kind of way in which I'm like I just want you know.

[01:00:35] I want you to convey to me that you get why I'm feeling this way and it does feel like a relief when somebody acknowledges that.

[01:00:45] And it's the most infuriating thing and like this will happen like in you know like with me and Jen me and my wife and arguments is when it seems like you're talking about different like like you have a completely different understanding of what's just occurred

[01:01:01] and it's better if the person just says yes I did that but I'm like I'm not sorry like that's way better than they have a different understanding of what just occurred. Right yeah yeah it's so weird that that desire to be understood so deeply.

[01:01:17] And to just know that you're not insane like Megan Gantz thing to know that you're not crazy you know.

[01:01:21] Because that you're not I find that that being accused of being over sensitive is something I'm really sensitive to because I think I am like I actually think I am but it makes me actually feel so good when somebody will tell like will tell me.

[01:01:38] No you're not being over like I can see you know I can see why you feel that way. I'm like good like it's validating. Yeah I can't sincerely tell you that you're not being over sensitive.

[01:01:49] If there's some other way we should I feel like we both are people for whom apologies are not difficult. I don't know how how you feel about it.

[01:02:04] I find that when we've argued for instance you're actually in a really good way quite quick to say sorry which completely disarms me and allows me to find it takes the defensiveness off and allows me to find ways in which I have obviously like been an SU right.

[01:02:27] Right it's like it's usually moral play well. Dwarfs whatever I might. I just wear my on my sleeve.

[01:02:35] No no like we've had like we don't do this as much anymore but back when we used to fight like there would be these long things where we were both pretty upset and also just like disagreed about but then like yeah those apologies went a long way.

[01:02:51] Yeah I wouldn't say so I think probably I'm it's easier for me than most to say sorry.

[01:03:00] I have a lot of practice at it but but it's still hard and I think that's an interesting question as to why it's so hard to to apologize given that it has these you know whether intended or not and hopefully not too intended these strong benefits instrumental benefits.

[01:03:17] You would think that we would be better at it and this is some of the stuff you know apology and honor has have a lot of connections.

[01:03:25] William Ian Miller really thought that apologies had to be in some way humiliating like you had to be actually humiliated which I think is a little too strong but something because otherwise people will just think that it's you're just doing it. Yeah it's cheap.

[01:03:43] I just doing it for so that you can move on. I find that in at some point in my life.

[01:03:52] I don't know how or why I decided that it's always just better to apologize because even when I think I didn't do anything wrong like if somebody tells me that what I did actually hurt them it seemed like no skin off my back to say well wow I really didn't mean to hurt you like I didn't know that I was hurting you.

[01:04:10] My sister. Sorry you were offended. Yeah sorry you were offended.

[01:04:13] My sister just would never she had a lot of trouble saying sorry I think my dad apologized to me for the first time he's like 86 you know like he apologized to me for the first time maybe 10 years ago like he just would not it would not it just couldn't so I think apologies by themselves are costly to people for like they're psychologically difficult.

[01:04:36] That's right but which is interesting why you know like and the way you were describing I don't think this is how you are but the way you were describing it. Apologies does make it seem like well if Dave Fazzaro says sorry with what is that.

[01:04:47] Yeah what does that mean to me but like if your dad says sorry that's that's a frickin meaningful. Yeah apology like although he's sorry although I do think I do think even his sorries were very reluctant.

[01:05:04] I do think that if my you know showing that you've done the work to understand how you've hurt somebody else might might be the cost associated with it but you know I don't know if you saw I shared an article on apologies as sort of costly signals.

[01:05:19] It was an interesting set of studies done in Japan one experiment for instance in an ultimatum game where I was given 20 bucks and have to split it with you and I give you just a low ball like bullshit like if you want to all or if so they did this and they had participants who received the low ball offers.

[01:05:39] They were told that either the person who gave them the low ball offer had been able to choose from like a priest for like a predetermined list of apologies and they were just able to like pick like apology number two.

[01:05:52] They just had to write it in their own handwriting.

[01:05:55] So half of the people got that the other half were told that the participant had to pay us an amount of money in order to even be able to apologize to you and as as you'd expect but it was exact same apology in both cases.

[01:06:10] As you'd expect the people who were told that the person incurred a cost to apologize found that apology to be more sincere and they were more likely to accept it. That seems it seems right. I mean it's like I don't know.

[01:06:24] Some people think that what you really want the goal of getting some of the apologies to make them hurt in some measure as like a rich in a retributive way. I just don't I don't see it that way.

[01:06:35] No, it signals something but I don't think I don't think we just want somebody to like because it can be a relief to apologize to somebody. I mean like I think that the struggle for me to apologize is in cases where I'm not.

[01:06:49] I don't know if that I'm wrong and I'm also kind of pissed, you know, but I might be but I'm not sure that's maybe the hardest part when I'm actually wrong and it's been nagging me and then I apologize to somebody.

[01:07:01] It can be like this, you know whether they accept it or not now at least I've like I feel like I am, you know, no longer diluting myself that what I did was okay.

[01:07:12] And this person knows that this person knows that I am sorry for what I did whether they forgive me or not or whether they like it's a relief. It's good. It's not some feeling of like humiliation. Yeah, right. Right.

[01:07:27] Yeah, it's a relief in Harman says in this article that I read about how maybe was in the apology itself how it was eating at his stomach just like right holding on to the knowledge that he had done something bad to somebody.

[01:07:38] Let's go quickly through the list and then we can start looking at some other apologies identification of the moral principles underlying each harm.

[01:07:47] The offender will identify the moral principles underlying the harms with an appropriate degree of specificity thus making explicit explicit the values at stake in the interaction.

[01:07:57] I found this one, and maybe maybe it's saying something that I am not quite getting like I get that you want to tell somebody that you know why. What you did was wrong was wrong.

[01:08:10] But I don't know that I would call that identifying the moral principles like I know right. Right. I might say to you like, Tam, I didn't mean to disrespect you. Is that identifying a moral principle?

[01:08:20] I think like if you like reaffirming the moral norms or the, you know, like the values I think is a better word here principles make it sound like, you know, I violated the categorical imperative. I thought what if everybody did this and then I realized it was wrong.

[01:08:39] So like I think it's more like you're just identifying what why it was wrong. What are the, you know, moral norms against that that you accept? This is a lot of this has some associations with restorative justice.

[01:08:53] And one of the benefits of it is this kind of communal reaffirmation of certain moral norms or values, right. And clarification also of those norms.

[01:09:04] One of the good things about an offense is that it gives you an opportunity to like, you know, discuss these values like the Dan Harmon, Megan Gantz thing. It was an opportunity to say like, here's why this is wrong.

[01:09:18] You know, even though it's not something that's obviously wrong like sexual assault is, it's still like you're so you're actually getting at the nitty gritty of like what is appropriate and what is inappropriate.

[01:09:31] And that's a real benefit of having conflicts over about wrongdoing is that you are now able to do this. It provides the opportunity to do this. Like express assured value. Pressure and clarify them too, because maybe there's debate as to whether this is a value or not.

[01:09:48] You know, and so now you're going to have that debate, whereas you might not have otherwise. So we haven't really talked about apologies in this way yet.

[01:09:57] I think there's something to it though that the evolutionary psychologists probably would view apologies as a kind of appeasement behavior and maybe think that what you're doing is showing that you won't do the same thing again.

[01:10:10] And so like all of these might serve as proxies for me believing that you're not going to do it again. Right.

[01:10:16] Because I do. Yeah, so I think that the value in knowing that somebody it's sort of like what what Smith I think is saying here is kind of like tell me that you've internalized the norms and the understanding of the specific wrong that you did because and I think that is valuable because now I'll just trust you a bit more in the future.

[01:10:36] Right. I don't think you're going to make the same mistake. But I don't think this is your new thing where you just try to turn everything into some sort of consequentialist like benefit. But I'm not saying I'm saying it might serve this function.

[01:10:49] It could be completely psychologically backward looking. But I do think that that all things being equal like the person who has shown these things is a better it's like a better chance that they're going to not do it in the future. No, that's right.

[01:11:03] I would talk about it more in terms of a communal thing though of like like a community has to figure out how to you know know when somebody can be reintegrated into the group and one of the things that you would want to know there is you know is this kind of thing likely to happen again.

[01:11:18] And the way to know that is to know that this person understands the norms and is now at least publicly committing to observing them. Yeah. So. So, like you know like you're implicitly totally I think actually that those levels of analysis may not conflict.

[01:11:39] And in fact the re like the reason that it's good to do that is like it is good to reintegrate people into the community that are trustworthy and that also could be a selective. You know, like it's it's. But yeah, like absolutely.

[01:11:53] perspective. I think it is important for these consequentialist reasons, but like it's just like I want to know, like especially in a close relationship, I want to know that we're on the same page about these things, you know? Like I

[01:12:07] want to know that this is not some deep value conflict between us and so that's really important to know that this relationship or else you're gonna learn that's a problem. And it's not just a problem

[01:12:20] because this kind of thing is likely to happen in the future. It's a problem that you have such a big value disagreement. Right. I could actually, in the context of interpersonal relationships, even romantic relationships, you can sort of tell like, I don't know if you

[01:12:33] remember when you dated this far back, but you could sort of tell, like conflict is one of the easiest ways to show, to discover that you have very different values from someone else. If someone just really just brushes it

[01:12:45] off and is like whatever, like I don't know why you're upset by this. I did that, but like why are you being such a bitch about it? I lost a lot of girlfriends that way. Yeah, right. Okay. So that was the moral principles.

[01:13:03] Yeah. See the person as a moral equal is the next one I have. I guess it's, yeah, like to show that you don't think that you have like more moral value than they do or something.

[01:13:16] I feel like some of that is just entailed in all of the other ones. Yeah, I agree. It's fine to specify, but I feel like you couldn't. So here's an interesting is the performance or communicative aspect of it.

[01:13:30] And I think this is, you know, this relates to what we were talking about with the corporate apologies of like how they're being done. But certainly like, you know, it matters that how you apologize,

[01:13:42] not just the words that you say, but like, are you doing it face to face? Personally, are you doing it publicly? Do you have like the right intentions for doing it? Is it not purely for instrumental benefits? Do you feel genuine regret and are you communicating genuine regret?

[01:14:01] This is a really important part, but it's exact. It's hard to like specify like what it entails or what it amounts to. But it's all very important. Yeah, I mean, just think about like how we how we like do this with our kids.

[01:14:15] It's sort of a funny thing to say, say you're sorry and mean it. I remember Eliza when she was like two and a half or something and she did something bad and someone and, you know, Jen would say, say sorry to your dad and she would say sorry.

[01:14:33] She would pet me like I was a cat like on the head or on the shoulder. You know, sorry. And then it's like, all right, I did. Like I don't I didn't think there that that was I don't know. She saw me as a moral equal.

[01:14:45] My my daughter used to do this like say that we're playing and she kind of hits me in a way that like it really hurt me. But I was like, oh, you know, like, don't do that. She would she failed these criteria so badly.

[01:14:59] She would tell me that didn't hurt. And I would say like, what do you mean it didn't hurt? And then she would hit herself in the same exact way. She's like, no, it doesn't hurt. I mean, I don't disagree with me. You don't know what hurts me.

[01:15:12] Yeah, that is kind of the opposite. But this is really important and like, and I think a lot of this stuff is hard to fake too. Yeah. You know, like the emotional and, you know, like looking somebody in the eye

[01:15:25] that, you know, the Jen like, I think this is psychologically difficult to fake and so that's part of why it has value, I think. It's interesting to think like, I think there is stuff that's interpersonally like it's it's specifically about how you act with the person

[01:15:45] you're apologizing to. I think it's cult like culturally, there are different norms that like all of these all go into how you're doing it. And like, I feel like we can really read when somebody means it and when somebody doesn't.

[01:15:57] I don't know if anybody's done the study to show like, here's somebody trying to fake an apology and here's somebody trying to give a genuine one. But yeah, it would be hard like how do you have a find somebody who's giving a genuine apology? We used Harvey once.

[01:16:15] This is why apologies are so meaningful is because it's hard to fake a lot of these things. Yeah. It's hard because that's the aspect that you can't read like what I was getting out with say you're sorry and mean it.

[01:16:27] You could take a lot of these as just sort of a guide to like how to make your apology sound better. Right. You can't like what are you going to do with the feel genuine regret? Right. This is why face to face apologies are especially powerful.

[01:16:43] I think is, yeah, you're looking the person in the eyes and you're you're incurring a cost of all these things. You're incurring the cost of confessing to the wrong too. Like you are running the risk that it's going to permanently

[01:16:54] damage the relationship in some way given that you're admitting to it. I saw by the way in my in my YouTube this afternoon, Ellen DeGeneres apologize for like, I guess over the summer last year, she had been accused

[01:17:06] of being, you know, like creating this terrible atmosphere in her show. I had heard about that by the way on the is it the MGM studio tour? Is that the one that you you've been on to Warner Brothers? Yeah, Warner Brothers.

[01:17:17] Yeah, the tour guide was like, yeah, she's really she runs a tight ship. Yeah, this was like and this was like three years ago or something. That's hilarious. She's she can be a little prickly if you. If you do the wrong thing.

[01:17:31] And so in her apology, the beginning of the season after this happened, like one COVID was still happening. So it was it was only a virtual audience. But like she was cracking jokes during it, you know, like as if it was her

[01:17:46] monologue and and there appeared to be just a laugh track to the jokes, which was just really weird. And you're like, well, she doesn't mean any of this. Like she's she's like the kid who's being dragged out and being told to apologize. Yeah, right.

[01:17:59] Yeah, in cases where there is a clear where it should be a one to one apology. Like I've wronged this other person. If if I hear a public apology, but then hear that the person. Didn't actually apologize to the victim. It's just I don't believe it.

[01:18:19] So like, do you know Chrissy Teigen? I don't know who that is. But I mean, like I've heard the name. So I have no idea in reference to what she's like a model. She's married to John Legend. And apparently people uncovered all of these like super.

[01:18:32] She was just like an internet bully to people. She would tell people, like go kill yourself like shit, like bad shit. And so when they uncovered it, you know, she's I think already twice like apologized and been just like super like throw herself on the sword.

[01:18:48] Kind of like, I know I don't deserve any. But then I heard like one of the people that she had really harassed, which is just being a troll said like she never reached out to me. Like and that come to me is just like, well, then fuck it.

[01:19:01] Like I don't believe a goddamn word that you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. Now that's right. You have to be as personal as it's possible for you to be. Yeah. For it to be for you to really believe it. The last thing is reform and reparations that I have listed.

[01:19:20] I mean, I think that's like that's a big part of an apology in one sense or I but I would almost think it's more like buttressing an apology rather than part being part of an apology. Yeah. And it super depends on like there you run the risk of

[01:19:37] making it seem sometimes. Obviously context always matters, but you make it you run the risk of making it seem as if. Whatever you do to make amends like materially like is it just sounds like you're trying to buy buy off an apology sometimes

[01:19:57] when you say like I like here's one thing. I think we've talked about this that I like I find really annoying when people are like, you know, I was a horrible asshole. You know, I raped three women. I'm going to donate $100,000 to like the battered women shelter.

[01:20:11] It's like right? Well, I get that's good in a consequentialist way. Right. But that doesn't convince me at all of your sincerity. And and I'd be reluctant to I'd be like a little unsuspicious that you think that this is going to make things better.

[01:20:29] Right? It's almost worse because you think that'll make up for it or something. Even if like it's obviously not worse in one sense, like because it's better for them to have the money than not. But it almost seems like you're trying to buy your way out of responsibility

[01:20:43] and blame it's tricky. So like a lot of people will say on these online apologies. Well, I don't I don't care about your apology. Show me what you're going to do about it. And then sometimes you just what can you do?

[01:20:53] Like what like what could you possibly do, especially when there's a nebulous victim like Michael Richards apology for saying the Edward during his death? It's just it's terrible. Like it's a it's it's cringy. Jerry Seinfeld brought him in like I think it was Letterman or something

[01:21:12] that Seinfeld was appearing on and he's and this is soon after the Letterman. Yeah. And and so they brought him in via like satellite and had had him issue this apology and it was really awkward. Among the things that were awkward is that he apologized to Afro Americans.

[01:21:31] Yeah, I remember. Afro Americans may have been offended. That's yes. In cases where you've said a racial slur, for instance, who? What do you do? Like what? Are you supposed to cut a check to the NAACP? Like it's unclear how you even go about redressing.

[01:21:51] Like there's nothing you can do. There's no it's too diffuse like your victims. It's too like really what you want to know is that the person is not a terrible person and that they are going to be better in the future.

[01:22:06] And so like I think that's what you want. Like I just think sorry is not the right word. It's not where at least an apology is not the right word for what's what you can do there. It's more publicly like signal that you are going that you're aware

[01:22:21] of what you did and you're going to try to be better. Yeah, I actually think that those are cases where apologies can backfire. And I'm almost of the opinion that you shouldn't apologize when it's so nebulous. Yeah. When your victims are. Yeah, when your victims.

[01:22:37] Yeah, there is a way that like these famous people apologize that really drops me the wrong way for some reason is when they say like I've let my fans down. Yeah, and it's like what cares about letting your fans down? Like that's not the issue you heard. Yeah.

[01:22:54] Yeah, no, I think public apology. It's so rare for a public apology to feel satisfying. And partly it's because, you know, can we talk about the Louisie? I think the Louisie K1 is kind of interesting because both you and I

[01:23:10] thought that's a pretty decent apology when it came out in the New York in the times and it was roundly attacked. And I'm I kind of am interested as to a like, you know, it was that

[01:23:26] were those concerns legitimate, but also be why people reacted to it that way. So this was for people who some somehow don't know about this. Louisie K used to want to masturbate in front of women.

[01:23:40] And so she would ask he would ask women, you know, like, I'm going to whip my dick out of masturbate. Is that all right with you? And they would be put in the position of like having to say yes or no.

[01:23:51] And this was including when, you know, he was pretty famous and they were might be up and coming. And so they might feel pressured to say yes. And then also he does seem like his manager kind of

[01:24:04] pressured a lot of these women not to go public about this habit of Louisie K. And so the Times publishes a story or it's at the Times or the New Yorker, like Ronan Farrow or something. It's probably of these five women who discussed this

[01:24:25] what had happened to them. And he wrote a fairly long right away, a fairly long apology to the New York Times that was published. Yeah. And I remember when this first happened, we did an episode on it and we were like, that seems pretty legit. Yeah.

[01:24:39] And but it was just not. It wasn't taken well. And I don't know. Like, I haven't never really followed up with why it wasn't taken well. I am reading it now as you're speaking. And at the end, he says, I've spent my long and lucky career

[01:24:55] talking and saying anything I want. I will now step back and take a long time to listen. Thank you for reading. That I actually think is the right thing to do. Like, I think that him stepping away, like I can see him being like,

[01:25:09] well, I fucked up, like I'm just like, I don't deserve to be like the public eye right now. I can see why people might. Now, I guess think that he didn't do enough to like make up for his actions.

[01:25:22] But I actually am still I'm still good with this apology. I mean, so he goes into like, you know, why it was wrong. Like he meets a lot of these criteria is now. Now, the one thing we don't know is like what the facts in question are.

[01:25:37] He certainly checks off some of the facts. But like he definitely underplays like the his role and maybe getting the manager to pressure these women to keep quiet about it and stuff like that. So that might be one part of it.

[01:25:49] Let me read this sentence because this is all this actually now thinking about it might be bad. So he says these stories are true, which is his only real admission about that. This is the only time he really talks about the act except for this sentence.

[01:26:03] At the time I said to myself that what I did was OK because I never showed a woman my dick without asking first, which is also true. But what I learned later in life, too late is that when you have power

[01:26:13] of another person asking them to look at your dick isn't a question. It's sort of justifying in a way that like it borders on being like, well, I always ask that's true. Like it right. Exactly. Like making it.

[01:26:28] Yeah. No, I think that's maybe part of it is that it seemed to minimize what he was doing. There's also this the suspicion because he's crafted this persona that seems like a good like a really good guy. That's what we fell in for. That's what like yeah. Exactly.

[01:26:44] And so like it's going to be really hard now to, you know, but at the same time, this is what Harman said, you know, the same thing about himself. I guess he was self aware of the fact that he had crafted this persona

[01:26:58] in a way that Louis CK isn't like he's not sort of recognizing that, you know, that that he's he's crafted this persona that says disgusting things, but it's ultimately like a really good feminist at heart.

[01:27:13] Yeah. And and yet he, you know, like and he doesn't try to reconcile that with what he did. Yeah, there is there is a little whiff of what I think are bad celebrity apologies where they spend a lot of time talking about themselves in a way that I

[01:27:30] think Dan Harman talked about himself, but he made it clear that it was centered around what he had done to this woman. And Lucy Kay says, you know, there is nothing about this that I forgive myself for and I have to reconcile it with who I am,

[01:27:44] which is nothing compared to the task I left them with. When he doesn't go into enough detail about like the harm that he might have caused these people, like I'm curious to know whether or not he's like he went and apologized. I mean, not to them.

[01:28:00] Yeah, I don't know if they wanted that, but it's another difficulty. Sometimes people don't want you to be like there and apologize. And I think there has been like probably 10 years for some of the women where they've wanted him to acknowledge this and he hadn't.

[01:28:15] But then also when he says the hardest regret to live with is what you've done to hurt someone else and I can hardly wrap my head around the scope of hurt I brought on them.

[01:28:23] I'd be remiss to exclude the hurt that I've brought on people who I work with and have worked with and whose professional and personal lives have been impacted by all of this, including projects currently in production. The cast and crew of better things, baskets, the cops, one Mississippi.

[01:28:37] I love you, daddy. It almost sounds like he's like bragging about how much shit I'm involved in. And and he's diffusing the apology at that point. Like, like so, you know, it's interesting because I also I kind of glanced

[01:28:50] through it before we recorded and I was like, it still seems like a pretty good apology, but now like going through it, I get why people. Me too. Me too. Yeah, diffusing the apology is exactly right. It's it shouldn't have been a one for all kind of apology.

[01:29:06] Like he should have focused on the victims and, you know, like why do I care that he's apologizing to the crew? I know that he fucked them over. Like, I don't it doesn't seem that relevant to what it's like.

[01:29:22] Oh, like I'm going to kill like five birds with one stone here. I apologize to all these people and like and again, like it's weird also. It's a little weird that it's in the times. I mean, this is thought this is the

[01:29:32] the paradox or the tension with public apologies is why like, why are we reading this? Like, why are he should be doing it to those people? And the fact and it's weird. The fact that it's here almost takes away from its insincerity

[01:29:46] because it makes it sound like he has maybe ulterior motives. It's a really odd position that some people are in to have to apologize publicly like this or like via press release. I mean, I guess not that we're a little on Dan Harmon's nuts.

[01:30:01] Like, but but I guess that's that's like the best you can do. I because like the real thing you have to do is like sexually harass someone for two and a half years, but then do like a great apology.

[01:30:15] Yeah, let's be clear. I wish he had like a hero. They're very bad with it. Like here. Yeah, I don't know. Like I thought about say say that you said something in class that offended

[01:30:29] somebody and you get, you know, all this, the, you know, the hammer of social justice come down on you. Would you finally would you would you do something like a issue, a statement? I think we've talked about this, I think, like almost certainly

[01:30:46] not unless like, I don't know, like I had some reason to think that they want like, A, if I think I actually did anything wrong. So I would need to actually believe that before I would do a public apology.

[01:30:58] And then B, like I would have to think that they wanted it. Either they asked me to or I had some reason to think that they wanted they wanted me to do it publicly than maybe I would. But like, you know, this is one of the we're not

[01:31:15] too high when on the fame spectrum that like that many people give a shit about these kinds of things. Yeah, but universe, the people involved. Yeah. Universities are tricky like that because we are sort of public facing to all

[01:31:33] of our students and so right, so it might happen. Have you have you ever had to apologize? No, in your like, yeah, never in your professional capacity. Never there was there was one time I probably talked about this.

[01:31:46] There was one time that a student emailed me and told me that she asked me if I could not curse as much in lectures because it offended her as a Christian and I just emailed back and said, I apologize. I'd never mean to offend anybody.

[01:32:06] Like sometimes I do curse and and I'll try to turn it down. Like what's I didn't again, to me, it's like. I didn't it was not a huge infraction and she was respectful and like,

[01:32:20] I don't know if I changed my behavior, but I just wanted her to know about how she felt and just responding to her. I think she appreciated, but that's as close as I've ever come to to having an apology. I am learning that your apologies are.

[01:32:37] Oh, you think that they're not costly enough when in fact what it is is that I have become I am not only sensitive about myself. I'm deeply sensitive about hurting others. So I know all the pain that they're experiencing. So I am quick to apologize because of that.

[01:32:50] You know, just because I don't self-flagellate like you want me to. I do. I want you to literally just start whipping yourself. No, I mean, I meant it like I what would you do in that situation if someone said could you not curse?

[01:33:05] Well, that's an interesting one because you're ultimately still going to curse in class. The only reason you might tone it down a little bit this one semester for this one student, but like you're not doing any of those things.

[01:33:17] You're not reaffirming those moral principles because you don't really think you violated a moral principle. But I do think I offended her and I don't want to offend her. And so I think that toning it down for that semester is exactly the right action

[01:33:31] because yeah, but I'm saying as an apology apology. It's a little weird because you don't think it was wrong. You're just like you are almost literally sorry that she was offended. No, but this is this is the thing that like why I feel like apologies

[01:33:48] seem harder than they ought to be, which is I feel like it's wrong to unintentionally hurt someone. I don't think it's of course I don't think it's wrong to curse in class because like what I wouldn't if I really thought it was wrong.

[01:34:01] But unwittingly harming somebody through your actions is something that I don't ever want to do. And so if I find out that I did completely unintentionally and even if I find out that it's because of something that I don't personally think

[01:34:14] is wrong, then I don't want I don't want anybody to feel harmed by what I did. So I'm happy to apologize for that. But it's like but yeah, I guess the thing is it just doesn't meet a lot of these

[01:34:26] criteria because you're not accepting responsibility in the sense that you're not saying, oh, I should have I should have been concerned about whether there might be a religious student that takes offense to these things. You're not accepting blame for what you know, of course I'm accepting blame.

[01:34:42] I just the thing is what do you do in a situation where what what you've done to harm somebody like the target to me is that I that I harmed, not what what I did to harm.

[01:34:55] So like I feel like if if what you're saying is in order to meet the criteria, I have to agree that cursing is wrong, then then I will never be able to apologize for that.

[01:35:06] But like I feel like what I have to agree to it is is knowing that I offended somebody in any way. That's wrong. Right. That's it's wrong in the sense that, you know, it's unfortunate that something that you did led to

[01:35:23] this woman being offended, but it feels like you're not actually signalling in any way that this is something A that you could be blamed for in the sense that it's your fault like you could have anticipated it.

[01:35:37] And then B it's not signalling much change, at least in future behavior, aside from this one semester where you know you have this. Right. Well, I didn't say like I years bleed when you say five.

[01:35:52] Yeah. So so, you know, I think what I was admitting to was some level of negligence for for not realizing that there might be a student sensitive to that cursing, but what would you do? I mean, I would do the same thing.

[01:36:05] I would say I'm sorry and I would be genuinely feel regret that that happened. But I guess I'm not sure if I would call that an apology in this more thick, the thicker sense of because I don't think I'm blame worthy.

[01:36:20] I think like, you know, look, you can't please everybody. And all right, Charlie, hold on one. I apologize for Charlie in drop on behalf of Charlie. But you know what I mean?

[01:36:34] Like, I guess I would I would be sorry in in in a in a real sense that like that she was upset and that I had led I had done something. But like, I don't know if I would call it an apology. Maybe sorry is better.

[01:36:49] Like I'm being conceptual analysis. Yeah, yeah, you really are nitpicky. So let me give you another example where I think it's true what you're saying about the thickness of the apology concept. But I think that if but it requires a thick infraction to have a thick apology.

[01:37:04] So I think a thin infraction and a thin apology are actually still an apology. I agree with that. I sincerely don't want to offend. So I apologize for that. But at the same time, I wanted to communicate that I did not endorse that view because if I did,

[01:37:22] then I would be a real ass. Like if I actually thought it was morally wrong to curse and I was cursing, then I would be a terrible person. And I wanted her to understand that what she was asking of me was something

[01:37:34] that I was willing to do because I care about how she's feeling in the class, but not something that I wanted to cosign. Right. And yeah. And communicating that is it's tricky because like it is a partial apology. You know? Yeah.

[01:37:51] Like and it has a little of the whiff of I'm sorry if you were offended. But I think a lot of the time we make fun of I'm sorry if you were offended because the person doesn't mean it.

[01:38:02] But in this case, you're genuinely sorry if she was offended, but you just don't endorse the norm for taking offense at things like that. Right. That's why I like I think there is an interesting difference between

[01:38:13] I'm sorry that I offended you versus I'm sorry that you were offended. And might just be semantic in the bad way. But I feel like I'm taking agency for it. Yeah. Well, that's that's my big scandal. Next. No, this is giving us a lot to work with.

[01:38:30] Can you imagine all the shit we've said here? Like, you know, I've never really had to apologize for any of it. All right. I think we've we've exhausted the apology. Yeah. Now I never want to talk about apologies again. Now this was good. Yeah.

[01:38:47] You should say turn this next time over. It was. I'm aware. You know what's funny is that we forgot to do that will be right back when we come back for the last episode. So I don't know if you noticed, but I had to record me doing.

[01:39:01] Yeah, somebody called you on being drunk. Did you see that? Oh, for the segue. No, it was like no, I wasn't drunk. It was just that it was like different recording. And so and it was so obviously different recording, which is I don't

[01:39:15] totally understand why it would be so different. Yeah. Oh, I thought he was talking about my wine dot com. No, no, no, he's talking about that. But he was accusing you of slurring during that chest.

[01:39:27] Which is funny, because I literally had it like like like memorized and I probably did like seven versions of it. When we come back, we're going to talk about transformative experiences. I think it just like I was so self-conscious about saying it that that's why the person.

[01:39:44] Yeah, but it's it's absolutely true, though, that the recording, even when you're in the same room, yeah, recording a different time can sound so different. And I think one one reason is our voices actually changed throughout the day a little bit. Yeah, right.

[01:40:00] I had a totally different voice. Exactly. Yeah. All right. Join us next time. Oh, I'm very bad with that.

[01:40:50] Very good, man. Just a very bad wizard.