Hacker News Reader

Comment by alexjplant | Hacker News Reader

> “I give my wife a lot of credit. She was, like, you should never apologize,” Langley said. “Sure, people make mistakes. I've made a lot of mistakes in the last nine years. I made a lot of mistakes this summer. But we do good work.”

So this guy admits he did things that he shouldn't have then contends that he shouldn't have to say sorry for them? Am I reading this right? Isn't the point of an apology to acknowledge the bad outcome and signal to aggrieved parties that the offender will try avoid repeating the negative behavior? If yes and this guy is refusing to do it then what does that say about his world view?

View on HN

Well, at least he won't have to apologize to his wife for throwing her under the bus.

It's a certain personality type, and nothing new. I've met people like this my whole life. For them, apologizing runs the risk of signaling weakness (and for sure, there's the other personality type that will take that message from an apology). So you can introspect and acknowledge mistakes you made to yourself, and maybe to some confidantes, but never to others.

Actually, introspection is out as well

https://www.businessinsider.com/marc-andreessen-zero-introsp...

> Great men of history had little to no introspection.

These people are completely detached from reality. How do they think we know the thoughts of these so called great men?

> How do they think we know the thoughts of these so called great men?

Many have biographies and autobiographies. Is not hard to spot.

Yes, exactly. In other words, they were introspective.

Introspection isn't a requirement to write an autobiography, and certainly not a biography. Just because someone can't stop talking about themselves and their accomplishments doesn't necessarily mean they analyze their inner thoughts and feelings for deeper meaning.

I would wager that a great many of those people had the introspection to eventually understand where they stood in the world and played the role and probably eventually believed it themselves (because often you must to be successful).

"A great king would not self doubt so I will not self doubt".

He'll say whatever will sell or raise his profile.

His blog in 2007, which people loved:

https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_personal_productivity.html

Search for "Anti-Todo" and read that section. Then tell me he doesn't believe in some introspection.

> It's a certain personality type, and nothing new. I've met people like this my whole life. For them, apologizing runs the risk of signaling weakness (and for sure, there's the other personality type that will take that message from an apology). So you can introspect and acknowledge mistakes you made to yourself, and maybe to some confidantes, but never to others.

Is that type narcissism?

I don't think we need a diagnosis for "asshole"

We do. Asshole is more subjective and narcissism is an attempt at describing some specific type of assholeness that you know exist in various individuals and that you can spot by checking if it matches a few characteristics. You can now better spot them and avoid them if you want or look for knowledge about how to handle this type of person if you have to.

> “I've met people like this my whole life.”

Yeah. Marines

That highly depends on the receiver. Currently in any public setting there is more or less no instance where "being sorry" will help you.

Utilitarian view, sure. Outrage sells, some people are addicted to outrage. They don't want an apology, they want to see people burn. Under no circumstances ever apologise to them (or lawyers).

Wisdom and self-reflection has no value in current political climate. It requires the correct audience.

Did you miss the part about "But we do good work" ?

In his twisted mind, he did nothing wrong, therefore no apology needed. It's a classic case of delusion mixed with relative morals and pretty much it's the best case of "Rules for thee, but not for me". Because, he blurred his house on Google maps, because, privacy is fundamental...just for him. Fuck everyone else.

Apologizing is admitting guilt and that's just never a good time in the vicinity of lawyers. It's their job to prove guilt, not yours.

Depends on whose lawyers we're talking about. Honesty is generally a reasonable policy when speaking to your own (which has nothing to do with apologies, of course).

I mean, it works for the president of the US. I think this attitude is a lot more common than people would like to admit.

The president is unlikely to feel consequences for the attitude, but Langley likely will as Flock enterprise value trends towards zero.

Flock Offers Employees Buyouts as Customers Flee - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49762835 - September 2026 (45 comments)

Cities terminate Flock contracts at record pace in August - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/cities-terminate... - August 28th, 2026

If there is something the president has truly shown me is that just because consequences look inevitable, does not make them so. He exemplifies the ability to avoid consequences and responsibility.

I only trust that consequences will arrive when they actually arrive.

He isn’t avoiding consequences. Only delaying them.

If he can delay them long enough that he dies of old age first, he will have avoided them.

No, he is avoiding them. He was found guilty of 34 felonies related to election interference in the Stormy Daniels hush money case. Judge Juan Merchan declined to sentence him to any punishment whatsoever. He was then re-elected president. He will never face any consequences for those crimes.

The Supreme Court has ruled that (Republican) presidents are above the law. Official actions can't be prosecuted, but you have to ask the court what official means on a case-by-case basis, making the ruling implicitly partisan. Trump will thus never face consequences for his crimes in office.

Trump is an admitted (Access Hollywood) and convicted (E Jean Carroll) sexual predator. He has paid several million dollars to E Jean Carroll for raping her but that is the extent of any consequence he has suffered. He continues to be president.

Wish I could have that hope. I don't believe he will ever experience consequences for the vast majority of things he's done. Even if he does finally receive some justice for one thing, it's a practical impossibility that he will experience justice for everything he's done.

And I honestly see no reason to believe he's simply delaying consequences. He was out of the presidency for four years during which time he was convicted of multiple felonies. Is that a consequence? Was that justice? It didn't end up meaning anything.

Let’s hope so

I highly doubt apologizing would’ve had any effect on the outcome. He never had any intention of changing the direction of the company.

Only due to the cultural shift over the past 10 years, I would say. You also see it coming out of “streamer” culture, as well as evangelical “prosperity gospel” culture, where any means justify the ends of acquiring wealth - and no shame need be felt.

Tea party of the early 2010s also played by this rule. Lots of "I cannot recall"s which translates to "I won't even acknowledge wrong doing so why would I apologize?"

It seems to me that corporate entities will also pay any amount of money rather than admit wrongdoing.

MAGA is the cultural descendent of the Tea Party so yeah this tracks. The birth of vice signaling.

Everyone debating a maga person now must be trained to deal effectively with the "I haven't heard about that" defense that will inevitably come up

IMO there's an ongoing battle between two very different concepts of what speech means.

1. I speak "X" because I believe X to be true. I am virtuous because I am correct, and honest.

2. I speak "X" because that is is the current signal for demonstrating loyalty in the in-group. I am virtuous because I demonstrate allegiance and membership.

_____

In the first case, you apologize for an error because it's how you get back to a state of being correct. (Or if you don't apologize, it's because you double-down and insist it isn't an error.)

In the second case, you don't apologize because the "error" was merely a strategic misstep of over-triggering the dirty out-group, and anyway caring about them too much is suspicious.

I think this is almost at the truth. My view is that everyone values two frequently opposing things: truth and social reward. Whether you behave like (1) or (2) depends on which you value more, and how much pressure is being applied from either direction. I like to think that most people usually value being correct over social reward but this is not always the case, and frequently this difference in values results in totally unproductive arguments. There is no persuading someone who defends a position for social reward. The best thing you can do is try to make their position seem absurd and silly as a social punishment, and hopefully witnesses will think agreeing with you will result in higher social reward. I believe this is also why high profile debates are frequently just two people slinging insults back and forth. This is actually what a significant number of people find persuasive, since it determines whether their social circle will reward them or punish them for their beliefs.

"At least you got your bag" is the saying these days.

This will fade. People are tired of it and will start to ostracize this antisocial behavior.

Gosh I hope you’re right.

not as long as sociopaths own social media

Or people get sick of it and opt out. There is lots of evidence that trend is accelerating

this is honestly why i don't trust guys who are "wife guys" (also extends to "family guys")

aka the guys who bring up their wife all the time regardless of the situation.

its really not masculine and makes me trust that "man" less

billions of people have spouses. it isn't a big deal. stop bringing them in as a deflection mechanism to soften whatever shit they're gonna say next lol

I think his point is that the people that are against the technology will never change their mind, regardless of what you do to assuage them. It's a lost cause.

Everyone and every business makes mistakes. We don't go on an apology tour every time we make a mistake. On the net he believes he's doing good in this world.

For instance, a mistake he spoke about was not providing strict enough guards on operators, allowing them to conduct unlawful searches. He's since corrected that and looks for new ways to restrict and audit platform access. What's the point of dwelling on this? Is the anti-flock lunatic cutting down cameras going to read the press release and think "gee, Flock is turning a new leaf", obviously not. It just adds more fuel to the fire taking away from the good work they do.

Flock does not do good work.

Flock enables mass surveillance of a type that destroys liberty, and is opposed by sensible people who understand freedom, history, and who respect the brave men and women who have fought for our rights.

Flock is defended exclusively by pathetic, weak little men who are afraid of their own shadows, and who (wrongly) believe that unchecked government power is a good thing.

If allowing unlawful searches to be done is just a little whoopsie, then all the actions by those "lunatics" you're complaining about are even less than a little whoopsie.

Flock's value proposition is essentially Uber's, except instead of evading taxi regs Flock lets your LEOs evade the need to get warrants.

Correct, flock is broken at a conceptual level and that means really no amount of implementation details will fix it.

That doesn’t mean that flock should just keep doing what they’re doing. Quite the contrary - flock should not exist. It is anti-American to its core, and there’s no salvaging it. Flock can only exist if it changes in every way possible.

Providing private mass-surveillance as a product for our government is, fundamentally, broken. It’s not a good idea, and no amount of twiddling will make it good. Similar to how running a hit-man business is fundamentally bad. Doesn’t matter how many background checks I do on the hitmen. Doesn’t matter if I extra triple check they’re only murdering bad people. The concept itself is immoral and deplorable.

hear hear. imo the constitution should be read as eyes open tradeoffs. the 4th amendment is an clear one and this is a great case for it: its not that flock couldnt theoretically reduce crime. it that the reduction isnt worth giving up the power to the government to do so.

this. and note that while it is likely true that bots were driving awareness of the anti-flock campaign, that does not mean that the anti-flock campaign is wrong - in his cognitive dissonance, he is affirming the consequent.

> looks for new ways to restrict and audit platform access. What's the point of dwelling on this?

Well, for one, seeing if anything changes. "Auditing tools" could be the loud part and "that are completely unused" is the soft part.

This is definitely not the person to be afforded the benefit of doubt.

Have you ever lived in a red state? In a rural area? "Never apologize, especially when you know you're wrong" is a foundational principle in many cultures and households.

I live in a rural area in a red state and it's quite the opposite. People are perhaps maybe a bit too apologetic. I think the unwillingness to apologize or acknowledge oneself as wrong is a symptom of emotional immaturity rather than political persuasion.

It is more contextual than a simple binary, especially the emotional context. If the event triggers their shame more than their identity, you get the larger than required apologies. If their identity is the primary thing that is triggered, they will get defensive and double down. It's not just a rural thing.

Yeah that's just human nature I fear. Nothing to do with politics or geography

Crazy to be self aware of it and blatantly not give af

It can be both. Never admitting fault is very much core to MAGA but it's somewhat neutral with other major political ideologies. Being emotionally immature may also make people remorse-averse.

As is throwing your wife under the bus when you get challenged.

This attitude is also very common for law enforcement or prosecutors.

In some careers, admitting fault can open you up to lawsuits or additional consequences.

Yes, but in the case of prosecutors it can be very messed up. When someone is wrongfully convicted and there is very unambiguous exonerating evidence, prosecutors will fight overturning convictions.

It's bad enough to wrongfully send someone to prison, but to keep fighting for wrongful imprisonment when it's shown they made a mistake is downright evil.

I live in a very rural area, and most people are sort of overly apologetic about their mistakes. The ones that refuse to acknowledge their mistakes or apologize are what we call "assholes".

In a rural community, being labeled as an asshole has real repercussions. A neighbor down the road is moving away because of this. He called the cops on a guy who was trying to catch some horses that got out of their pen when the man looking for his horses pulled into his driveway to then back out and turn around. The place he bought was my neighbor's grandpa's farm. There was an old barn with a wooden door inside that my neighbor asked to buy from him (his grandpa had carved his and the grandma's initials on it when they were dating). So the asshole said sure, for $25k. When my neighbor said no, the asshole burned the door. He's an asshole, and because of that nobody would help him when he needed help with his crops because his combine died.

Now he's leaving. Community is important when there's not much of it around.

But I digress. I'm not sure geography or politics has anything to do with emotional maturity.

This is the mantra of blue cities too.

"I may not be right but I am never wrong" -- a quote from a conversation I had w/ someone in Austin, TX

Reply on news.ycombinator.com