It seems like “reasonableness” is mostly about willingness to follow established precedents and norms, the main consequence of apologizing usually has to do with establishing new norms or reinforcing existing ones, and power is what you have when the established “reasonable” norm is to do what’s in your interests—so these things should be treated as different manifestations of a single phenomenon rather than separate. In the Intel case, the obvious analysis is that admitting that they acted “unreasonably” could put them on the hook for replacing millions of defective CPUs, that is, a norm would be established that would transfer power away from Intel and towards its customers.
To be clear, it wasn’t my intent to suggest that the consequences-based and the power-based perspectives are different—I agree that they’re manifestations of the same phenomenon. It’s just that one may be a more intuitive way of thinking about certain situations than the other.
It seems like “reasonableness” is mostly about willingness to follow established precedents and norms, the main consequence of apologizing usually has to do with establishing new norms or reinforcing existing ones, and power is what you have when the established “reasonable” norm is to do what’s in your interests
Indeed, this analysis clarifies the relationship, and I agree with all of it.
It seems like “reasonableness” is mostly about willingness to follow established precedents and norms, the main consequence of apologizing usually has to do with establishing new norms or reinforcing existing ones, and power is what you have when the established “reasonable” norm is to do what’s in your interests—so these things should be treated as different manifestations of a single phenomenon rather than separate. In the Intel case, the obvious analysis is that admitting that they acted “unreasonably” could put them on the hook for replacing millions of defective CPUs, that is, a norm would be established that would transfer power away from Intel and towards its customers.
To be clear, it wasn’t my intent to suggest that the consequences-based and the power-based perspectives are different—I agree that they’re manifestations of the same phenomenon. It’s just that one may be a more intuitive way of thinking about certain situations than the other.
Indeed, this analysis clarifies the relationship, and I agree with all of it.