You don't understand apologies. The purpose of an apology is to smooth things over. It is not a prize to be won. "I said nothing that required an apology" is untrue on its face - someone was upset or annoyed by your statements enough to mute you. You were put out by this. If you wish to remedy this situation, you have to apologize. You have to reach out. The apology is therefore required. Now - you may not feel that the apology is JUSTIFIED. However, the upper hand in this discussion belongs to the other person. If you wish to communicate unrestricted on their posts, the onus for correcting the imbalance is on you. The choice is simple: Are you willing to abase yourself enough to bridge the gap of discussion? Then do so. Would you rather sit in your castle of high dudgeon maintaining that you have no need to apologize? Then accept that you've been muted. It's that easy.
I'm sure neither of us are inclined to do so. I don't follow you and you don't follow me. That's not my point. I don't care if people mute me, that's fine. I care that people can remove my ability to talk to others. That, to me, is a problem. No one should have the ability to stop me from talking to someone else. Sure, I could go start another post. But that's a band-aid, not a solution. I'm much more in favor of the several proposals of "mute as comment ignore" where the muter simply doesn't see the comment anymore, but doesn't remove that person's ability to communicate and have discourse. As for your point on apologies, there's a reason you're not supposed to apologize in a vehicle accident. An apology is an admission of guilt. People shouldn't have to feel guilty about holding diverse opinions here. Hubski is a community centered around "thoughtful discussion," and jumping up and down on someone's ability to speak (once again, to others) defeats that. You used the phrase "upper hand," that itself incites conflict rather than discourse (and I'd argue, goes against your "reach out" suggestion). I don't have the inclination to talk to people who aren't willing to tolerate opinions they don't share, I come here for discussion and thoughtful debate on topics. Being silenced for having a differing opinion destroys what Hubski is.
It isn't, actually. Not ever. Not in any court in the land, not in any form of conversation, not in any definition anywhere. In legal engagements they can complicate settlements if you're stupid: That's not an apology, that's an admission of lawbreaking. The fact that they tell you not to apologize for anything is that lawyers suspect you're too flustered to have a clue what you're doing. Yet you have this whole "guilt" thing about apologies. It's weird, frankly. And you only touch on it long enough to get back to your point, which isn't the discussion we're having, which is that you don't understand apologies. You should try to understand apologies. Not for here, but for your life in general. The idea that you should only ever apologize if you're guilty of wrongdoing probably fucks you a lot more than you even know.An apology is an admission of guilt.
f you jump out of your car and blurt out, "I'm so sorry I ran that red light! Is everyone okay?" you may back yourself into a corner in terms of legal liability for what happened.
I try to have a conversation, and am told I don't understand the conversation. This is why I stopped trying to have a conversation with you. For irony, I'll go ahead and mute you. I know it won't prove my point to you, but clearly you're incapable of understanding it anyway.