What makes a good excuse?
Explaining the situation or avoiding your responsibilities - are excuses valid and is there an art to them?
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Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision-making. I'm here with Sara Nonu, Nick Hare, and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights. And this week we're discussing what makes a good excuse. And due to the lockdown, unusually, we're recording this remotely. Nick, what makes a good excuse?
Speaker B:Well, this is prompted by an interesting story, something from earlier in March. A gentleman by the name of Morris Sines, who's privileged enough to have a Rolls Royce, was being stopped by police and apparently drove off. And since he was he was then subsequently caught, because if you've got Rolls Royce with a number plate on it, the police have got methods of finding out who you are. Right. So they tracked him down. And his excuse was that he had a lady was in the backseat with him performing at some sort of sex act. And he'd ordered his chauffeur to drive away, perhaps to save her honor or something. Anyway, it turns out it's all just lies. But the interesting thing is that that he sort of tried to use that as an excuse in the first place. I mean, even if it had been true, is that a good enough reason not to stop for police? And then more generally, excuses all the time, don't we? All the time we have to excuse things, things that go wrong. You know, you've got a phone call at work, which means you can't do the next podcast and we've got to change this and then something goes wrong with the I.T. And that means that, you know, Chris can't get his microphone to work. Sorry about that, guys. Something came up and then you couldn't get the editing done in time every day is full of excuses all the time. So, you know, it's clearly a common thing that we do now. What makes a good one? What makes a lame one? That's that's what we want to talk about.
Speaker A:OK, and actually, as we talk this through, it does make me realize that I'm quite an excusable person. I do. Because you have to apologize for so much, Fraser. Yeah, I think you're exactly right. But I think the reason why is mainly I just trying to cram too much in and sort of get a
Speaker C:bit too busy. And so maybe I do that already making excuses for having to make excuses.
Speaker B:Although now. So one thing we're going to discuss now, I should be an expert on this on people who say, oh, I'm just really bad at time management. Is that an excuse?
Speaker A:We'll get to that more after the break. I am. I am one of those people. So, first of all, I wonder if that makes me a really good judge of what is a good excuse since I'm using all the time or is it just all the poor, benighted people who know me? They are the ones who are best at judging what is a good excuse or not. And, you know, on the sort of, you know, on the sort of Fraser level excuses, where does this one come in? It's just, you know, this is one of the bad ones. Yeah, it comes out of your mouth, Fraser. It's a bad one. It's a bad one. Yeah, yeah. OK, so who wants to pick up on this? Chris or Sarah, do you want to come in? What is a good excuse? Oh, actually, no, let's do it a different way. Are you are you like me? Are you making excuses or not?
Speaker C:Well, I don't think I do make excuses because I never get anything wrong. No, because what I don't often do, I think once you start making an excuse for something, you're acknowledging that it's your fault and that it's something you have to sort of explain away. You know, if you look at what an excuse is for, it's essentially a rationalization of something that's that's unpopular or controversial, you know, usually to others. But sometimes we make excuses to ourselves and it's about trying to create and convince others of a logic that detaches you from from the blame. So to my mind, as soon as I start, you know, as soon as you start making an excuse, you're already acknowledging that you're culpable. So so, yeah, I think I think I just generally try and pretend whatever it was that was wrong didn't didn't happen, just to just ignore the fact that it happened in the first place, because I think excuses just draw attention to the fact that you've messed something up.
Speaker A:Well, I don't sound like a bit of a diva, but anyway, go on, Nick.
Speaker B:No, I'm not sure if it's quite good, because I think an excuse is trying to say that you are not culpable. An excuse removes your culpability for whatever it is you've done or not done, if it works. Yeah, I mean, exactly. Yes, it is. It is. But which is different from an apology. I feel like you're talking about an apology.
Speaker C:No, no, I think I think for me, it's like it's like the Alistair Campbell theory of if you're if you're the story, you know, if you're the person spinning the story and you're you're part of the story, then you've you've lost at that point. And I think just by an excuse entwines you in the problem. And so you're putting you're building this case of logic as to, well, it wasn't it wasn't my fault. And once you get engaged in that interaction, you're sort of exposing an argument that somebody
Speaker B:thinks can sort of say, I think you're it's almost like you're saying it's more powerful to go for no case to answer. It's like I'm not going to defend myself because there's nothing to defend. It didn't happen. I wasn't there. What are you talking about? Yeah. Rather than rather than to say, OK, yeah, I did do that. But, you know, yeah.
Speaker A:Sarah, what are your thoughts on this on either? What is an excuse, whether you're an excusable person? I don't know if excusable person is the right term, but anyway, go for it.
Speaker D:When thinking about it, I thought when I thought the word excuse, I kind of thought of all the negative connotations it has. So as soon as you're coming up with an excuse or say you've got an excuse or someone wants to hear your excuse, it's slightly negative. I prefer to say my reason I have a reason for something or there's a reason why I didn't do it, especially if it's, I guess, something that's more not bad or not a lie. And then following that, when I was thinking about an excuse, there were four kind of things I thought about if I was to make an excuse, not saying that I do or I don't. But the first is the context in the situation when you need to make the excuse. So really thinking about, OK, what's going on? The second is your audience, like you have to know your audience. It's much easier for you to give an excuse to say my parents, because I know what excuses will work and what won't compared to someone else I don't know. It's the consequence of the action. So saying what's the fallout from you not doing what you were supposed to do? And then also looking at the action, like was your behavior, like what were you doing? Was that behavior acceptable or was it not acceptable? And I guess those are the kind of things I thought about when about excuses. But for the most part, I think I just kind of like to own up if I've done something wrong. But it really is dependent on the person.
Speaker C:Yeah, I think that's that's right. And so maybe I came across as being a little bit of a, I'm trying to think of a diplomat, but a bit of a dick. I like the term diplomat. But what what what I meant was, I suppose you're either you're either you are genuinely involved in it. And so you don't need to distance yourself from it or you're not. And there's no case to answer. But excuse, I think you're right. It's something about the negative connotations of the word, which makes it sound weaselly in some in some way.
Speaker D:Absolutely.
Speaker A:Well, I think I think the key thing to a successful excuse is never calling it an excuse. And you're quite right, Sarah. I always have to say, oh, no, but there's a reason. There's a reason that you never ever. That's the first commandment of making it good. Never admit that it's an excuse.
Speaker B:Yeah, that is a good bit of opera. That's free advice right there. Life pro tip. Yeah, I think we actually need to draw a distinction between two really fundamentally different types of excuse, which are touched on by what Sarah's saying there about sort of talking about reasons, which I would say excuses cause and excuses reason. Right. So now I'd say causal excuses say that doing or not doing something, the thing you're culpable for was simply not feasible. Literally, the train broke down. You know, you've got run over. You know, there was no way that you were able to accomplish the thing you should have done or not do the thing you did. Do because of the physical world preventing you from doing it, which is quite different and quite a different category, I think, of excuse, certainly in terms of the way we judge people for using them from the sort of reason argument, which essentially says that at the time it was not desirable to do that thing. So, for example, why didn't you do? Why didn't you finish that report? You had to take your daughter to hospital, right? Well, you know, you could have done, actually. But what you're saying is that something more important, you wanted to do something else instead. And I think actually a lot of our excuses and I think where the gray area of excuse quality comes in is in that area. It's that we all know that washing my hair works because it's so lame, because it's such a low priority thing to do that. You're basically saying, look, I don't really don't want to go on a date with you. Washing my hair is more interesting. But actually, you know, yeah, some sometimes those.
Speaker A:Yeah, well, this is where we start getting to the realms of excuses and honesty and morality, because here's the thing. As a as an inveterate excuse maker, something I realized. So when I was at university, I nearly got thrown out of my university on various occasions. And it was always I hope it was larks. It was never larks. It was never larks. It was always for basically not doing any work. And so as my university career went on, I had to make. Here's the thing, because you were talking about, you know, washing your hair is not going to cut it. It has to be, you know, on my sister's. Certainly not in your case. Certainly not in my case. Maybe back in the day. So it's always got to be something really dramatic. And so because people can't challenge that, you know, if you say, you know, my sister fell down a well and she's got three broken legs or something like that. They've got to go for that. And so, yeah, when I was university, my poor family was involved in a series of, you know, quite dramatic and quite serious road accidents and that kind of stuff. And I just hoped that my different tutors and so on never actually got together and talked about, you know, the misfortune of the McGruer, wider McGruer family. So my point is this is so that's what got me talking about that, thinking about that. And because you're talking about, you know, the level of excuse you go for. And I just had really had to go for broke on this kind of stuff. Yeah, I don't know what's my point. Does anyone want to pick up on that?
Speaker C:Big lie. Well, I think I think sort of this idea that there are there are two types of things that that you're trying to do or two different kinds of excuses. And if you look at one of the great areas of excuse making, right, politics is it OK, you know, and we can sort of focus on that a little bit. But Nick's point is really picked up recently. In fact, I think it was yesterday. Joe Biden made a comment. He said President Trump is not to blame for the coronavirus, but he is to blame for the response to the coronavirus. And I think that totally picks up on on sort of Nick's distinction about, you know, the fact that there are things which where what you're saying is there, you know, force majeure. There was something, you know, beyond beyond my ability to do anything about. And so, therefore, the consequences of that are not mine to own, because, you know, this was beyond the scope of anybody to deal with, like the coronavirus. But what clearly Joe Biden's seeking to do is to pin the blame for the things that are within the locus of control of the individual on on Donald Trump, i.e. the response. And and so, you know, that's the kind of thing that Nick was talking about, where, you know, you make some judgment where you prefer to do something, you know, one thing rather than another thing. So, you know, they may have invested in building a wall rather than, you know, hospitals or whatever it might have been that that choice was made. And, you know, somebody's pinning in sort of zooming in on that. And I think, yeah, that's just a kind of that seems a sensible distinction. And those two those two things very often get conflated in in excuses. So and it sounds to me, Fraser, like the the big lies you were making, you were trying to come up rather than say, well, actually, I chose to go down the pub rather than do my work, which would have been the honest excuse, which wouldn't have wouldn't have washed. You came up with the, you know, somebody fell down a well excuse, which is beyond your your control. So there's obviously something there as well about about effectively distancing yourself from culpability for for the event that caused you not to be able to do the thing you're supposed to have done.
Speaker A:Sarah, anything to weigh in on at this point?
Speaker D:No, not really. I think it just that comes back to one of those points I made earlier that, you know, you did something and therefore you're now trying to get out of it. And it's looking at your behavior. And was your behavior acceptable or not? You going down to the pub instead of going to class was not really acceptable. So therefore, you have to to make up an excuse.
Speaker A:I don't like the direction this podcast is taking.
Speaker D:You're just giving great examples that we can just work with so easily.
Speaker B:Yeah, Nick. I'm not sure. I don't think it's. Yeah, I think that you're right. But but this idea of what an acceptable thing to want or desire is, I wonder if the problem here is not the that there is something inherent in the excuse. And I'm thinking here of the reasons type excuse. There's not not something in the excuse which is lame, but there is what it reveals about your preferences. I think that's the that's the issue here. It's not we're not saying I mean, it's a completely legitimate excuse. Right. If Fraser loves going to the pub. If he cares about the pub and seeing his mates in the pub more than getting a good degree. Right. That really is of the same kind as someone who has to take their mum to hospital, you know, and couldn't sit the exam. It's of the same kind. There is something else that you care about more than getting a degree. But the difference is that we think it's OK. It's OK to get there are things that we think it's OK to care about and things which we think it's a bit morally weak to care about. And and and wanting to be in the pub every night, we think that's not a legitimate or a sort of acceptable desire to have. That's I'm putting that forward as my hypothesis that actually when we judge the name, it's not about the structure of the excuse. It's about the the what it reveals about your your own self. And that's why we would never even bother using excuse. I mean, if I said, look, I'm sorry I couldn't come to your birthday, which I said I'd come to. But, you know, it's a bit cold. And there was something I wanted to watch on telly, completely legitimate excuse. But it reveals that I don't really like that person. That's exactly the kind of excuse. I am entitled to infer that.
Speaker D:Yeah, I think it goes beyond that as well. I think it's about self-perception. So some people who are at the pub, say most nights and are giving excuses or sometimes that they don't want people to think that they are at the pub every night and they want to show themselves as someone else.
Speaker B:I think and I think that's that actually when you when you start thinking about yourself, is this is this something I feel I should apologize for? There used to be a program hosted by Simon Mayo called Confessions. It was on the radio. And then I think it was also on TV briefly. And he had this saying, if you don't want to hear about it on Confessions, don't do it. And I think that is a brilliant test for we can all rationalize why what we're doing right now, actually, it's fine. It's not a problem. It's not hurting anyone. But if you heard about it on Confessions, if you were on Confessions being exposed as having done that, would you be proud? Would you stand up and say, yes, I did that. And here's why. I think that's a really good test for whether or not actually you're doing something you know is right or wrong.
Speaker C:But I think also we've got to get fundamentally to the purpose of an excuse. And that is to escape censure or the consequences of what you've done. Right. And so in Fraser's context, it's obviously, you know, getting back to Sarah's point, it's audience specific. Right. So while one person might apologize to their lecturer for not turning in their essay on time because they were down at the pub, but they would come up with some other reason, you know, the flip side of that is somebody saying to their mates, sorry, I can't come down the pub tonight. Because they may not say because I'm going to stay in and finish my essay because their friends would think that was lame. And they'd, you know, lose credibility in their eyes. So they would come up with another excuse. But the point is, regardless of what you actually are saying, what you're trying to do is convince somebody that it's not your fault. And therefore, you are not liable for the consequences of whatever the action is that you've done. So you get an essay extension or your friends still like you and don't think you're a square or whatever it is.
Speaker A:Okay, we're actually quite close to getting towards the end here. There's a question I want to ask. But before I do, is there anything anyone wants to round this up on?
Speaker B:Well, I'm not a lawyer, but I think it might be worth just touching on what I understand to be a sort of legal distinction between exculpation and justification, which I think is potentially quite useful. I'm not sure I totally understand it myself. But essentially, a justification seeks to say that, yes, you did the thing, but actually it was fine. It's not even something you need to be absolved of. So killing someone in self-defense, for example, is a justification because what we're saying is the act of you doing that was fine. It's not something that you need to defend as such. Whereas exculpation says, yes, what you did was wrong, but there was some reason why you did it. That was kind of makes it less bad. So doing something, robbing a shop under duress, for example, or under blackmail. And then other reasons like being not having responsibility or being insane or someone who... Automatism apparently is a thing where if you're having an epileptic fit or something and you drive into a busload of nuns, no one's saying that was justified, but you have an exculpation for it. I'm not sure to what extent that carries over into how easy it is to conceive of that distinction between justification and exculpation in real life. I don't know.
Speaker A:Any last points anyone wants to make?
Speaker D:I just wanted to throw it out there. Is it better to tell the truth as your excuse or is it better to lie? Which one is it? That's one thing that we haven't really touched on is the lying factor of an excuse.
Speaker C:I think that one of the key elements of an excuse is it has to be believable. Obviously, Fraser's sister with three legs falling down the well is not in the believable category. So I think and most good lies have a kernel of truth to them, a strong kernel of truth to them, because then you don't get caught out because you're not over elaborating and making the whole thing up. Your brain has to do less work. So I think close to the truth, but maybe stretching it slightly.
Speaker D:Now that's just going to make me wary of everything you say to me, Chris.
Speaker C:Oh, you should definitely be wary of everything I say.
Speaker D:Yeah, everything now. Everything, Chris Deas.
Speaker A:I think Chris is not practiced enough in the world of making excuses because no, he's wrong. Because, of course, you should have a kernel of truth in there. But it's got to be huge. OK, it's got to be, you know, aliens were landing. That's the kind of that's the kind of level.
Speaker D:Isn't it huge enough that people wouldn't ask you questions about it? So it's devastating. You shouldn't want to know anymore.
Speaker B:There is that sort of total brazen truth in sort of what's it called?
Speaker C:The Goebbels approach to the big lie. Yeah, go on. Well, what did he say? Well, if you tell a lie that is large enough, it will be believed.
Speaker B:We haven't really discussed signaling, but very briefly, I mean, I think that's a big element here, which is that when something happens to you, that's really ridiculous. I mean, if the dog actually eats your homework, your stuff, you have to lie because you can't say the dog ate my homework. No one is going to believe it. And likewise, I mean, I think the more outrageous your excuse, I think people are going to rightly think, well, I could check whether that's true. So there's no way that they would have done that. There's a sort of bluffing element, bluffing and a signal to it.
Speaker A:And also you've got to say, I think a useful one which will come on a slot short to shortly is you've got to sort of discombobulate your audience a bit. That is really useful. That's another top tip for me there. OK, been a pretty unethical podcast so far. Yeah, it's a bit too revealing. Yeah, before we go on, there's just one thing I want to, I just want to make a statement to our dear audience, our listenership and also to any of my former university teachers listening. I want to make clear that when I made those excuses, it's not because I was just down the pub with my mates all the time. Sometimes I was down the park drinking there as well. So it wasn't always that. So, yeah, I've got a question I want to ask each of you, which is what's the best excuse either that you've ever made or that you've heard? And what's the worst excuse that you've ever made or ever heard? I've got one I can certainly start with a great excuse, which I once made when I was at school. I was about 13 or 14, and I can't remember. I probably hadn't handed in work or I didn't want to go to a game or something. And so what I said to my teacher was that the reason I hadn't gone to this event was because I'd had to leave early because I was going to my dad's house that weekend. Right. And I told this to my brother and my brother said, what were you saying that to him for? Because he's now going to think that our parents are divorced. And I said, exactly. That's the point. Because he will just be so freaked out or so sort of the fact that, oh, I didn't realize that McGruer's parents were divorced and, you know, discombobulate, you see, sort of distract them. So I think that was a really good excuse.
Speaker C:You then just had to pretend your parents were divorced for the next six years. But apart from that, it's fine.
Speaker B:It was a good investment, a good investment in future lying.
Speaker A:But yeah, that's certainly my good excuse. That's my contribution. Anyone want to jump in with anything?
Speaker B:Well, as I might have mentioned on other podcasts, I have some pretty I've got an unusual sleep pattern. I tend to get sleep very late. And you want that manifest itself, you know, when you're working in kind of regular routine job is that you basically don't have very much sleep. You've got kind of three or four hours sleep a night and then, you know, you can catch up at weekends to some extent. Well, when I had kids, I was a godsend because every you can go in and I'm really, really tired. Oh, yeah, you've got a small kid, didn't make any difference at all. You know, it really nothing to do with them. They were actually pretty good sleepers. And, you know, usually I was up when they woke up anyway. But I suddenly had a reason. It's like it turned it from a type B reason where actually I just, you know, I'm really bad at going to bed and to being a sort of type A reason where I literally it's out of my control. It was really good, really cool thing to happen to someone with delayed sleep phase.
Speaker A:You're quite right, Nick. And that's the great thing about kids. And by the way, I like your style. I like the fact that you referred to this as a reason. Reason A, reason B, you've already got it right. You know, no excuse. Chris or Sarah?
Speaker D:I've been thinking about this and I can't think of anything specific, but I guess a good excuse is anyone that actually gets you out of anything. And a bad one, well, would be one where you get caught. You get caught out.
Speaker A:Have you got a specific?
Speaker D:No, I'm too smart for that.
Speaker A:Ah, I like it.
Speaker D:I think it comes back to those four things I think I've said before. I think about the context and the situation. I think about my audience. I think about the consequences of like either me not doing what I was supposed to do or the consequence of me being caught out. And then I also think about, you know, was whatever I did or didn't do, was that acceptable or not? And then I put that into my excuse and I come up with something and I keep track. Perfect. You keep track.
Speaker C:Formula for success.
Speaker D:Formula for success, precisely.
Speaker A:I like it, I like it.
Speaker C:Yeah, very studied, very planned.
Speaker A:Yeah, and Chris?
Speaker C:Yeah, I think the two kind of the poor excuse that I remember is the goalkeeper David James, who, you know, had a bad spell in his career, sort of letting some goals in and blamed it on having been playing the PlayStation too much. And the reason this is a bad excuse is because, first of all, it just made him sound ridiculous. And second of all, you know, the idea that there was some causation between playing the PlayStation, there were then loads of articles, you know, sort of studying whether or not, you know, repetitive games playing, you know, affected your attention and all that sort of stuff. But generally, he was just, it just made him sound worse. Probably the good excuse that comes to mind is when Nigel Farage turned up to an event, a political event very late, and he sort of said, well, there was bad traffic on the M4, there'd been an accident or something, and he was held up in the traffic. But he then said, you know, and that's because our roads are overcrowded because of all the, you know, immigration that doesn't fit with our country's infrastructure. So he turned it effectively, you know, him being in the wrong into a political message, which I thought was quite good. But of course, the best excuse of all that we're living through at the moment is the coronavirus. It's pretty much, you know, anything you want to get away with now, you can blame on our current circumstances. Yeah, isn't it wonderful?
Speaker B:It's an all-encompassing type A excuse out of your control. Although while we're on the issue of politics, I think one of my favourite politics quotes ever was, you might remember, Gordon Brown. I can't remember what the context was. There'd been a government cock up of some sort. Gordon Brown said, I take full responsibility for what happened. That's why the person who was responsible went immediately, which I think is still one of my favourite quotes. So Gordon Brown as well. Yeah.
Speaker A:Okay, we're going to wrap up there. By the way, guys, sorry for, it took a while to deliver the most recent podcast edit. I just, the dog ate my hard drive. So I'm sorry about that. Anyway, let's wrap up there. Thank you as always for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Sara Nonu, Nick Hare and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights. Until next time. Goodbye.
