“If you were sorry you wouldn’t have done it to begin with” has also come up on several occasions in my personal life. Haven’t figured out how best to respond to that one.

If you did something wrong more than once and gave the same apology that statement would make total sense. The first time though is unfair and kind of selfish minded.

I've spilt things on people more than once, AFAIK that's not unusual. Does that make me at fault morally?

I'd say no.

Your thesis needs work IMO.

Make sure you don't fail morally by ever presenting an incomplete/unsound thesis again!

Spilling something is an accident. Other things can be mistakes but not accidents.

Spilling something is usually a mistake, and often can be mitigated; the point is that mere repitition of error is insufficient to prove moral degeneracy.

IDK at some point you should be investing in a sippy-cup

your willful misunderstanding is making this thread unbearable.

If repetition of a trait is not enough to demonstrate it as a core trait, what is?

(Serious question)

If you trust the person to not be acting on malice, then I'd not worry too much about the precise semantics of those words and guess that the person is mainly expressing their frustration, hurt, etc.

What about responding to that honest emotional expression directly? "Ouch. I hadn't realize how much I'd hurt you. Truly, I'm sorry."

That's... not how the direction of time works.

By that argument regret seems impossible. Some nuance is probably lost here, to be fair.

There are a range of harms that are reasonably excusable and then those that are inexcusable. It's when people are excessively or inconsistently unreasonable that you're better off not associating with them and their BS. It's unreasonable to reason with an unreasonable person.

I am not perfect and I am trying to be better.

Victims have the hardest hearts.

Your personal life sounds more exciting than mine.

In each case though you did it to begin with because

1) while you knew you would be sorry, you surmised you would be more sorry not doing it, or

2) did not believe anyone would mind your actions, or

3) did not realize you would so much regret it when others took offense to your actions.

#3 absolves you of nothing. #2 absolves you unless you thought they wouldn't mind simply because they wouldn't know. #1 could absolves you in theory, but might just reflect priorities that the recipient of your apology doesn't share.

All this is likely of little use to anyone, but I couldn't resist writing it down anyway.

All three of your possibilities imply that it was on purpose and understood to be wrong to begin with. What about if you made a mistake: you thought you were doing the right thing, but turns out it was the wrong thing. Or you thought what you are doing wouldn’t impact anybody negatively. Or you did the right thing but it didn’t work out the way you anticipated. Or it was an innocent and honest thing you did, but somebody else took offence anyway. You can be sorry for things without there being any malice at play.

We (humans) are not always good at predicting the future or other people’s reactions. We do stupid things and make stupid mistakes all the time and when these things affect others we often feel sorry that we did those things.

Don't those all fall squarely under #2 (supposing the act won't bother anyone)?

I guess you’re right.

This statement would only work if one's could be perfect, if their actions would be not a mistake but a calculated misdeed and their apology would not be sincere.

If you are really sincere with your apology, and you are doing the best you can to fix what you did, so just ignore this kind of statement. You are doing your part.

That was my point. Unless the apology is of the type "it accidentally got deployed before we had the opportunity to test the change and communicate to users..." then they shouldn't have done it to begin with.

Your point is that you don't know what an apology is.

So you are saying we are never allowed to make mistakes?

I'm not sure you'll get a response as the OP probably can't hear you right up there on that high horse of theirs.