this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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A Boring Dystopia
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Do not attribute malice to that which can be explained by stupidity... But never fully discount it.
Everytime I see this sentence my brain just refuses to understand it. What does this mean?
It means to not assume a person is evil if their actions could be explained by them being stupid instead.
It gets clearer if you flip it around to sound less poetic:
Or perhaps in more direct words someone might actually say:
You are walking on the street and a big fat guy bumps into you. Assume they are just clumsy don't assume they were trying to run you down.
This doesn't mean be unaware, this doesn't mean ignore red flags, this doesn't mean to not have a healthy level of caution. It means assume good faith from deeply imperfect people until evidence no longer supports it.
It means if you don't know if someone did something because they had evil plans or were fking stulud, its safe to assume they were fking stupid at the point of the incident.
Especially if the evil plan would have been convoluted and required things to align just perfect for the plan to be successful.
But it is not safe to make that assumption. It's wildly dangerous to label evil as stupid. Giving evil people an in is how we get to where we are.
I was just explaining to the commenter above what was meant by the saying. I never said it was correct in all situations.
If you have an issue with the saying, you're free to give Robert j. Halon your feedback.
Unfortunately you are also responsible for what you say and do.
It's called Hanlon's razor, a take on Occam's razor, the unstated part is "all else being equal".
Yeah and its wildly misused and dangerous.
If you want to look for more information:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
I quit believing in Hanlon’s razor years ago when I realized that it’s clearly both. Both stupid malice and malicious stupidity.