Hanlon's Razor

 

Hanlon's Razor is the adage: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Or sometimes, "Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence."

It appears in a similar form by the inimitable Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as, "And I have again observed, my dear friend, in this trifling affair, that misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than even malice and wickedness. At all events, the two latter are of less frequent occurrence," in The Sorrows of Young Werther. The same sentiments are also shared by William James, Churchill, and H.G. Wells. More recently, Douglas Hubbard gave a more modern version in his book The Failure of Risk Management: Why It's Broken and How to Fix It: "Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system."

I've seen people get mad at others pushing in line when the pushers-in didn't realise other people were queuing. I've seen drivers shouting at another driver who's in blissful ignorance of the trouble they've caused. I've seen agents blamed for terrible customer service when the system is at fault, and customer service blame users when the product is at fault. I've seen people despairing at others leaving litter in the park or on the street when animals had dragged out the mess overnight. I've seen people vilified for not moving down on a train when they weren't aware of the squeeze at the other end. And, usually, I think people aren't smart or capable enough, or in fact wicked enough, to carry out the conspiracies that people credit them for. Very often it's the person assuming bad intentions and getting mad who suffers the most.

To be sure, there are different degrees of negligence. We can all make mistakes, but if you're doing your taxes, it's not okay to make a mistake because you didn't read the instructions. If you're standing on a busy train, you owe it to others to be aware that you may be blocking an aisle, and we should do our best to make sure our rubbish stays where we put it. But none of us are perfect and so often I think Hanlon's Razor has some truth to it.

Perhaps a better formulation of Hanlon's Razor would be, "Before attributing to malice, try attributing to incompetence."

Hanlon's Razor, which encourages us first to consider innocent mistakes rather than assuming ill will, was a submission to Murphy's Law, book two: more reasons why things go wrong, by Arthur Bloch (p52).

For more fun ideas in sketches see my book Big Ideas Little Pictures.

 

 

Also find on the sketchplanations site: Fundamental Attribution Error (someone shared Hanlon's Razor with me on posting this), Attribution bias, Chesterton's fence, Russell's teapot, Bloom's taxonomy, Maslow's hierarchy, Muphry's Law, The Peter Principle, The Generalised Peter Principle