I quit believing in Hanlon’s razor years ago when I realized that it’s clearly both. Both stupid malice and malicious stupidity.
Comment on Imagine voting for someone that wants to get rid of the department of education.
DrownedRats@lemmy.world 7 months agoDo not attribute malice to that which can be explained by stupidity… But never fully discount it.
root_beer@midwest.social 7 months ago
FatTony@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Everytime I see this sentence my brain just refuses to understand it. What does this mean?
JungleJim@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
It means to not assume a person is evil if their actions could be explained by them being stupid instead.
afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 7 months ago
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 he 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.
Shard@lemmy.world 7 months ago
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.
blue_struct@feddit.de 7 months ago
If you want to look for more information:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor