Hanlon: Hanlon's Razor

The writer Robert Hanlon once said that, 'You should never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.' And this has come to be known as Hanlon's Razor. The basic idea is that it actually takes talent to be truly evil. To mastermind a cunning plot that gives James Bond a run for his money actually takes wits. Which means that if somebody has done you wrong, or they've harmed you in any way, it's more likely to be from incompetence, or neglect, or idiocy than any cruel intentions. Suppose that somebody cuts you up on the motorway. They slide into your lane, and it's just inches away from a crash. And so, you hit your steering wheel, you honk your horn, and you swear loudly. 'How could they do this to me?' But what's far more likely is that person just made a mistake, and now they are just as anxious as you at the near crash. But now they are also panicking about the person behind them honking their horn and swearing at them. Hanlon's Razor echoes a long philosophical tradition. Saint Augustine, for example, argued that ignorance, and not intentions, were the root of most sin, and the Stoics, like Epictetus, warned us not to judge appearances too quickly. It was more often misunderstanding, and not malice, that is the culprit. Hanlon's Razor is a good rule of thumb. If somebody gets your drink order wrong, it's probably not personal. If somebody forgets to copy your name into an email, it's probably not from spite. Most people, most of the time, are not out to get you, but that doesn't mean that their stupidity won't hurt you anyway.