I hate Hanlon’s Razor with a passion. It’s just a way to introduce plausible deniability for cases that do involve malice. Not that this stuff necessarily is malicious, I just think it’s dumb to rule out maliciousness any time it could be incompetence.
If I were to rewrite Hanlon’s Razor today, I would update it as so: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence or indifference.” Because yes, it does introduce plausible deniability; but most of the most harmful things in our modern world aren’t malice, but simply big companies caring less about you than about their own precious profits, or politicians caring less about their constituents than about their kickbacks and campaigns.
But admittedly, the word “adequately” does do a lot of heavy lifting in the original and in my update, because I’d counter your (quite reasonable) objection with the corollary that if malice is evident, incompetence is no longer an adequate explanation.
In general, though, I’ve had simply too much experience in this world to believe that there’s a grand conspiratorial plan behind anything awful people do these days.
Good comment, I can agree with it. Though to address your last paragraph, I wasn’t trying to say that it’s usually maliciousness or best to assume it, I just don’t think it should be summarily dismissed.
I’d also say that there’s not much functional difference between a pattern of malice, incompetence, or indifference.
Totally true. Though you might address the various patterns differently (malice = legal action, incompetence = mandated education, indifference = financial penalty), the results of the patterns are often the same.
I hate Hanlon’s Razor with a passion. It’s just a way to introduce plausible deniability for cases that do involve malice. Not that this stuff necessarily is malicious, I just think it’s dumb to rule out maliciousness any time it could be incompetence.
If I were to rewrite Hanlon’s Razor today, I would update it as so: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence or indifference.” Because yes, it does introduce plausible deniability; but most of the most harmful things in our modern world aren’t malice, but simply big companies caring less about you than about their own precious profits, or politicians caring less about their constituents than about their kickbacks and campaigns.
But admittedly, the word “adequately” does do a lot of heavy lifting in the original and in my update, because I’d counter your (quite reasonable) objection with the corollary that if malice is evident, incompetence is no longer an adequate explanation.
In general, though, I’ve had simply too much experience in this world to believe that there’s a grand conspiratorial plan behind anything awful people do these days.
Good comment, I can agree with it. Though to address your last paragraph, I wasn’t trying to say that it’s usually maliciousness or best to assume it, I just don’t think it should be summarily dismissed.
I’d also say that there’s not much functional difference between a pattern of malice, incompetence, or indifference.
Totally true. Though you might address the various patterns differently (malice = legal action, incompetence = mandated education, indifference = financial penalty), the results of the patterns are often the same.