Hanlon's Fig Leaf

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice.

Despite its rise to popular prominence by way of a joke book, the concept of Hanlon's Razor has won credibility among many very serious people. No doubt, some who cite it with reverence believe the maxim to be coined by a respected philosophical thinker and not, as the case seems to be, some rando from Scranton.  

The adage as made popular in the early days of the internet goes like this: 

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. 

The base notion holds some truthiness, no doubt. Winston Churchill once made a similar comment regarding the disposition of Charles De Gaulle. Then again, Churchill was a famous quipster, and no doubt intended the observation as such.

My case against Hanlon's Razor isn't against a wry quip about human nature. After all, anything funny is most likely true. Rather, my issue is with the way an easy jibe has been elevated to a heuristic in absolute terms, and a worthless one at that. 

When taken seriously, Hanlon's Razor is, at best, a fig leaf for incompetence; an excuse to leave a screw up to keep screwing things up. At its worst, by excusing incompetence it opens to door to malicious actors by supplying them with a pretext for their bad outcomes.

The shared quality of malice and incompetence is hubris, insofar as malice is a type of incompetence. After all, anyone who does something nasty has justified it to themselves through poor reasoning. When they do so knowing they'll have the cover of Hanlon's Razor, though... well, no one is too stupid who gets away with it.

Still, simple hubris is enough for some. It's something of a mark of sophistication among certain experts to condescendingly cite Hanlon's Razor to scold those who complain about bias and corruption in high places. They have accepted an overemphasis on motives that whitewashes bad outcomes with assumptions of good intent. We all know what the road to Hell is paved with. 

Thus, Hanlon's Razor exposes an irony: you'd expect front row kids to be less moved by intentions than they obviously are. In that way, it would seem Hanlon's Razor does apply to them. They are the door-holders, as it were.

Hanlon's Razor needs to go away, but unfortunately, it is a self-protecting maxim. I'm not prepared to say Hanlon's razor itself is malicious, but once someone has adopted Hanlon's razor, they will naturally apply it to itself in the manner of the fig leaf.

Then again, Hanlon's Razor sees its most use by the right to handicap the right. Meanwhile, the left paints the right both as dumb AND malicious, applying the inverse of Hanlon's Razor: "Never excuse as stupidity that which is conceivably attributable to malice." 

In closing, I leave you with this counterpoint to Hanlon's razor by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from Letters and Papers from Prison:

"Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings  at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed- in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous."