#40 Hanlon's razor: It's usually a mistake, not malice

Last week, we explored Occam’s Razor which states that simpler explanations are more likely to be true than complicated ones. Hanlon’s Razor is a related mental model we can use in everyday life.

Hanlon's Razor states that we should not attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. Often, when something bad happens as a result of someone's actions we tend to think that they did it on purpose. That they wanted to intentionally hurt us. In reality, maybe it was a result of a mistake or incompetence, not malice.

One way to explain why we think this is Conjunction fallacy. Basically, if given an option between "A person did something wrong" and "A person did something wrong AND it was intentional", we tend to choose option 2. It’s the same reason why we prefer more complex explanations over simple ones. Numerous psychological experiments, including the ones conducted by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, have shown exactly that.

When we always assume malice, we put ourselves in the center of everyone's world. This is quite a self-centered approach to life. In reality, for every act of malice, there is more ignorance, stupidity, laziness, or just mistakes.

In our complex world, using Hanlon's Razor can help us avoid paranoia. Very often, an explanation most likely to be right is the one that contains lesser intent.