The problem with "Hanlon's Razor" is that everything can be explained by incompetence by making suitable assumptions. It outright denies the possibility of malice and pretends as if malice is rare. Basically, a call to always give the benefit of the doubt to every person or participant's moral character without any analysis whatsoever of their track record.

Robert Hanlon himself doesn't seem to be notable in any area of rationalist or scientific philosophy. The most I could find about him online is that he allegedly wrote a joke book related to Murphy's laws. Over time, it appears this obscure statement from that book was appended with Razor and it gained respectability as some kind of a rationalist axiom. Nowhere is it explained why this Razor needs to be an axiom. It doesn't encourage the need to reason, examine any evidence, or examine any probabilities. Bayesian reasoning? Priors? What the hell are those? Just say "Hanlon's Razor" and nothing more needs to be said. Nothing needs to be examined.

The FS blog also cops out on this lazy shortcut by saying this:

> The default is to assume no malice and forgive everything. But if malice is confirmed, be ruthless.

No conditions. No examination of data. Just an absolute assumption of no malice. How can malice ever be confirmed in most cases? Malicious people don't explain all their deeds so we can "be ruthless."

We live in a probabilistic world but this Razor blindly says always assume the probability of malice is zero, until using some magical leap of reasoning that must not involve assuming any malice whatsoever anywhere in the chain of reasoning (because Hanlon's Razor!), this probability of malice magically jumps to one, after which we must "become ruthless." I find it all quite silly.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

https://fs.blog/mental-model-hanlons-razor/

Assuming incompetence instead of malice is how you remain collegiate and cordial with others.

Assuming malice from people you interact with means dividing your community into smaller and smaller groups, each suspicious of the other.

Assuming malice from an out group who have regularly demonstrated their willingness to cause harm doesn’t have that problem.

I agree. It seems to be an all too common example of both: 1. lack of nuance in thought (i.e. either assume good intentions or assume malice, not some probability of either, or a scale of malice) 2. the overwhelming prevalence of bad faith arguments, most commonly picking the worst possible argument feasibly with someone's words.

In this case instead of a possibility of it being a small act of opportunity (like mentioned above of just dragging feet) not premeditated, alternatives are never mentioned but instead just assumed folks are talking about some higher up conspiracy and on top of that that must be what these people are always doing.

Anyway thank you for your point it is an interesting read :)

IMHO you're taking it a bit too literally and seriously; I suggest interpreting it more loosely, ie "err on the side of assuming incompetence [given incompetence is rampant] and not malice [which is much rarer]." As a rule of thumb, it's a good one.

It doesn’t say don’t think about malice as a possibility, it says that if you aren’t going to think about it, you should ignore malice as a possibility.

That's because actual malice IS rare. Corporations are not filled with evil people, but people make perfectly rational, normal decisions based on their incentives that result in the emergent phenomenon of perceived malicious actions.

Even Hitler's actions can be traced through a perfectly understandable, although not morally condone-able, chain of events. I truly believe that he did not want to just kill people and commit evil, he truly wanted to better Germany and the human race, but on his journey he drove right off the road, so to speak. To quote CS Lewis, "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

Yep, "Hanlon's Razor" is pseudo-intellectual nonsense. It sets up a false dichotomy between two characteristics, neither of which is usually sufficient to explain a bad action.